Hellboy

Cast: David Harbour, Milla Jovovich, and Ian McShane

Director: Neil Marshall

121 minutes (15) 2019

Lions Gate 4K Ultra HD

[Released 19th August]

Rating: 8/10

Review by Steven Hampton

Beginnings are often terrible, sometimes wonderful, and usually tricky things to get just right. Hellboy starts in the familiar mode of standard prologue, with a narration by Ian McShane - introducing us to the Dark Ages, and noting that it was called so for “a fucking good reason.” This is a quip that establishes the movie’s tone almost perfectly. It’s not edgy, but it is funny. If you cannot laugh or chuckle or, at least, smile at this acidic intro then it’s unlikely that you will enjoy the rest of this movie’s remarkably revisionist efforts to be more faithful to its Dark Horse comic-book source material.

A superhero in the mould of the Hulk, and especially like the Thing, of the Fantastic Four, Hellboy (created in 1994 by Mike Mignola) is a demonic orphan with sawn-off horns and a stone hand, who is adopted by secret agent Professor Broom (Ian McShane), after he foils Nazi plans to raise something devilish, and therefore presumably evil, straight from the Underworld, to be a WMD in WW2. Hellboy is guided away from his obvious heritage as a cross-breed substitute or hybrid-alternative anti-Christ, because of his human upbringing. His monstrous appearance conflicts with ethical choices and sympathetic humanity as the basic morality of his indomitably antiheroic character is derived from old-as-time arguments about whether it’s nature or nurture that makes a person who (or what) they are.

“Destiny... stupid word for coincidence.”

Professor Broom, the leader of the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defence (BPRD), sends Hellboy to England, where he’s invited to join a mythical Wild Hunt for giants on the rampage, but our hero is betrayed. Alice (Sasha Lane, American Honey) is a psychic medium who helps Hellboy when the Professor later teams him with super-soldier Major Daimio (Daniel Dae Kim, TV’s Lost, Hawaii Five-0 remake), although his confrontations with the Blood Queen (Milla Jovovich), an immortal witch dismembered by King Arthur and Merlin, result in daring super-heroics that are actually fusions of gory action, wryly composed comedy, and fantastic visions of apocalyptic mayhem.

Neil Marshall, the maker of Dog Soldiers (2002), The Descent (2005), and under-rated actioner Doomsday (2008), churns up fairy-tales, dread folklore, gothic moods, fabulous beasts, and grotesque curses, to show us that fighting evil is an intrinsically dirty business. From witching-hour nightmares on Pendle Hill, and Baba Yaga’s chicken-legged house, to encounters with a talkative fairy-boar changeling, and Mexican vampirism (recalling From Dusk Till Dawn), Hellboy runs through an impressive series of supernatural threats which establishes a varied rogues’ gallery of enemy forces, in formal sketches if not as finished portraits. This brisk pacing works very much in the movie’s favour. So, don’t worry if you dislike like any particular monster, there will be another weird one along in just a few minutes.

The original Hellboy (2004) movie, adapted/ directed by Guillermo del Toro, and starring Ron Perlman, was basically a clever blend of sci-fi and fantasy, with moments of humour more like Marvel’s recent epics of superhero cinema. This remake or reboot (if you prefer that term), is quite definitely - and rather defiantly of this decade’s seemingly inevitable trends - a fantasy-horror adventure. If, as David Harbour has reportedly said, this darker version of Hellboy ‘failed’ to match the ‘chocolaty’ appeal of DC, or Avengers, brands, it’s because the richer flavouring here is too boozy for mainstream success. There’s no sex or drugs (like in Deadpool), but this year’s Hellboy certainly is a big rock ‘n’ roll movie, so it deserves to be appreciated for its own grisly, grimly comedic merits, and not unfairly dismissed, or simply ignored, just because it’s not a copycat of its genre predecessors.