Review of Hellboy (2019) by Tryasummersault — 16 Apr 2019

8.6/10 Already underrated beyond belief, Neil Marshall's Hellboy adaptation is a visual blast full of ballistic action, malevolent monsters, and exciting fun throughout. While I enjoyed Del Toro's excellent stylistic take on Hellboy, I have to say this is superior in following subject matter, and nails the many colorful tones of the Mignola comics better.

The story introduces us to the lovably insane Hellboy very well with an incredibly intense set of opening sequences, and immerses the viewers into his world very effectively. As things progress we get familiar with some fantastically executed origin stories that portray the comics perfectly, and it expands on so many different characters supremely. The overall story moves along well with some vibrantly brilliant creatures and ferocious fights. When everything unfolds it leads up to an epic finish full of excitement and bloodshed. Once again I have to say it followed the comics rather well and had some great personality and humor to it.

As far as the acting performances go I was thoroughly surprised by how awesome David Harbour was as Hellboy. He was absolutely hilarious and captured the character so well with a wide array of emotions shown. The makeup was also fantastic on him though I was skeptical from the trailers. Ian McShane as Trevor/Dad was excellent as well and contrary to delusional critics they had great chemistry with each other. Milla Jovovich was beautifully sinister as the blood queen and honestly I'd like to see her as the villain more.

The standout imo was the plethora of extremely detailed creatures/monsters throughout especially Baba Yaga. The sequence with her was horrifyingly marvelous. I didn't expect them to blend the paranormal/horror aspects so well but they definitely did. The gruesomeness and gore was prevalent and I thought it was fitting for the adaptation.

For a few minor nitpicks, there are some moments where the cgi is a bit shoddy but it was usually solid. You can tell when they're using practical effects and they are amazingly well done. Obviously you can't use practical effects for giant monsters so I can cut them some slack. Also the soundtrack is a bit spastic with some interesting choices that worked at times and sometimes didn't.

Overall it's a shame this was unfairly accosted which caused it to bomb massively. I would've loved to see where they went from here especially after what's teased at the end of this. Like I said,I believe this is going to go down as a very underrated film and might even develop a cult following hopefully. People don't know what they're missing out of stubbornness.