Review of Hellboy (2019) by Rebecca31 — 22 Apr 2019

To all you movie buffs out there who just love a movie so terrible it's good, well then buckle up for the best worst film of 2019 because I don't see anything else threatening that title this year. So leave your brain at home, get your massive bucket of popcorn and coke, sit back and enjoy this entertaining rubbish. .

Open with a huge exposition piece narrated by Ian McShane, King Arthur uses Excalibur to destroy The Blood Queen, Nimue (Milla Jovovich) and scatter her body across the corners of the land so she doesn't come back and unleash a deadly virus that will destroy mankind. Fast forward to modern-day and Hellboy (David Harbour) is working with the B.P.R.D. to make sure Nimue isn't pieced back together by a hog like beast and take her revenge. Maybe early on the development of this adaptation of Hellboy they realised it was going to be terrible and decided to go full on with everything. The violence is ramped up to the max, the script is hilariously terrible. There's only one sequence that really worked for me, featuring a grotesque witch Baba Yaga, this scene shifts the tone of the whole film away from cartoonish comic book violence to dark and horrifying and then moments later Hellboy is back with the fairies and all other madness.

I'll give it one thing, I was never bored. But don't get me wrong, this Hellboy remake is awful, it could not be more of a mess but despite that I was still entertained. What it lacks in almost everything, it makes up for in pure violent enjoyment. I was part of the group that wanted one more Hellboy movie from Guillermo del Toro and Ron Perlman, just one more, finish the story and then reboot the whole thing. Well that didn't happen and the whole thing has been remade because that's all that ever happens now and the result is interesting to say the least. I feel Hellboy was always going to suffer without del Toro but with new director Neil Marshall who has made Dog Soldiers and The Descent I thought hey maybe this guy knows what he's doing. I'm not quite sure who to blame, him or the writer, it's someones fault so one of you has to take the blame. I've never read the Hellboy comics but from I've heard this film does them no justice. Which is a real shame because I love the idea of Hellboy, I loved the first adaptation by del Toro the second one not so much yet they're both better films than this remake. David Harbour is as good as Ron Perlman, I wasn't ready for the role to be recast but honestly they could not have gotten anyone better. Harbour does a great job, unfortunately the rest of the film doesn't live up to that standard. Recommended for those who want a movie so bad it's good, just make sure to go to it with low expectations and an open mind.