Review of Hellboy (2019) by Severedwing — 24 Jul 2019

So I really hate to have to say it, but I got to. This film is PURE trash. Between the ugly visual effects for Hellboy himself (he looks just god awful) and the non-stop over-the-top gore I can find nothing to like in this movie. Seeing this after watching the first movie over again did not help, because the comparison is just overwhelmingly in favor of the first.

Where do I start? Well I can begin by saying that they really never gave Hellboy a character in this movie. Throughout the entire thing he was either sarcastic, whiny, brooding, or just not very funny, but trying to be funny. He was never developed throughout the entire film, he just kind of was there. Things happened TO him but he never really did anything special, even in the end external forces were required for his choices to actually be made.

The over-the-top gore was just pathetic. The cartoonish fight scenes were just that, cartoonish. The original movie had fights, yes and they were unrealistic as hell, but they were not cartoonish (compare the fight between the giants in this film and Hellboy with his fight against the giant plant monster in the second film or Sammael in the first). The gore was just unnecessary filler to make people react to gore, it served no purpose.

The greatet thing about the comic and the first film was its mixture of the occult, myth, legend, stories, and real life. In this film they just seemed to throw around references to myths and legends to fill gaps in the plot. Baba Yaga? Sure lets add that. Excalibur, why not. Hell why not add in some Alice in Wonderland and Chupacabra crap as well. It had no direction, the subtlety of it was lost on this film. Everything was just spelled out and poorly.

This film is terrible. God can only hope it will never get a sequel. If you are a fan of Hellboy stick to the comics, the original movies, and even the animated cartoons. This film is just trash.