For years fans had been clamouring for Guillermo del Toro to be given the chance to round out his lovably offbeat Hellboy movies with a trilogy-closing instalment, but instead we're treated to a big pile of steaming reboot. Swapping del Toro's cinematic passion and artistic ambition for Neil Marshall's cartoonish bloodlust and blustering storytelling, this version tries to compensate for a lack of charm and inventiveness by leaning wholeheartedly into its adults-only take on the titular demon-hero. It doesn't work. This is two hours of crude plotting, joyless acting, deflating action and woeful dialogue. There's a slither of fun in the foul-mouthed insult-slinging, but there's limited mileage when the barbs rely so heavily on cursing and so little on wit. Marshall has proven with Centurion and his 'Blackwater' ep of GoT (S2 E9) that he can concoct exhilaratingly brutal action sequences, however he's hamstrung here by cheap CGI and an overemphasis on gore. Ironically, it's the sequel-teasing epilogue that boasts the most creative set piece. It's tonally confusing too, Marshall sometimes going full piss-take in pursuit of peak B-grade glory; but it can be hard to judge where the intentional irreverence begins and the subpar filmmaking ends. The latter seems to win out more often than not. I could write a novella listing the ridiculously bad aspects of this film but let me keep it to three of the worst: the Stephen Graham voiced CGI pig-monster Gruagach, a bizarre narrative link to the King Arthur fable, and, well, majority of the acting. David Harbour (Sheriff Jim Hopper in Stranger Things) appears tired as the eponymous anti-hero, Sasha Lane is irritating as his séance sidekick Alice, and Daniel Dae Kim huffs and puffs as frenemy Major Daimio. Ian McShane and Milla Jovovich have a bit of fun hamming it up as Hellboy's pop Professor Bloom and the villainess Blood Queen Nimue respectively, although even they struggle to spit out some of the sillier lines - of which there are plenty. Sporadic moments of enjoyment sprinkled throughout an otherwise dreadful comic-book adaptation, Hellboy teeters on the edge of being so bad it's good, but ultimately is just bad.
Review of Hellboy
