Hellboy: The Crooked Man (15)

In 1959, Hellboy and Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defence (BPRD) parapsychologist Bobbie Jo Song journey by train through Appalachia, escorting a wooden crate containing a sedated funnel web spider. The carriage derails and the BPRD colleagues encounter returning prodigal son Tom Ferrell, who fled his home after a close encounter with a demon called The Crooked Man. Bobbie Jo persuades Hellboy to accompany her up the mountain to investigate this shadowy phantom.

LondonNet Film Review

Hellboy: The Crooked Man (15) Film Review from LondonNet

Twenty years after Oscar-winning director Guillermo del Toro gave birth to the first big screen incarnation of the Dark Horse comic book character, a laboured fourth film (and second reboot) pits the red-skinned and cloven-hoofed miscreant against witchcraft and wickedness in the Appalachian Mountains. Co-written by director Brian Taylor, Hellboy creator Mike Mignola and Christopher Golden, The Crooked Man realises a storyline first published in 2008, which delves a little deeper into the eponymous antihero’s tortured past…

The tone and cinematography of Taylor’s uneven picture are bleaker than earlier iterations with sporadic flashes of macabre humour punctuating the heebie-jeebies. Make-up, prosthetics and practical effects are impressively icky but the film’s budgetary limitations are distractingly evident with the hit-or-miss application of digital trickery in action set pieces. A monstrous spider that chases after Hellboy to set the plot in motion doesn’t gel convincingly with the surrounding forest environment and the creature is unintentionally humorous leaping from tree to tree in hot pursuit of the eponymous guardian. A climactic showdown at a church also has too much spit and not enough polish.

Jack Kesy puffs on endless cigarettes in the lead role, earnestly growling dialogue that veers from playful to portentous (“Dark things call to dark things”). His Hellboy certainly isn’t as charming, capricious or charismatic as Ron Perlman’s portrayal, or David Harbour’s reboot. Linear storytelling lifted straight off the comic book page propels us to 1959. Hellboy (Kesy) and Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defence (BPRD) parapsychologist Bobbie Jo Song (Adeline Rudolph) journey by train through Appalachia, escorting a wooden crate containing a sedated funnel web spider.

Bobbie Jo believes the creature may host a demonic entity so it is being kept in a state of sensory deprivation until they reach a controlled scientific environment. Dark magic buried within the foetid earth rouses the spider and in the ensuing fight with Hellboy, train carriages derail and the BPRD colleagues are stranded in the wilderness. The pair encounter returning prodigal son Tom Ferrell (Jefferson White), who fled his home after a close encounter with a demon called The Crooked Man (Martin Bassindale). This gnarled phantom collects a shiny coin for every soul he shepherds to Hell. Tom is convinced that he survived a tour of duty in the Second World War because of a pact forged with The Crooked Man in his ignorant youth. Bobbie Jo persuades Hellboy to accompany her up the mountain to investigate.

Hellboy: The Crooked Man is stuck in second gear from a thunderous opening foray with the giant arachnid. Exposition is clunky, particularly in the first hour as characters traipse through woods from one gloomily lit vignette to the next. Let there be lightness.

– Kim Hu