Hellboy, Mike Mignola’s most famous creation, is a generally beloved character amongst comic book readers, and had a pretty good run in the past when it comes to film adaptations. Guillermo del Toro delivered a superbly-crafted duology, and even the direct-to-DVD animated films were pretty decent. But, with little over a decade since the end of del Toro’s duology, as well as a failed attempt to deliver a third chapter, the decision was made to push the dreaded reboot button with filmmaker Neil Marshall at the helm. Normally, you’d expect something expect something amazing seeing this is the guy that gave us The Descent, Doomsday, and some of the best episodes of Game of Thrones, but sadly this is not just Marshall’s worst film but one of the biggest misfires in comic book movie history.
This is a sprawling abomination of a film with a sorry excuse of a story that sounds as if it was cobbled together by a bunch of half-crazed monkeys, making the messy Suicide Squad look like a coherent masterpiece in film making. Tonal switches happen left and right, being light and comedic one second and then serious and horrific the next, and each and every character just goes through the motions while the audience is left bored out of their minds.
Prior to the film’s release, Mignola and company bragged about how this film would be more faithful to the comics than del Toro’s duology, but the narrative is nothing more than a scruffy, unfocused patchwork of scenes barely hung together by weathered string. We have Nimue wanting to destroy humanity yet also wanting to claim Hellboy as her king, then we also have to deal with a vampire in Mexico, then we deal with giants located in England, then Baba Yaga turns up, then we deal with some Arthurian myths and legends, and so on. It’s nothing more than a series of unfortunate events with so much happening that it never once feels tight or cohesive in the slightest.
Not only is this non-comprehensible, but it’s also embarrassingly cheap to look at. The film is sugar-coated in CGI sploosh with horribly rendered creatures and monsters, gore, and green-screened edges so obvious that it makes CGI short films on YouTube look better by comparison. The colour palette is beyond atrocious, and combined with the cheap CGI delivers nightmarish flashbacks of Justice League.
Hellboy is painful to watch, but also painful to listen to thanks to its wooden dialogue and humour which induces a noisy, headache-inducing experience for the viewer. Speaking of noisy, despite lead David Harbour trying his best with the material that’s given to him, he lacks the unique quality that Ron Perlman had in spades and actually spends a lot of time shouting his way through the film, almost as if he too is annoyed to be in it. Even the ever-reliable Ian McShane looks fed up as he spends a lot of the film bickering with Harbour’s Hellboy as if they’re an old married couple, plus the talented Stephen Graham comes off as annoying in the vocal part he’s landed with. However, with the unlikeable characters on display, one gleaming beacon of light is Milla Jovovich as the camp, villainous Nimue, but she’s on screen far too little to make that much of an impact.
In the end, Hellboy is a joyless mess of a movie that lacks the heart, soul, passion or creativity that the iconic comic book hero deserves. Everything about it comes across as inept, ill-advised and annoying, right down to its characters, visuals, story and editing. There have been recent reports of behind the scenes turmoil, and regardless whether or not that’s true, you can almost tell that this must’ve been a troubled production that had no right being in the cinema. This is a film that should either be sent straight to DVD, Netflix or just the bargain bin.
HELLBOY / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR: NEIL MARSHALL / SCREENPLAY: MIKE MIGNOLA, ANDREW COSBY / STARRING: DAVID HARBOUR, MILLA JOVOVICH, IAN McSHANE / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW
