When Guillermo del Toro made his two Hellboy movies in the 2000s, as much as he showed respect to Mike Mignola’s comic book creation, he was putting his own spin on the material, which often leaned in his fairy tale sensibilities, while Ron Perlman’s Hellboy was drunkenly singing Barry Manilow. It was a disappointment that del Toro never concluded his planned trilogy, and it is even worse when the franchise gets rebooted with Neil Marshall’s 2019 adaptation, which was a total mess that tried hard to earn its R-rating. And now we have another reboot, so have things gotten better than they were five years ago?
This is certainly a change of pace from previous cinematic iterations as director Brian Taylor co-wrote with Mignola and Christopher Golden, adapting The Crooked Man limited series from the comics. Set in the 1950s, Hellboy (Jack Kesy) and the rookie BPRD agent Bobbie Jo Song (Adeline Rudolph) are stranded in rural Appalachia, where they discover a small community haunted by witches, led by a local devil that is referred to as the Crooked Man.
What felt unique about the Hellboy comics was not only did it evoke Mignola’s love of Jack Kirby’s superhero comics, but told various storylines that have their roots in folklore, pulp magazines, Lovecraftian horror, etc. Because of its rare format, there can be adventure stories about stopping pulp Nazis, to comedic shorts such as a young Hellboy eating pancakes for the first time. In the case of The Crooked Man, it leans towards horror that touches upon folklore within the Appalachian Mountains.
Despite the involvement of Mignola, who seems willing to let a franchise that he originated go off on new directions (cinematically at least), while not retreading familiar ground like a repeat of Hellboy’s origin story, this new instalment is as crooked as its titular antagonist himself. Instead of superhero spectacle that the previous films lean into, this is low-budget horror that though is intentional, is rather styleless with flat cinematography that makes it look any lo-fi horror flick shot in the woods.
You can see the filmmakers feel limited by the budget they had, with much of the money spent on the practical effects towards Hellboy and the Crooked Man themselves. In terms of set-pieces, there is a great deal of characters talking as a way of disguising the fact that the filmmakers not using much special effects. Not even Hellboy using his Good Samaritan has that satisfying impact. As for the horror itself, it relies on the cheap method of cranking up the volume, which usually happens just to transition to a new scene.
When it comes to comic book roles, if they were cast pitch-perfectly the first time like Ron Perlman was in the first two Hellboy flicks, the latest movie may have been able to recapture lighting in a bottle. Although David Harbour made the role successfully his own, despite the 2019 reboot being in absolute shambles, the same can’t be said about Jack Kesy. Best known for playing Black Tom Cassidy in Deadpool 2, Kesy mumbles his way without any charisma or humor as Hellboy, though his co-stars bring a bit more energy, not least of which Joseph Marcell AKA Geofrrey from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.
