Hellboy: The Crooked Man (now streaming on Hulu) is so dull and ineffective, you’ll be tempted to rebrand the guy Heckboy. A reboot of a reboot, the film is a diminishing-returns project in a rapidly declining franchise, based on the beloved comic-book series by Mike Mignola, which began a couple decades back with two well-regarded Guillermo Del Toro films, re-began with a 2019 Neil Marshall floparoo and re-begins again with this $20 million-budgeted outing that looks like 79 bucks and a handful of worn-down nickels. So, yes, sad trombone, especially considering it’s directed by Brian Taylor of Neveldine/Taylor, the filmmaking duo who created if-cocaine-were-movies movies Crank, Crank 2 and Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance – and if this latest Hellboy is anything, it’s an if-Trazodone-was-a-movie movie.
The Gist: It’s 1959. A train clatters along a track in rural Appalachia. In a cargo car are Hellboy (Jack Kesy), and his work partners Bobbie Jo (Adeline Rudolph) and what’s that guy’s name again? I didn’t catch it before he was murdered by a giant spider, which is why nobody bothered to give the guy a name. Sorry, guy! Guess you’re just Johnny Expendable. They work for the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense, and they had been transporting a smallish, regular-sized highly dangerous spider before something made it suddenly grow into a huge highly dangerous spider, which is absolutely something the BPMD would handle. Except they don’t handle it. The spider transformed a man into a corpse and managed to defy physics in a manner that derailed just the one train car despite it being attached to many other train cars, then escaped. Rough day at the office.
Of course, physics were also defied when the spider grew to gargantuan proportions in a rather unnatural manner, and it turns out there’s somethin’ in them thar hills causing it. Hellboy and Bobbie Jo find themselves plodding along a path in the middle of a forest, something that happens far too often in this movie, possibly with unintentional comic effect. Anyway, Hellboy can smell when things are off, in the supernatural sense, and this forest is heavy with the whiff. He ain’t ascairt either – when asked if he’s got the heebie-jeebies, he replies, “I am the heebie-jeebies.” He’s a big lumbering musclebound galoot, half-demon and half-man, with bright red skin, a massive stone fist and cranial horns he grinds down to forehead stumps. I think he and Bobbie Jo are looking for the lost giant spider, but they barely mention it, like they either forgot it existed or don’t expect to find it, which is how I felt about the plot of this movie.
The pair encounter some folk in the forest who adhere to precise hillbilly stereotypes in that they wear straw hats, have grubby faces, don’t wear shoes and seem to have little consideration for the diversity of the gene pool. Notably, there are witches among them, and one enchanted-slash-cursed a poor man named Tom (Jefferson White), a soldier who returned from the war completely unharmed because he cast a spell on himself that resulted in him being kept safe thanks to his “lucky bone,” and I refuse to elaborate further because it’s funnier that way. Needless to say, he’s beholden to the witch. And I believe Hellboy and Bobbie Jo are committed to helping this guy ditch the curse, because I think that falls under their jurisdiction? I dunno, nobody communicates anything effectively in this damn movie. Oh, and the whole area is under the control of a creepy old crumbler in a stovepipe hat known as The Crooked Man, who cocks his head to the side with a softer and squishier version of the CRACKITY BONES sound (crackity crackity crackity bones bones bones!) and, frankly, looks like Leprechaun in the Wood. Where’s Ice-T when you need him?
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Hellboy: The Crooked Man puts its title hero in a flimsy The Witch ripoff forest, fighting some flimsy Evil Dead deadite ripoffs.
Performance Worth Watching: Joseph Marcell plays a blind crazyman reverend who injects some verve into his line-readings – while the rest of the cast murmurs out the dialogue just so they can get this all over with sooner rather than later.
Memorable Dialogue: The blind crazyman reverend – because no reverend in Appalachian country can possess sight or sanity – watches as Hellboy loads his gun:
Blind crazyman reverend: You doubt the power of prayer, son?
Hellboy: Just like to have some extra high-caliber ammo on hand, just in case.
Sex and Skin: None.
Our Take: Hellboy: The Crooked Man is a relatively concise 99-minute movie that nonetheless feels way longer, because that’s how time functions when we’re watching a hard-on-the-eyes movie clod its way through an aimless plot being executed by terminally blasé actors. The story is based on a Mignola original culled from the comics, and the man himself has a screenwriting credit, but the movie lacks the outsized personality and sharp comedy of the source material, and the visual gusto of the Del Toro films. It exists as a gormless wad of IP in dire need of inspiration and/or a reason to exist.
The film’s dim-lit ugliness and lack of energy functions contrary to Taylor’s usual high-octane M.O. Granted, he’s saddled with a turgid screenplay and a tight checkbook, but even then, the movie plays like it squandered its budget on liquor and downers for the cast and spent the remaining $100k on makeup FX for Hellboy and The Crooked Man. Kudos to Taylor for not leaning too heavily on CGI and attempting folk-horror atmospherics, but man, does this movie look drab, with its anonymous locations (lots of random wooded clearings) and set pieces (a crappy old house, a crappy old church, a second crappy old house) contributing to an overall tone and aesthetic that’s a deadening blend of ennui and depression.
Nothing in The Crooked Man compels us to feel invested in this story, which lacks suspense, dramatic momentum and a sense of pacing – the first act is fine, the second drags, and the third drags ever so slightly less and with ever so much more noise and yelling. There’s little sense of setting or context, the action sequences are rote zombie-movie shtick and it’s edited like the director didn’t get all the necessary coverage so they just worked with what they got. It has only the vaguest sense of a reason to be invested in these characters on an emotional or pragmatic level. Reader, I was bored. Out of my skull. Watching this movie was like taking a long slow drag on the cheapest, shittiest schwag weed – you just sit and wait for a buzz that never comes.
Our Call: Heckboy reviewed his own movie in the dialogue: “Smells like death – and bird shit.” SKIP IT.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
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