Hellboy (2019) – Review

If you were to take a shot every time this movie does anything cringe-worthy, you might as well just die of alcohol poisoning within the first five minutes of this trash fest.

Hellboy (2019) is directed by Neil Marshall and stars David Harbour, Milla Jovovich, Ian McShane, Sasha Lane, and Daniel Dae Kim. It revolves around the titular character Hellboy, who is caught between the worlds of the supernatural and human, while battling an ancient sorceress bent on revenge.

I have never seen the Del Toro Hellboy films before so I really went into this movie with no reattached feelings on the Hellboy franchise. What really made me interested in this was that David Harbour, who is a terrific actor, was playing the infamous role. I went to the Canadian premiere of this film, and David Harbour and Milla Jovovich were in attendance, which admittedly, was really cool to see. Sadly after they introduced themselves, the fun ended for me that night. Hellboy might just be the worst film I have seen in theaters in the last few years.

To be fair there are some good things in the movie to talk about. First off, despite some of the garbage material he had to work with, David Harbour is clearly trying his hardest to bring this character to life, and fortunately succeeds. He went through the process of makeup & hair-styling, every day for hours to play this role with sincere dedication, and you can see the work he put into to the role. Whenever the film decides to use practical makeup and effects, it’s really well done and you can see the great lengths the artists put into this film. This also goes for some of the practical sets they used, which were pretty great to watch. That’s pretty much everything good in this.

There are too many things to list on why Hellboy fails so spectacularly on so many levels. To start somewhere, let’s start with the fact that this movie tries way too hard to be edgy and cool for the sake of being edgy and cool. If the tagline in the poster “legendary AF” and the upfront R rating being put into the marketing isn’t enough of a sign that it’s trying too hard to be cool, the movie will very well remind you of that in its 2-hour runtime. In the first few (or even 3rd word for that matter) spoken, they drop an F-bomb, with countless other swears being dropped from that moment forward, for no-good reason to begin with.

This may sound like a nitpick, but this goes such a long way in making this movie so eye-rolling to watch. The humor in this film is simply not funny in the slightest and every single joke falls flat. When you’re not rolling your eyes at the stupid uses of F-Bombs and humor, when the credits role, you’re simply going to be disgusted by the amount of violence in this movie. Sure, in a movie called Hellboy, you would expect to see some blood and violence, but there’s just too much here to the point that it becomes mind-numbing. I’m a fan of violence in films, but this is going too far. If any of you are sensitive to extreme violence, stay the hell away from this film.

If you look past how edgy and cool this movie tries to be, this film still fails on every other level. The story is incredibly basic, which is fine, however the story itself has literally no substance to it. It’s one of the most predictable blockbusters ever-made, that you can even predict everything that’s going to happen in the film, just by watching the trailer. What doesn’t help the story at all is what could very well be one of the worst scripts in recent memory. The script here is so dreadful, as there are so many lines which are poorly written. The script relies on so many scenes where exposition is used and it’s just so god-damn boring. Instead of the story being shown to you, it’s simply told to you. The characters are also so bland and basic that it hurts. They try to give Hellboy a character arc, but it doesn’t work. The rest of the characters have literally no depth at all and are all so boring to watch. The movie also has the audacity to end on a cliff hanger setting up a sequel, which made me storm out of the theater when credits rolled, even with the promise of a Q&A afterwards.

Since the film has such a bad script with terrible material to work with, there’s no surprise to why every single actor (with the exception of Harbour) gives such a bad performance. There are so many talented actors wasted here, giving career low performances, which too be honest, I can’t exactly blame these actors for doing so, due to how little material they were given to work with.

In conclusion, Hellboy is one of the worst films I have seen in theaters in recent memory. The film on almost level fails by trying to be so edgy and cool, that it just becomes such a mess. Now that I have seen this, no wonder Lionsgate decided to dump this movie out with little fanfare. I honestly think I should see the Del Toro Hellboy films now, because after watching this, they’re probably masterpieces compared to this crap.

2/10