Directed by:
Neil MarshallScreenplay:
Andrew CosbyCinematography:
Lorenzo SenatoreComposer:
Benjamin WallfischCast:
David Harbour, Milla Jovovich, Ian McShane, Sasha Lane, Daniel Dae Kim, Thomas Haden Church, Penelope Mitchell, Sophie Okonedo, Brian Gleeson (more)VOD (4)
Plots(1)
Hellboy is back, and he’s on fire. He is called to the English countryside to battle a trio of rampaging giants. There he discovers The Blood Queen, Nimue, a resurrected ancient sorceress thirsting to avenge a past betrayal. Suddenly caught in a clash between the supernatural and the human, Hellboy is now hell-bent on stopping Nimue without triggering the end of the world. (Lionsgate US)
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Reviews (11)
Harbour’s good, with all the right catchphrases. The gigantic outcasts from hell in the climax might be the most impressive ever. The casting of Milla Jovovich appropriately defines the target audience composed of fans of bloody, B-level monster freak-shows. Neil Marshall’s imagination knows no bounds, nor does his courage (or lack of common sense?) to flush such a huge budget down the drain. His Hellboy amuses with its stupidity, excess and craziness, but watching it in a cinema seemed extremely out of place, even bizarre. With the right crew at home, beer and popcorn, I might be inclined to give it three stars.
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Having a 50 million-dollar full-length feature written by a debutant screenwriter with no experience in feature-lenght films, and assuming that it will then "somehow" work under the direction of a slasher B-movie director from England, is a really ignorant overestimation. It is therefore fair for the producers that the movie flopped. Although it seems there must have been a serious endeavor to please the comic book’s fans, Cosby's screenplay for this two-hour-long movie just does not work at all, and it appears to be an overpriced and incoherent dud, where the shallow characters have no chemistry between them, and so we cannot feel any sort of emotions from them. Also, their motivations are either completely shallow or straight up just completely random. Hellboy comes across like a computer game, where you are constantly jumping from one location to another, finding a key that will move you on to the next level, in a superficial (and seemingly unnecessary) plot. With all that being said, this movie is a really disgustingly big pile of CGI excrement. However, when I put aside even the most basic expectations I have from any movie (in other words, I switch off my brain), I absolutely did not enjoy this in any way. Actually, after those two hours, I could not figure out how this appalling failure of a movie was supposed to hold my attention.
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Though it stays closer to the source material, it is still not a good adaptation. It does not automatically create a film for fans when you combine multiple plotlines from multiple comic books, and I would give anything to have seen Guillermo del Toro's planned conclusion to the trilogy instead of this cluttered outcome. Even though Daniel Dae Kim is appropriately cast as Hellboy in this world of blood, betrayal, and endless fighting, excessive cheesiness or intentional B-movie qualities are not an advantage in this case, but instead a painful burden. From the very beginning, the screenplay relies on necessary shortcuts, thus undermining itself right from the start when it launches three storylines simultaneously and fails to completely extricate itself from this unfavorable starting position until the end. It is a shame about the strangely artificial masks and occasionally bizarre special effects, which often border on the ridiculous. And last but not least, there is the disgraceful and increasingly common posture of using not only blood but also profanity at any cost to achieve a stricter rating. In the second half, it became so childish that I almost grimaced, even though I am always in favor of boldly subverting an overly tense atmosphere. I feel sad about the resulting dead end, as Hellboy: Rise of the Blood Queen could and should have been an example of how to navigate the path of slightly smaller adaptations of famous comics, instead of closing the door on many potential wonders.
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The new Hellboy goes uncompromisingly its own way, and the question is, will you like it? Fans of the comics will find a lot of familiar things and maybe they will be willing to forgive Hellboy for moving forward at too high a speed, for the way it neglects character work and for taking a step backwards in terms of filmmaking compared to what Ron Perlman and Guillermo del Toro did years ago. But if you haven’t read Mike Mignola's comics, you're probably better off waiting for Avengers. This Hellboy doesn't have much to offer.
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I preferred Del Toro’s vision much more. Although this Hellboy tries to draw more on the comic books, it’s bloodier and ruder, but I miss the fantastic poetry here. Here they simply squander the mass monsters and characters appearing here, only to flit by on the screen, leaving you none the wiser. Harbour’s Hellboy is much more hideous, like a heavy-metal street bum, crossed with the devil. The action is hard and dirty, but full of playfulness and invention. The monsters are really demonic. The witch is so horrible that the sight of her made me feel physically ill. But my two-year-old daughter liked it...
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