Review: “Hellboy” Condemns Its Audience To Eternal Punishment

Hellboy demonstrates what a lot of money can really fail to achieve, whilst also giving an abject lesson in committee made filmmaking.

For anyone who has visited the New Forest you might be surprised to learn how mountainous the terrain is according to certain Hollywood screenwriters. So hilly in fact that it supposedly harbours a multitude of giant folk who consistently upset the landed gentry and other leafy forest dwellers. This amongst other things is what makes Hellboy so disappointing, as all too soon it becomes painfully obvious how little this film means.

Although the production design is the saving grace alongside a stand out performance from David Harbour everyone else seems to be in a different film. Milla Jovovich and Ian McShane may try valiantly to elevate the material but some things are genuinely beyond redemption. Neil Marshall gives us a pumping soundtrack which sometimes feels at odds with the content, while a paper-thin storyline does little to engage.

Harbour deserves to be in a better movie than this one as he steps into Ron Perlman’s shoes and respects his legacy without feeling the need to eradicate it. Surrounded by pay cheque players, poorly written caricatures and CGI that veers into ridiculous banality without acknowledging any comic book humour, this Hellboy is diabolical. It demonstrates what a lot of money can really fail to achieve, whilst also giving an abject lesson in committee made filmmaking.

That this film represents a high water mark in derivative FX driven tentpole movies is without doubt. There must have been a point when Harbour realised how bad things were and yet he still managed to provide the only real substance on screen. There seems to be no reverence to the source material, no emotional connection to these characters and at times things feel like an extended music video. To add insult to injury the film goes on too long. It never provides any sense of closure and in fact sets up a sequel which one can only call optimistic under the circumstances. For something worthwhile I can only suggest checking out the originals. Superior in every way apart from the central performance it is sad to say that this effort comes nowhere near to its predecessor.