Harry Situation Reviews: Hellboy (2019)
Oh hell(boy) no...
Hellboy (2019) is a comic book reboot of the Hellboy film series that were done by Guillermo Del Toro, but are now directed by Neil Marshall (director of Dog Soldiers and The Descent), and stars Stranger Things’ David Harbour as the titular demonic good guy.
Much like the Guillermo Del Toro movies and the comics its based off of, Hellboy is a demon summoned by the Nazis to bring the end of the world, only to be adopted by Professor Broom (played by Ian McShane) of the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense (BPRD). This time around, Hellboy is brought to London to investigate and stop a powerful witch known as the Blood Queen (played by Milla Jovovich) from releasing Hell onto Earth, and he does so with a hard R-rating.
As you all know, I’m a big fan of Hellboy. I just got down with doing a series of Countdown Reviews of each Hellboy movie released. While I didn’t have high expectations for this reboot, I am an optimist. I wanted to see it regardless and give my own opinion of it. It, at the very least, deserves that.
One thing that I try to avoid when I review a sequel/remake/reboot/prequel/whatever is that I don’t make any comparisons to the original film. That’s just not fair and it leads to biased opinions. We all know that a sequel/remake/reboot/prequel/whatever may not be as good as the first one. Not all of them can be the The Return of the King or the Empire Strikes Back or the Dawn of the Planet of the Apes of each franchise. But it’s always up to us to keep an open mind.
Now with that out of the way, the first two Hellboy movies are far superior than this one.
Alright, the one big positive that I want to get out of the way is that David Harbour was good as Hellboy. When I first heard he was cast as him, I knew the chose wisely. I could see it. And he did a good job throughout the movie. However, I don’t recall Hellboy ever being as shouty as he was in this movie. He was kinda a shouty Hellboy. Other than that, a solid performance from him. Not to mention, his makeup as Hellboy was also good, although it did remind of Satan from Preacher, but overall, looks good enough.
But this movie was a fucking shitshow mess.
To sum it up, everything that I feared would happen to this movie, did happen in this movie. The biggest one being it had no idea what kind of movie it wanted to be. It was a Hellboy movie, then it was a comedy, then it was a horror movie, then it was a fantasy action flick. It’s a Frankenstein stitch-job that did not mesh together.
Now let’s talk about the R-rating. Yeah, this movie has plenty of blood and gore. And I mean plenty of blood and gore. Like guy having his head ripped open by a pig-demon-thing and seeing his exposed brains style blood and gore. And that’s the biggest problem with the movie: it has all this blood and gore but they all serve no purpose. It’s just blood and gore for the sake of it, and because they wanted that R-rating. And let’s not forget that they drop the F-bomb whenever possible. It’s not necessary. I’ve read enough Hellboy comics to know for certain that there’s nothing really there to warrant an R-rating. Sure, it got dark sometimes, but nothing extremely graphic as half the shit they show in this movie. So why was it rated R? My theory is that since R-rated comic book movies like Deadpool and Logan were so successful with critics, audiences, and the box office that the makers of this film thought they could bank by riding the same train. But they forgot one key element: the audience needs a reason to give a shit about what’s going on. We the audience aren’t going to see your movie for the gallons of blood you can show onscreen, we want a good story too.
Some of the other performances were okay, but nothing spectacular. I mean, Ian McShane in this movie as Professor Broom, I don’t know who he was trying to be, but it sure as hell wasn’t Professor Broom. In this movie, Hellboy and Professor Broom have this very complex relationship that was never in the comics. This guy (whoever he was supposed to be) could barely give a shit about Hellboy. Professor Broom of the comics, while he did make Hellboy a force for good, did actually care for him and did in fact treated him like his own son. That was shown perfectly in both Hellboy (2004) and the animated film Hellboy: Blood and Iron. I didn’t give much of a shit about Hellboy’s daddy issues because I knew that’s not how it was.
Oh, just so you all know, Hellboy’s backstory is explained in this film (again), with Ian McShane’s Broom being there during World War II. Yeah, and the explanation they give to why he still looks like his current age is bullshit.
And Milla Jovovich as the villain... Oh hahahahahahahhaha. Yeah, she was the least intimidating thing in this movie compared to the CGI monsters. Mainly because her character is the most basic of evils. No complex issues about her like Kylo Ren. No moments of sympathy like Kubo. Not even having the mere enjoyment of spreading chaos everywhere like the Joker. She's just evil for the sake of it, and she's boring because of it.
And the CGI, oh fuck, it’s pretty obvious and pretty terrible. Take one scene where Hellboy is fighting off three giants in a forest. It looks cool but you cannot help but notice how bad the CGI looks when they're doing all the moments and the disgusting gore factor that plays into it as Hellboy is fighting them off. And they repeat this process again towards the end (minor spoiler here) when all these giant demons start walking through London and the CGI becomes so obvious that its damn painful to look at. Also, that scene only exists just so this film could add more gore, as if there wasn't enough of it.
In the end, I gave Hellboy a chance. I didn’t have any high expectations, but I, at the very least, gave it the benefit of the doubt, as I do with most movies. I expected something better than what I initially feared to be turn out in this movie. But it couldn’t do that. It was a fucking mess from start to finish to a point where I couldn't sit through it any further and walked out, making this the second time in my life where I had to walk out of a movie before the end credits appeared. I honestly had to hit the bar right about this movie. Please stick to watching the Hellboy movies that had Ron Perlman. Those are worth your time than this one. I think Dante forgot to mention a few more circles of Hell when he wrote the Divine Comedy, and this movie definitely belonged to one of those circles.
Positives:
-David Harbour as Hellboy
Negatives:
-Terrible story setup
-Terrible structure
-Bad, obvious CGI
-Lame villain
-Bad characterization
-Fucking pointless R-rating
Final Grade: F
I feel bad for ripping on this movie. I really do. I feel bad for the people who worked on this movie because I could tell that there was some talent behind it. Just wasn’t in the cards for them sadly.
So those are my thoughts on Hellboy (2019). Have you seen it? What were your thoughts? Which Hellboy movie has been your favorite so far? Please be kind, leave a like and comment, and check out more reviews here on Prose!
Best Quote:
Blood Queen: “We belong together, you and I.”
Hellboy: “We do, but it’s not gonna work, you know. You see, I’m a capricorn, and you’re fucking nuts!”
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