Rating: R
Runtime: 2 hours
Director: Neil Marshall
Quick Impressions:
I never had any desire to see this Hellboy reboot. Neither did my husband. For months, I thought the promotional material looked sketchy at best. And I mean, why reboot Hellboy? Guillermo del Toro’s films are visual masterpieces. Ron Perlman is perfect in the part. Granted it has been eleven years since The Golden Army (a movie whose excellence was immediately eclipsed because it opened the same summer as Iron Man and The Dark Knight). I guess we have had forty-thousand Spider-Mans since then, but you never hear anyone saying, “A Spider-Man reboot! It’s about time, Sony!”
To be blunt, this new Hellboy looked so abysmal that I started plotting a strategy to avoid it. Then a couple of weeks ago, my husband realized, “David Harbour is Hellboy? He’s great in Stranger Things! Now I kind of do want to see it.”
And I thought, “He is great in Stranger Things!” Full stop. The thing is, now that my husband wanted to see Hellboy, I couldn’t exactly say, “Instead let’s see a movie that’s sure to be good, like The Beach Bum,” with a clean conscience (or even a straight face. And we’re waiting to see Laika’s The Missing Link with the kids).
Then I happened to see, “Wait! Milla Jovovich is in this movie?! What?! She plays Nimue?!!! Hold on! Merlin is in this???” I still expected the movie to be bad, but now I didn’t mind. I’m a sucker for bizarre Arthurian tie-ins, and I’ve loved Milla Jovovich since I first saw her in The Night Train to Kathmandu when I was a child. Frankly, I would be completely entertained by two hours of Milla Jovovich looking around. (She’s wonderful at cutting her eyes dramatically to one side. She does that several times in this movie.)
So I knew that Milla Jovovich playing Nimue would keep me engaged. What I didn’t know is that all the other characters would be so delightful and compelling, too. (Another thing I didn’t know is that my husband didn’t actually want to see the movie.) But oh well, we’ve seen it now!
The Good:
This movie appears to be made for kids who loved fairy tales, but now they’re grown up and super into metal. Actually, I think my mother would like it. She’s not super into metal, but I think the fantasy elements and corny jokes would appeal to her. It reminds me a bit of a B monster movie, and also a little of the original Clash of the Titans. (“I think the gore might be a bit much for your mom,” my husband said. “Yeah, but she’d love that B movie vibe,” I replied. “Trust me. I saw her DVRing Cat People as we were leaving the house.” When we got home, and I told her I thought she’d like the movie, she replied, “We watched Congo tonight.” Mmhmm.)
Immediately, this new Hellboy reminded me of an early Jackie Chan movie from China I watched on cable years ago. I can’t remember the name, but the opening narration blended together all sorts of unrelated figures from British legend and Western mythology. Hellboy‘s end credits have a cast list like Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus. (That one always makes me smile. It’s my favorite part of the play.)
It’s easy to imagine Hellboy reviewed by SNL‘s Stefon. (“This movie has everything…”)
This movie really does have everything. Witches, changlings, prophecies, Arthur, Merlin, Nimue, the Nazis, Rasputin, Nazi hunters, Baba Yaga, Man-Eaters, Mexican wrestling…
At first, as I was watching, I thought, “Okay, so I guess they’re just jumping in and skipping an origin story. That’s refreshing for a reboot,” but then it turned out the movie was an origin story after all. And also a destiny story. And also really just kind of an everything story. It crammed in Hellboy mythology, plot points, and characters with the manic frenzy of a production horribly worried it won’t be getting a sequel.
In this movie, characters with really elaborate backstories just keep showing up at random times. At first, I was worried that I should have been remembering things from earlier Hellboy movies. But then gradually I realized, “Oh okay! So Hellboy is like my grandpa. Everywhere he goes, he runs into somebody he knows and has an incredibly complicated history with that I have never heard anything about. But don’t worry. After a few minutes of confusion, he’s going to tell me the whole story.”
