Hellboy

The new Hellboy flopped at the box office and with critics, and I'm not too happy either. Neil Marshall may have made the solid The Descent and the perfect post-apocalyptic B-movie Doomsday, but Hellboy won't rank among the highlights of his career. There's no story, which is to be expected, but the weird nonsensical jumping from scene to scene felt annoying to the point of artificiality. David Harbour isn't downright bad, but the humour is so dry that I didn't laugh once, which I take as a huge minus. When it comes to the action, it's pretty good to watch, it's very substantial in terms of gore – I can't remember the last time I saw such carnage in the cinema – but it's a great shame things usually end up when they are at their best. Praise should be given to the scene with the giants (which could have been longer), Baba Yaga who had eerily perfect make up, and the finale, which is again too short and doesn't live up to its full potential. It's a shame that outside of the action, the film is rather boring and has nothing to surprise and impress. Thanks to the decent serving of gore and a fair amount of monsters of all kinds, the film is watchable, but I was expecting a more entertaining ride. 60% (04/14/2019)

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... (10/31/2021)

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. (04/11/2019)

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. (04/17/2019)

In some aspects, Hellboy has pretty decent balls. Unfortunately, not even the exploited to the marrow R-rating and the good jokes here and there can alter the fact that it looks uglier than shit. Really, it’s been a long time since I last saw an audiovisual work that looked so terribly unaesthetic. An awful, overelaborated digital mess; the cancer of modern filmmaking and, in this case, in the terminal stage. (04/11/2019)