Hellboy - The Crooked Man
Hellboy - The Crooked Man (2024) Rewatch? ❎
I have been genuinely looking forward to getting to watch this. I went in with the full expectation of getting a cheap-ish adaptation, somewhere between TV pilot and straight to video, and that’s exactly what I got. After the complete mess that was the previous Hellboy film I can’t pretend I wasn’t a little worried (one of those rare films I can’t manage to get through in its entirety because it is just so hard going) but no need really. It turned out okay.
I mean, if you’re up for a wyrd and spooky low key base under siege story that’s incredibly faithful (though not entirely) to the comic book story it’s based on and even manages on occasion to match the exaggerated strangeness of Richard Corben’s art, it is exactly that. If you’re expecting something a bit more grandiose or Del Toro-esque? Nope, it’s not that. It most definitely does not have the budget to be that.
It’s a tough gig given how much Ron Perlman nailed and owned the role of Hellboy in Del Toro’s films but you know, I’ll happily watch more of Jack Kesy as Hellboy too. Works for me. He makes a good fist (ho ho) of bringing the comic book Hellboy to life, punches, gunshots and all.
I could grumble about the direction a bit, I’d much prefer it stopped still for a moment or two every now and then, let you take in the weird nastiness of the witchery and The Crooked Man themselves. Instead, it’s always moving, jumping around, sometimes complete with late nineties/early two thousands weird outs like something from Millennium or Blair Witch 2 or something.
It makes an obviously cheap film look cheaper still and weirdly dated, which is a bit of a shame. Especially when the effects budget is, erm, well. It has one, I’m sure. Kinda strips out the tension a bit, you know?
It’s also deeply teal which, you know, Hellboy tends not to be.
But, in the end, it is what it is and I enjoyed the damn thing regardless and that’s all that ultimately matters to me. It’s mainly exactly the film I expected it to be and that’ll do me just fine. It is, for better and for worse, The Crooked Man.