Hellboy: The Crooked Man (2024, dir. Brian Taylor)

by Jack Martin | Sep 29, 2024

Certificate: 15

Running Time: 99 mins

UK Distributor: Icon Film Distribution

UK Release Date: 27 September 2024

WHO’S IN HELLBOY: THE CROOKED MAN?

Jack Kesy, Martin Bassindale, Jefferson White, Adeline Rudolph, Joseph Marcell, Leah McNamara, Hannah Margetson

WHO’S BEHIND THE CAMERA?

Brian Taylor (director, writer), Christopher Golden and Mike Mignola (writers), Jeffrey Greenstein, Yariv Lerner, Mike Richardson, Sam Schulte, Robert Van Norden, Les Weldon and Jonathan Yunger (producers), Sven Faulconer (composer), Ivan Vatsov (cinematographer), Ryan Denmark (editor)

WHAT’S IT ABOUT?

In the 1950s, Hellboy (Kesy) investigates a supernatural phenomenon…

WHAT ARE MY THOUGHTS ON HELLBOY: THE CROOKED MAN?

Forget Hellboy, for the real devil among the story of the big-screen journey of Dark Horse Comics’ shining star is, in fact, Millennium Media. The independent production company, largely known for its schlocky run of mid-to-low budget action movies like Olympus Has Fallen and the Expendables franchise, first got its grubby hands all over the property after original director Guillermo del Toro and lead actor Ron Perlman declined to return for a third instalment of their well-received adaptation of the comic-book character. Their 2019 attempt to reboot Hellboy turned out to be rather hellish in its own right, winding up as a box office bomb with universally savage critical reviews, and even its director Neil Marshall ended up calling it one of his worst professional experiences, with the company effectively taking creative control away from him.

But Millennium isn’t done desecrating the franchise’s corpse just yet, for its latest attempt to reboot the franchise (again), this time with an adaptation of the popular limited run titled The Crooked Man, as written by series creator Mike Mignola, is practically the final nail in the coffin containing Hellboy’s movie career. Made solely so that Millennium can cling onto the rights, this soulless and often incomprehensible adaptation somehow makes the 2019 film look far more noble and ambitious by comparison – and that movie, almost as much as this one, can go straight back to hell where it came from.

Set in 1959, the movie immediately introduces the viewer to Hellboy (now played by Jack Kesy, underneath make-up and prosthetics that sadly make him look like a cosplay rendition of the character rather than the actual article) as he and fellow Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense agent Bobbie Jo Song (Adeline Rudolph) are travelling on the train through the Appalachian forests, when an incident with a horribly rendered giant CG spider derails them and strands them in redneck country. There, they soon learn of a sinister coven of witches who along with their leader, a supernatural being known as “the Crooked Man”, are terrorising the local community, and along with local war veteran Tom Ferrell (Jefferson White), armed with his “lucky bone” that lights up at the end like it’s a wand from the Harry Potter universe, they set out to save the day.

One good place to start with this movie is the fact that it just, well, starts. Within seconds of the title card flashing up on the screen, we meet Hellboy and his allies without any explanation as to who they are, where they come from, and why nobody at all seems to even bat an eyelid that a giant red man with cut-off devil’s horns and an enlarged right fist is walking among them. This is a movie that seems to be under the impression that its audience already knows exactly who Hellboy is, as well as the world in which he operates, which is bound to leave those who may be going in knowing nothing about this property beyond confused. You can pull off something like this with more iconic characters like Batman or Spider-Man, whose origins are well embedded within the public consciousness, but for a comparatively more obscure figure like Mike Mignola’s Hellboy, it reeks as though neither Millennium nor its creative team cared that much, if at all, about welcoming any prospective newcomers – which is saying something, because one of the credited writers on this film is Mignola himself.

I should clarify that I have not read the original Crooked Man comic book, but with Mignola seemingly heavily involved in this film, it’s highly probable that we’re dealing with a full-on faithful adaptation here, kind of like how Zack Snyder delivered near shot-for-panel versions of both 300 and Watchmen. Unlike those films, however, Hellboy: The Crooked Man doesn’t necessarily translate well to a cinematic experience, with numerous characters and plot elements (all of which I like to think are expanded upon better in the original limited series) feeling woefully underdeveloped, and in most cases refusing to make any kind of sense whatsoever, even in a heightened fantastical world that the likes of Hellboy reside in. It often feels like you’re watching a glorified TV pilot, one intended to establish its main characters as they face off against the Villain of the Week, to where they even insert numerous fade-to-commercial transitions all throughout the movie, accompanied by musical stingers that feel as though a voiceover announcer is about to say that “you’re watching Hellboy on the Syfy Channel.”

Visually, it’s utterly repulsive, as director Brian Taylor – one-half of Neveldine/Taylor, the directing duo behind similarly unintelligible action movies like Crank, Gamer and Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance – brings an overly kinetic and fast-paced style to sequences where you can barely make out what’s happening due to all the camera movements and darkly lit environments. Conceptually, it’s bare-bones stuff as it plods along at a stop-start pace before it fully becomes a prototypical haunted house movie in its third act, and even at that point there’s little reason to get invested since not once do you ever feel as though you know any more about these characters, not even Hellboy who spends most of the movie listening to side characters dish out clunky exposition while he puffs on an endless supply of cigarettes.

The film is plagued by some pretty bad performances, from actors going so far over-the-top that they almost become unintentionally entertaining, while others speak in such monotonous tones of voices that make their already weakly-defined characters even less interesting. As is typical for a Millennium Media movie, it also looks and feels pretty cheap, with the Bulgarian backdrops (one of the company’s known traits is shooting in such cost-effective countries) barely being utilised in any truly substantial fashion as a stand-in for the Appalachian region, and its cheesy effects are largely masked by the incessant camerawork that, once again, make the movie almost impossible to comprehend.

So yes, Hellboy: The Crooked Man is demonstrably, unfathomably bad. Yet, despite running this franchise into the ground not once but twice now, Millennium Media is unlikely to relinquish its freshly renewed rights, which again are the sole reason that this movie exists. Whatever horrors it has in store next for the franchise have yet to be made known, but Satan help us if their next film continues this dark, dark path for the cult comics icon.

SO, TO SUM UP…

Hellboy: The Crooked Man is a dire reboot that exists solely so that Millennium Media can hold onto the rights, as the production company puts little to no effort into setting up its own story or characters, under incomprehensible filmmaking that barely masks its cheap effects that, among its many other crimes, brings dignity to the similarly bad 2019 version.