Mark Reviews Movies: HELLBOY (2019)

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Review by Mark Dujsik | April 11, 2019

Director Neil Marshall and screenwriter Andrew Cosby find the most obvious route in telling the story of the spawn of a demon-human marriage, who is summoned to Earth by the Russian mystic Grigori Rasputin at the behest of the Nazis, only to become an agent for a top-secret governmental organization that fights against paranormal threats to humanity. This is a lot of nonsense to process, and yes, that part about "the most obvious route" was meant to be facetious.

There should be nothing obvious about this story, this character, and especially this world, which all come from the comic book series created by Mike Mignola. You'd think it would be impossible to turn this much absurdity into a fairly straightforward and dully generic tale, but somehow, Hellboy pulls off that unlikely feat.

It doesn't help that we've seen this material come to the screen twice before, under the much more amiable and self-aware guidance of director Guillermo del Toro—once with a movie of the same title in 2004 and again with the superior sequel Hellboy II: The Golden Army four years later. It's unfair to directly compare these two distinct visions of this world, because filmmakers should feel free to put their own stamp on new versions of existing stories. They also should without the added pressure of feeling the need to match what has come before their own interpretations.

A broad comparison here, though, is a bit instructive. Whereas the earlier cinematic adaptations of this comic series felt imaginative and displayed a certain winking acceptance of the ridiculous nature of their world, Marshall attempts something more grounded, more serious, and much more explanatory.

The humor here comes from one-liners and pop-culture references, mostly spoken by the protagonist, a red-hued demonic creature with a stone hand, a pointed tail, and horns that have been cut and filed down to stubs. Marshall and Cosby seem to have greatly missed the point: The character himself is already the joke. To fail to accept that fact is to lose what sets him and his world apart from any other generic superhero or fantasy story.

That's what we get, though—a routine superhero tale that's only slightly distinct for its narrative's reliance on fantasy, from witches and an evil sorceress to Arthurian legend and all sorts of creatures of various shapes and sizes. Marshall mostly lets Cosby's screenplay do all the work of exploring the specific details of this world, using plenty of expository dialogue and numerous flashbacks to explain the origins of certain characters. For his part, the director is primarily focused on giving the movie a certain brand of attitude, which is mainly making it seem as if every character is too hard-nosed to care about anything that's happening.

Before we meet our demonic hero, we get a prologue set in the Dark Ages The evil sorceress Nimue (Milla Jovovich, admirably saying lines like, "Revenge is the only sustenance I require," without splitting her sides in laughter), known as the Blood Queen, attempted to conquer humanity with an army of monsters and a terrible plague. She was stopped by King Arthur, who dismembered the witch's body and sent the pieces in locked caskets across Britain.

In the present day, Hellboy (David Harbour), the adopted son of Professor Broom (Ian McShane), is a member of his father's Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense. There's a dire prophecy of the forthcoming Apocalypse, and while some believe that Hellboy himself will be responsible for it, the demon agent soon learns that a couple of his old nemeses are trying to bring back Nimue. He receives some help from Alice (Sasha Lane), a psychic whom Hellboy has known since she was a baby, and British super-duper-secret agent Ben (Daniel Dae Kim), who hates monsters because he secretly can transform into one.

There are plenty of creatures here—giants roaming the countryside, a bipedal warthog monster named Gruagach (voiced by Stephen Graham and realized with some embarrassing digital effects—and not the only example of them, either), an army of demons that cause havoc in London, and a twisted, Slavic hag who lives in mansion that walks around on big bird legs. They're grotesque, to be sure, but Marshall seems less concerned with giving them any significant personality (e.g., the pig is a potty-mouth) and more concerned with the damage they can do and that can be done to them—all of it shown in gruesome, bloody detail.

That reliance on gore is just an extension of the movie's non-specific, "bad-ass" attitude. That tough posturing is really all that Hellboy has, and without any care for or even a basic acknowledgment of the absurd possibilities of this world, it wears thin pretty quickly.

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