This movie is driven forward by flashbacks, probably more so than any other film I’ve ever seen (except possibly Memento). Given this jarring style of exposition, Hellboy actually tells a surprisingly cohesive and complete story. It’s pretty entertaining, too. At one moment, I even asked myself, “Is it possible that I’m enjoying this more than Captain Marvel?” That’s a much, much, much better movie, but this one stands apart from the field. For sure, it’s not predictable. It throws formula right out the window (possibly to make room to cram in more random characters). It’s pretty hard to guess what people are going to do next when you don’t even know who they are.
I was surprised to love all the characters. This film introduces so many interesting characters. (So many!) (Soooo many!) The entire cast does a great job with the material they’re given. Perhaps the biggest surprise of the movie is that David Harbour makes a perfectly respectable Hellboy (surprising only because Ron Perlman casts a long shadow). I believed him in the role immediately and just accepted that he was Hellboy (and I’m the kid who used to get furious and disturbed every time Ronald McDonald changed to a different actor).
Milla Jovovich is also good. I wish we got a bit more of her, but she’s wonderful in all her scenes. (I think it was a mistake of those who cut her in pieces not to think to disfigure her face, the source of her power. I mean, the grotesque and disfigured Baba Yaga does not find it nearly as easy to recruit followers.)
As Hellboy’s dad Professor Broom, Ian McShane was my favorite one in the movie until more people got in the movie. He’s really likable in the role, though, and giving a legitimately good performance.
I knew Daniel Dae Kim was in the movie, and I like him. (I almost feel like his character deserves his own movie. His story here feels so truncated.)
I had no idea that Sasha Lane would show up as Alice Monaghan. What a fascinating character! I found the character so intriguing, and Lane herself is immensely watchable. When she turned up unexpectedly in the movie, then turned out to be a major character, it felt like a wonderful bonus. Alice, actually, was probably my favorite character in the movie.
To my surprise, I found that I also really enjoyed Stephen Graham as the Gruagach (or as I thought to myself as I watched the movie, “I kind of like this pig monster. Underneath it all, he seems like a sweet guy. He just has troubles.”) (Actually, his backstory made me feel genuinely sorry for him.)
In smaller roles, Sophie Okonedo, Alistair Petrie, and (surprise!) Thomas Haden Church are also good.
Best Scene Visually:
This version of Hellboy isn’t beautiful like Del Toro’s breathtaking vision of the story. (Milla Jovovich is beautiful. The scenes of her coming back together are kind of lovely if you just focus on her face and don’t worry so much about how many arms and legs she has at the moment.)
But this Hellboy does have some great visual moments. Instead of thinking in rapt transport, “How magical! How eerie! How elegant!” you kind of grin, nod, observe, “Wow cool! That’s so spooky! How evil!” There’s definitely a current of dark magic running through the story. Sometimes this gives way to unnecessary gore (that makes you think, “Hmm, yeah, that’s gross and all, but maybe they should have spent more money on CGI or else had fewer scenes of exploding gore monsters.”)
But some of the spookiness really works. Hellboy’s final moments with Sophie Okenedo’s Lady Hatton are incredibly captivating, visually and aurally. I love the scene he walks into. What an eerie dynamic tableaux! What happens in this scene is also cool, but I wish it didn’t look quite so gross. (At least no kid would come away from this thinking, “Yeah, dark magic is probably harmless. It looks so clean, wholesome, and inviting!” Then again, no kids should be watching this movie since it’s rated R. That’s a pity, too, because if it dialed back the horror just the tiniest bit, I think kids would love it.)
There’s another tiny visual flourish I love late in the movie, involving a manhole cover. That was one of many moments that made me think, “The people making this movie are so into it! Critics will probably hate it, but the team behind it is obviously like, ‘Yeah!!! We’re making the most awesome movie ever!” (The flames during the end credits are another good indicator of this. The way they come bursting out triumphantly made me think of Arrested Development‘s G.O.B. doing his magic act to “The Final Countdown.”)
Best Scene:
The scene with Lady Hatton was probably my favorite in the movie. I was also delighted with everything about Alice, her introduction, her backstory. She’s a cool character, an unexpected highlight of the film.
