★
Hellboy, caught between the worlds of the supernatural and human, battles an ancient sorceress bent on revenge.
Classification: 15
There’s an elephant in this review, if you’ve read the title of the film above you can probably guess what it is. This isn’t the first film named Hellboy but that does nothing to influence the experience of watching this latest reboot. 2019’s Hellboy from director Neil Marshall would still be hot garbage even without Guillermo Del Toro’s original films to compare it to. Terribly written, horrendously edited and filled with tedious characters, no amount of vicious gore or poorly executed action sequences can make this film work.
Hellboy centres around the a paranormal investigator who just happens to be a demon that was spat out of hell. David Harbour plays the titular hero who at some point through exhaustive exposition from various characters for a variety of direct subjects is tasked with stopping the evil witch Nimue (Milla Jovovich). However Hellboy is prophesied to join forces with Nimue and cause the end of the world putting him at odds with his allies. Before we delve deeper into the negatives about the film, praise should go to the production design team along with the make up artist team. The practical creature designs from David Harbour’s Hellboy make up to a contortionist hag that resided in a walking cottage were engaging and welcomed audiences into the world of the film. It is just a shame that every other aspect of the film wanted to throw audiences out.
The main headaches from this film comes from it’s script and its editing. The story of the film is incohesive, with too much exposition that is introduced all over the place and giving the main character and the audience no reason to care about any of it. Necessary context is either introduced too late or ignored for scenes that just have no place. This overabundance of information leads to a complete lack of character development, everyone is too busy explaining the plot to Hellboy to actually form any type of connection within the film. So when the film attempts to have its dramatic moments between its characters, its completely unearned because barely any work has gone into making these relationships work on screen. The film relies heavily on cheap comedy and an overabundance of gore instead of character to keep the audience invested, to little effect.
David Harbour initially impresses as Hellboy, his introduction shows him as a character conflicted with the life he leads and frustrated by his adoptive father’s (Ian McShane) decisions that have brought him to this point. However the film has Hellboy dismissive of almost every character and the information they give him, he just doesn’t care about the plot and neither does the audience because of this. When suddenly because story demands that he does, it makes no narrative sense and Harbour’s performance just transforms into an inconsistent mess. This extends to the rest of the cast with no character has a satisfying narrative conclusion, even in the third act the film is throwing new expository nonsense in to see what sticks in hopes last minute reveals will make up for nothing of substance coming before.
Hellboy brings nothing new to the table, a waste of talent both on and off screen and knowing that this film was made instead of conclusion to Del Toro’s Hellboy trilogy is just hurtful. The ineptitude of the script and editing makes the film laughable in the worst way with its tiring hero, lifeless narrative and un-engaging action.
Director: #NeilMarshall
Release Date: April 12th 2019
Trailer:
Written review copyright ©CoreyBullochReviews
Images and Synopsis from the Internet Movie Database
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