By Samuel Rillstone
Directed by Brian Taylor and based on the 2008 comic story of the same name, Hellboy: The Crooked Man follows the titular Hellboy (Jack Kesy) as he is thrust into the Appalachian Mountains with his B.P.R.D. colleague Jo (Adeline Rudolph).
There they discover a coven of witches are terrorising the nearby locals at the behest of a supernatural entity known as The Crooked Man.
I've always been a big fan of Hellboy from the Guillermo del Toro movies that came out when I was a kid. The lore and look of the character always appealed to me a lot so when I heard there was going to be a new Hellboy (following a failed reboot in 2019), I was cautiously excited.
And I'm happy to say I had a lot of fun with this! It's got a much different feel to the del Toro films and the 2019 film, which felt more big picture and dealing with the end of the world.
This feels like a random little Hellboy story in an ongoing comic run. You get thrown right in the middle of an adventure and are drip-fed info. And it's very self-contained. By the end, you feel like a sequel would be like another episode in a TV show, with Hellboy fighting another monster of the week.
Photo: Millennium Media
Kesy as the titular demon is pretty good. He has a nice gruffness to him, an interesting physicality and stands out from the previous iterations enough. I really liked how he has these little sayings and a vocabulary that's fun and playful. It shows heaps of personality for the character and is probably indicative of the fact Hellboy creator Mike Mignola had a hand in writing the script.
Adeline Rudolph as Jo, an original character not from the comics, is a good addition. Again, you get drip-fed background info about her which informs her arc across the movie which was satisfying if a tiny bit predictable.
Jefferson White plays Tom, one of the locals who has a history with the Crooked Man. He's an interesting character with an intensity that is played well by White and stands out against the other characters.
This core trio guides the story and was a really fun group. They feel like a Dungeons and Dragons party investigating a mystery in a spooky little town. Tom is the ranger/warlock, Jo is a wizard and Hellboy is a barbarian.
Photo: Millennium Media
It definitely leans more spooky and scary than previous Hellboy adaptations so it may not be for everyone. But I enjoyed the macabre, almost Lovecraftian take. The jump scares got old for me personally; they're just a bit cheap.
On a budget of US$20 million, I reckon they did pretty well. It feels pulpy and scrappy. Like a raggedy paperback comic that's been loved and worn.
And everything feels tangible. Don't get me wrong, there's definitely some ropey CGI but the locations and sets feel tactile. Maybe it's just because of a lot of exposure to greenscreen-heavy films, but the human eye knows. It feels like there's lots of texture on screen.
Though it was a bit hard to find a screening since it only got a limited release and is already on streaming overseas, if you get a chance to see it on a big screen I recommend you do for sure. Absolutely worth the price of admission.
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