Review of Hellboy (2019) by Lcamoviereviews — 18 Apr 2019

Another year, another reboot. This time, it’s the red deviled superhero, Hellboy, getting the let’s try and do it over again approach. I have to start off by saying I was not happy at all when I found out that a reboot was coming instead of a third and most likely final installment of Del Toro & Ron Perlman’s series.

I very much enjoyed what Del Toro did with both films and Perlman’s Hellboy performance was just near perfect. It deserved a bookend film to tie everything up and create a solid trilogy. So, with that being said, I attempted to walk into this film with an open mind and not judge it from it’s previous films.

I was successful at times but couldn’t help but think about what was done before when watching this reboot. There are moments in the film that work well and some not so much. We are treated to a dark but very quick and morbid opening with Ian McShane’s Professor Broom, taking the role over from the late John Hurt.

McShane is a great actor but he is no John Hurt playing this role. Hurt’s interpretation was far better I think and enjoyed his much better. Broom talks about the origins of the Blood Queen (Milla Jovovich) and how King Arthur used excalibur to chop her to pieces and hide all of her body parts across the world in treasure chest containers.

The opening works well enough but McShane just seems like he is rushing through dialogue during this which I found a little irritating. This is followed by Hellboy trying to recover a former partner who has been turned into a vampire.

As the movie petals along, we are lead to explanations of the Blood Queen’s motivations to different set pieces with tons of blood and gore. I was surprised by how much gore is shown throughout this film.

It almost seemed a tad bit overboard especially in the final act when numerous creatures are just tearing through civilians and doing it in very morbid and disturbing ways. The humor seems to fall flat a lot at times and only found myself chuckling at some things Hellboy said.

This is where the writing in Del Toro’s begins to show why it was superior. It just seems like this film was made for more of a B movie audience as some of dialogue is cheesy and over the top. I didn’t have any problem with the VFX like a lot of other critics seemed too.

There were only moments where some things that didn’t look finished but don’t think they were any bad or worse then Del Toro’s with the exception of he used a lot more creature works then this film does.

It just solely depends on VFX for the creatures instead of costume and design. Harbour is likable playing the part and think he holds up well to Perlman. Jovovich is ok here with sort of a campy performance but still does the job.

All in all, the film has some moments that work but the problem here is you can’t help watching this and thinking we deserved a final film by Del Toro before we got something like this. Del Toro’s films were just made so much better and when you walk out of this film, it just seems like a cheaper and weaker script than what we have seen before.