Guillermo del Toro’s take on the Dark Horse Comics character in his 2004 film and the 2008 sequel framed the half-demon as a lovesick teenager and crafted an expansive world of fantasy and awe. But his vision for the third and final film, which would’ve brought his take on Hellboy to its conclusion, never quite panned out. The cancellation of that sequel meant a chance to start over, to bring a new cinematic adaptation much more in line with the darker, horror-filled world in Mike Mignola’s comics. To an extent, this Hellboy succeeds. It is indeed darker and horror-filled, but it’s also an exhaustive experience as it overstuffs by stitching together every possible Hellboy comic story and motif it can muster.
Opening in the middle ages to a plague and war-ravaged land, King Arthur and Merlin stop the Blood Queen, Nimue (Milla Jovovich), from causing more death and destruction by hacking her to bits and sealing them in boxes. All of this is relayed via massive exposition dump. Cut to the present day, where the exposition never stops as we’re whisked from scene to scene, location to location, along with Hellboy (David Harbour). We first meet him in Mexico, where he fights vampiric luchador Camazotz. Then he’s dealing with a betrayal before fighting off Giants. All the while Hellboy’s enemies, including hog-like fairy Gruagach, are working to collect Nimue’s body parts and put her back together.
Eventually, he meets his new allies in Alice (Sasha Lane), a medium with strong paranormal abilities, and Ben Daimio (Daniel Dae Kim), a military leader of B.P.R.D. with a serious distrust of monsters. Both introductions are choppy and abrupt, yet speed through flashback sequences that flesh out their backstories enough to fill viewers in before being sped right along to the next bit of info dump.
That’s essentially Hellboy in a nutshell; too much is being thrown at the audience too fast in an attempt to check off all of the boxes a die-hard comic fan may want. It’s at the expense of story and character. All of the dialogue is either exposition or jokes that rarely land. Forget about chemistry between characters, too; there’s no time to develop any of that. Lane feels wholly out of place, and it’s difficult to discern how much of that is her performance or simply the script. Hellboy’s entire emotional narrative is reliant upon his relationship with his adoptive father, Trevor Bruttenholm (Ian McShane), but their few scenes together don’t really present much of one.
Then there’s the CG work, which mostly isn’t great and often diminishes the great practical effects there are. Battle scenes are reduced by choppy editing and then blasted to smithereens by the most obnoxious of needle drops. Any action sequence or big moment is cued by its soundtrack, and it’s relentless.
But there are a number of great moments, too. Any scene that features the seriously creepy Baba Yaga is an amazing highlight that I can’t stress enough, particularly one that sees Hellboy inside her home. This character is so fantastically designed and performed, her home so unnerving, that she deserves an entire movie of her own. Troy James once again creates a memorable horror character in his unique twisty way.
It’s not just Baba Yaga that’s great, but all of the amazing creature designs by Joel Harlow. The Gruagach, the gruesome and hellish creatures in the third act, and so, so many more make for a nonstop monster showcase for the entire 2-hour runtime. If you just want gore, violence, and monsters, Hellboy delivers and then some.
The screenplay is a mess; way too much is crammed in (at least four major comic storylines), the dialogue is often cringe-worthy, and it’s unfocused. There’s no finesse to the characters, and this take on the big red half demon isn’t much at all like his comic counterpart. But there’s something admirable in a film that is so overly ambitious that it swings hard for the fences. If you completely let go of this being anything like del Toro or Mignola’s versions of the character and just enjoy a frenzied, constant barrage of gore-filled monster mayhem then you’ll have a fun time.
This doesn’t quite feel like the Hellboy we wanted, but it does feel like a throwback to anything goes ‘90s horror, complete with not so great CG and over the top monsters. A lot of them. Technically, it’s a mess of a movie, but I’d be willing to tune in for a sequel if it means more Baba Yaga.