Probably the film’s strongest scene is the Baba Yaga sequence. This scene (though kind of random) reveals something key about Hellboy’s character (to the audience and possibly to him, as well). It’s probably the most subtle moment in the movie. (Subtlety is not this film’s strong suit.) We see what makes Hellboy different from Baba Yaga. It’s more than a line in the sand.
Best Action Sequence:
There’s an ambush in the movie that (for some reason) I didn’t expect. I liked the action there because I thought, “How unexpected! This kind of makes me think of William Rufus. What is it about a certain people and a certain locale?” (I’m trying to avoid spoilers with my vagueries.) (I don’t think vagueries is actually a word, but using words to mean what I want is one of my vagaries.) My husband thought the CGI in a scene that comes right after this was pretty terrible. He was right.
The Negatives:
I must confess that I enjoyed this movie because the story was such a nonstop whirl of confusion (that turned out to make perfect sense). You could call it over-plotted, but at least no one will get bored watching Hellboy. I actually sort of admired the disorienting technique of fully introducing characters only after they’ve been on screen for a good long stretch.
You’re definitely getting plenty of story for your buck. The dialogue is pretty hit-or-miss, admittedly. Some jokes genuinely made me chuckle, but other lines felt cheesy and forced. I feel like none of this is the actors’ fault. In fact, I’d commend the cast of this film. They’re all doing good work, and they’ve been given characters who are all quite interesting (except Merlin who annoys me, which is not Brian Gleeson’s fault).
Some of the flashbacks work better than others. I kept thinking, “Can a movie reach a saturation point in flashbacks? Then during one late jungle memory, I thought, “Yep, that was one too many.” This particular memory explains a lot, but both my husband and I couldn’t help laughing at it. I thought, “Okay, so Merlin and Rasputin aren’t enough. Now the story is pulling in Predator.” I also couldn’t help calling to mind Principal Skinner’s meditations on his time in Vietnam. This is such a quick cut to the past, and while it is necessary to the plot, it’s just impossible to take seriously. You just watch it and think, “Will these flashbacks and side characters never end!”
For my personal tastes, the story is far too gory. The way it presents the gore gives it the aura of being cheaply made. Some scenes, I think, are almost ruined by this obsession with gore. There’s a scene in a church where a group of monks have taken a vow of silence. This could have been darkly beautiful in its chilling horror, but instead it devolves into a level of gore that almost cheapens it, making it seem borderline silly. The silliness is okay. (Like I said, I’m half-way rooting for the pig guy.) But this seems to want to be dark and evil, and it’s not quite getting there. I will grant that many of its jokes work, but it doesn’t seem to know how to make the non-funny parts not funny.
There were multiple scenes that reminded me of Super Mario Odyssey, but that may be more indicative of how much time I spend lately playing Nintendo with my son than of any failure with the movie.
The biggest problem is that I kept thinking, “This movie is actually pretty good. Is it over yet?” I could have left at any time. In fact, some people did leave our screening before the end of the movie, which is never a good sign. However, after the movie, I did hear one guy enthusiastically explaining some stuff about Baba Yaga to his friends which made me suspect that this version of Hellboy is more faithful to the graphic novel. (Either that, or the guy was a Baba Yaga enthusiast. For all I know, he’s a comp lit professor.) (Of course, he could be a Baba Yaga enthusiast, comp lit professor, and Hellboy fan.)
Also, part of me finds an element of Nimue’s plea to Hellboy very persuasive. I’d love to see the movie go that way instead.
Overall:
Hellboy isn’t exactly good. It’s also not so bad it’s good. Strangely it’s a movie that manages to be both bad and good at the same time. In some ways, it feels like a long anecdote told by a too friendly stranger that you can’t seem to get away from. (Sort of a “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” type situation if the ancient mariner also played electric guitar.) David Harbour makes a good Hellboy. Milla Jovovich delivers exactly the performance you would expect, and the supporting characters are all immensely interesting, especially Alice (Sasha Lane).
Should you pay to see Hellboy in the theater? I don’t know. I guess the real question you have to ask yourself is, “How much do I like popcorn?”