Review: Hellboy is a gory, pulpy blast

Relaunching a Hellboy franchise is no easy task. Guillermo del Toro first brought his take on the Mike Mignola comic creation to the screen with 2004’s Hellboy, before unleashing Hellboy II: The Golden Army, one of the greatest superhero films ever made. Over a decade later, del Toro has been swapped with director Neil Marshall (The Descent, Game of Thrones), while David Harbour (Stranger Things) has taken the reigns of the foul-mouthed devil detective from fan-favourite Ron Perlman. The end result is a gorier, wackier version of Hellboy, one that eschews the high gothic take of Del Toro’s films for an over-the-top comic book aesthetic.

True to the film’s comic origins, Hellboy is so over-stuffed with plot that trying to sum it up here is almost pointless (the plot summary on Wikipedia is 8 paragraphs long). The main gist is this — centuries ago, Merlin and King Arthur defeated a powerful witch known as The Blood Queen (Milla Jovovich), chopping up her body and hiding the parts across the continent to ensure she would remain powerless. In the present day, Hellboy, a hard-drinking demon with a penchant for f-bombs, works for the BPRD, an organization tasked with researching paranormal activity. His adopted father Trevor Bruttenholm (the incomparable Ian McShane) dispatches him to England to help track down a group of killer giants, where Hellboy learns the upsetting truth about his origins.

Meanwhile, a pig-like creature known as Gruagach (looking like a villain straight from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles universe) is seeking revenge on Hellboy by trying to resurrect the body of The Demon Queen, causing havoc trough Europe as he begins to assemble the various pieces of her chopped-up body. While trying to stop Gruagach’s plan, Hellboy encounters a seemingly never-ending cast of supporting characters, including an old psychic friend from his past named Alice Monaghan (Sasha Lane), Ben Daimio, a member of BPRD with the ability to turn into a jaguar (Daniel Dae Kim), and the grotesque witch Baba Yaga, who enters into a creepy pact with Hellboy to help defeat The Blood Queen.

That may sound simple enough, but we haven’t even gotten to the hidden tomb of King Arthur, a major plot point involving the sword Excalibur (did we learn nothing from Transformers: The Last Knight?), towering Lovecraftian creatures parading through the streets of London tearing humans apart like tissue paper, a pulpy Nazi hunter, and so much more.

As convoluted as the story gets, the movie zips along at lightning speed — there is some bloody confrontation every few minutes, filled with loads of gore and Hellboy’s endless stream of bad one-liners, set to a pulsing soundtrack of heavy metal classics from the likes of Alice Cooper and Mötley Crüe. For better or worse, the tone of this version of Hellboy truly sets it apart from Del Toro’s films — director Neil Marshall seems to be harkening back to the era before the MCU began to set the template for how superhero films are supposed to look and feel. This version of Hellboy feels scuzzy and dirty — it truly captures the feeling of Mignola’s comics, which balance the horror of the character and his surroundings with generous heapings of gallows humour, a delicate tonal balance that only works if you’re willing to go along for the zany ride.

It’s hard to imagine anyone taking over the role of Hellboy from Ron Perlman, but Harbour does a good job of injecting Hellboy with the right amount of world-weariness, goofiness, and blood-curling rage. As silly as much of this movie is, the script by Andrew Cosby does try to “humanize” Hellboy — we see how his tragic backstroy has shaped his life and relationships, and his complicated relationship with his adopted father provides some emotional heft to what could have simply been a standard superhero romp. The film also tries to make a point about how we deal with the outsiders in society — it comes off a bit heavy-handed (no Right Hand of Doom pun intended), but it adds another dimension to Hellboy’s character as he is forced to navigate the world of humankind as a walking demon.

Despite the wide scope of the plot, in many ways Hellboy still feels a bit cheap, especially on the CGI front. There are some moments that simply look unfinished, especially during daytime sequences where the harsh light exposes every awkward effects jumble (the fight scene with the giants is a prime example of this). Other moments never manage to feel as consequential as they’re meant to be, because the purview seems so limited — for a story that features a witch’s plague set to wipe out mankind, we only see snippets of the attack though a TV set, and what appears to be one block of London under attack.

Hellboy may not be a great movie, but if you’re on-board with the demented tone, it sure is a lot of fun. Sure, the labyrinthian plot can be a lot to swallow, but should be nothing new for comic fans who’ve had to navigate these convoluted waters before. Say what you will about the validity of this remake without del Toro and Ron Perlman attached, but in many ways this version of Hellboy is truer to the crazed spirit of the original comics than Del Toro’s more grandiose films. With buckets of gore and a self-aware, zany tone, Hellboy may not appeal to everybody, but this is the sort of fun late-night genre movie that fans of the comics are going to want to keep coming back to (especially after a few drinks).

Hellboy is in theatres now.