Hellboy: The Crooked Man is the Hellboy film most accurate to Mike Mignola‘s incredible comic series yet. It is also unfortunately, not a very good movie, with noticeable and considerable shortcomings that hinder its potential.
Based on the three issue miniseries Hellboy: The Crooked Man (alternatively numbered as issues 33-35 of the overall Hellboy series), Hellboy: The Crooked Man is the fourth live-action Hellboy film and sixth overall. The film is directed by Brian Taylor (Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance) and written by Taylor alongside comic writers Mike Mignola and Christopher Golden. The film is overall incredibly accurate to the source material, sometimes going as far as to take dialogue word for word, or recreate panels from the comic as shots in the film. The only significant change is the addition of B.P.R.D agent Bobbie Jo Song, a new character created for the film. The comic book accuracy puts it in contrast with previous Hellboy adaptations, which almost always made significant changes to the material as they brought it to the silver screen. As a lifelong Hellboy fan, dating back from when I was six years old, there’s a certain nostalgia and joy I get at seeing any Hellboy adaptation, but particularly one as accurate to the comics as this film.
The story of the film follows Hellboy and B.P.R.D Agent Bobbie Jo Song investigating a mysterious small community in rural Appalachia haunted by witches and a local devil named The Crooked Man. The film follows the comics plot almost entirely beat for beat, but taking a 3 issue story arc and turning it into a film means the pacing is slowed quite considerably, and the story often feels meandering or directionless. Additionally, decisions made to make the film more approachable for Hellboy newcomers mean that the story is clunkier than before and riddled with exposition, often going out of its way to explain important information to the audience instead of using visual storytelling in the same way the comic series does.
The film is going for a more intense horror tone than previous Hellboy films, and is filled with eye-roll inducing jump-scares and solid, effective attempts at gruesome body horror. It’s definitely the spookiest Hellboy film yet, and touches on an element of the comics up to this point mostly left out of previous adaptations. However, I am not sure it makes for a particularly scary horror film. It’s scares are too telegraphed, and it lacks the patience to build the sense of eerie dread it’s attempting to conjure. Instead, it feels formulaic, like it’s attempting to crib from successful supernatural horror films such as The Conjuring. This comes as a source of great frustration to me, as The Crooked Man is both one of the most unsettling and one of the darkest Hellboy stories, but the film never quite gets that tone right. The film’s script is pretty good, in spite of being riddled with clunky moments that lack subtext.
The film’s budgetary restraints are evident in full force from the very first scene. This is not something the filmmakers can necessarily control, and I think they’re very ambitious with the budget they do have, with some sequences such a contorted shapeshifting moment standing out as looking fantastic. However, almost all of the CGI is distractingly bad, and completely takes the viewers out of the movie the more the movie attempts to use it compellingly. It gets particularly bad in the action heavy second half of the movie, where it makes the viewer miss the action spectacle of the Guillermo Del Toro duology of Hellboy (2004) and Hellboy II: The Golden Army immensely.
The technical elements of this film are the main thing holding it back from being solid. The lighting and cinematography of this film is just straight up not good. There doesn’t seem to be any attempt to use any lighting beyond natural, pre-existing lighting and the nighttime scenes are dark and muddy. The cinematography is either imitating panels of the comic, or using as many stereotypical horror movie shot compositions as you can think of. So many dutch angles. The sound mixing is awful, and the entire movie is far too loud, with the dialogue and ADR often unclear and inaudible. The music is again, very stereotypical for a horror film, using sharp cutting violins in poorly timed musical queues. It’s also one of the most poorly edited films I’ve seen in a long time, with shots lacking connective tissue between each other. Every single scene ends with a fade out to black before the next scene starts, which is a completely baffling creative choice and felt lazy.
The main thing redeeming the movie is the acting performances. Jack Kesy is wonderful as Big Red himself, having the mannerisms down completely and hitting a lot of the important character beats well. He’s held back by a rather awkward prosthetic look, where quite distractingly you can see exactly where prosthetic pieces are glued on to real, painted skin. He embodies the character better than David Harbour did in Hellboy (2019), but not quite as well as Ron Perlman‘s iconic turn in the Del Toro duology. Adeline Rudolph does a valiant job at trying to make Bobbie Jo Song a compelling deuteragonist, but always feels like she’s there for exposition to the audience and to second guess Hellboy’s actions and force them to be explained. Jefferson White gave probably my favorite performance of the movie, as the meek and empathetic Tom Ferrell, who’s right at the centre of the plot. He’s become an actor I enjoy finding in movies and TV shows, especially after his worryingly good supporting performance the show Yellowstone. Martin Bassindale does a good job at conveying the creepy atmosphere of The Crooked Man, and get’s some solid scares in, but is held back by the film’s lack of budget. The other two important cast members, Joseph Marcell and Leah McNamara as Reverand Watts and Effie Kolb respectively, both overact and chew the scenery almost a bit too much to the point of distraction and frustration.
Overall, while this film has a hell of a lot of potential to be something really good, it’s buried under its own shortcomings, plus it’s pretty fun at times, it can’t escape the limitations in budget and technical elements. It is a film that, while everyone seems to be valiantly trying their best to make it work, looks and feels cheap, like a fan film that happens to be an officially endorsed product and runs for 100 minutes. Everyone in the crew seems to be trying the best they can, particularly the writers and actors, but they’re let down by the film’s clunky technical elements. I think those clamoring for a more accurate adaptation of Hellboy like myself will find a lot of enjoyment in this film, but sadly, I doubt we will get many new Hellboy fans in the process, and I worry this might be the last time we see Big Red on the Silver Screen for a long time.
Hellboy: The Crooked Man is being released straight to VOD in the United States on October 8th, 2024, and is currently playing in cinemas in various other regions around the world.
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