If you are into heavy metal music, gratuitous blood, gore, violence and foul language, and if you aren’t too concerned about cohesive storytelling, then this movie reboot might be the Hellboy you’ve been waiting for.
The new Hellboyfilm by director Neil Marshall and writer Andrew Cosby, who are mostly known for their television work, can’t hold a candle to the 2004 original by Guillermo del Toro, with Ron Perlman playing the boy from Hades. This time around, actor David Harbour (Stranger Things) plays the lead role and with his full Hellboy make-up on he looks more like Joaquin Phoenix than David Harbour, which is a weird distraction.
That said, Harbour’s performance is one of the better aspects of this needless remake. The film also stars Milla Jovovich as Nimue, the Blood Queen, the main nemesis of the film; Ian McShane as Hellboy’s “Dad”; Daniel Dae Kim as the shape-shifting Ben Daimio; and Sasha Lane as the clairvoyant Alice Monaghan.
The narrative is all over the place, but the plot mostly involves the return of the Blood Queen to the modern world and her desire to bring monsters back into the light. She wants Hellboy as her king and the hero must decide between good or evil or somewhere in the middle.
The biggest problem for me was the aforementioned blood and guts and foul language. I get it that some people love this, and I’m no prude when it comes to R-rated films, but the excessive and needless nature of it all worn thin early on.
The movie does have its moments, like a cool fight sequence between Hellboy and a group of giants; but most of the many action sequences are boring, as is the stuff in-between.
It’s much more Hell meh than Hell yeah!
