Review of Hellboy (2019) by Mmadnessgames — 12 Jul 2019

Take the original Hellboy and remove Guillermo Del Toro, Ron Perlman, Selma Blair, John Hurt, Jeffrey Tambor, David Hyde Pierce and Doug Jones... Replace them with "Hop" from Stranger Things and the half-naked chick from The Fifth Element. Now add an awful script mixed with some really bad CGI and an army of crappy side characters including Rocksteady from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

David Harbour is a poor substitute for Ron Perlman, but he'll do in a fix. The problem with Hellboy is: there are no even remotely interesting characters aside from the protagonist. Abe Sapien is gone and replaced with a clairvoyant girl and an Asian soldier with a scar on his face.

There's no pretty much no depth to Hellboy's character. Liz is gone. The cats are gone. He doesn't smoke cigars anymore. He's just this big depressed fat red guy who mumbles everything he says. None of the comedy lands. NONE of it.

Hellboy's father has no personality. It's difficult to fill John Hurt's shoes, but they could've done a lot better. There is zero chemistry between father and son.

The antagonist is your typical, generic ancient witch. It's the old "we-cut-her-up-into-little-pieces-and-buried-them-all-separately-but-now-somebody-is-putting-them-back-together" story. The actress does her best, but it's a boring and totally unmemorable character.

When Guillermo Del Toro made Hellboy, he put his heart into it. The Hellboy reboot, on the other hand, has no soul. It is a studio-forced reboot produced for money only. I don't think anybody involved with the production cared about the film they were making.

One of the worst super hero films I've seen for at least a decade.