Hellboy: The Crooked Man Trailer Can’t Scare Up and Interest

Movies

Hellboy is back, but you may not recognize him. The film series (such as it is) based on the comic book by Mike Mignola has been rebooted again, and this time, Hellboy is played not by Ron Perlman or David Harbour but by Jack Kesy, who played Black Tom Cassidy in Deadpool 2. This film is called Hellboy: The Crooked Man, and it’s based on one of Mignola’s comic storylines, with the script co-written by Mignola. This time, Hellboy heads to Appalachia to take on a coven of witches and the menacing devil who controls them. Jefferson White, Adeline Rudolph, Leah McNamara, and Martin Bassindale also star. Directed by Brian Taylor – half of Neveldine and Taylor, the guys who directed the Crank movies – Hellboy: The Crooked Man has no release date yet, but it will arrive sometime this year. You can see the trailer below:

Why are there English subtitles when the dialogue is in English? That’s just strange, not that the rest of the trailer is much better. Hellboy: The Crooked Man looks awful, like a cheap-o horror movie destined for a mid-January release. And that’s probably what it is, outside of the release month; the Hellboy movies have never been huge hits, and the third one (which was the first reboot) was an outright bomb. The only way to make another would have been to do it for as little money as possible, hence the absence of any actors whose names you’d recognize and a shoot that took place in Bulgaria. I get it, but I think it’s time for Mignola to stop plugging away at this and realize that Hellboy isn’t going to make it as a movie franchise. It’s a shame; the first one is okay, but Hellboy II is a great movie that had the bad luck of being sandwiched between Iron Man and The Dark Knight in 2008. (Prince Nuada would’ve been the best superhero movie villain of the year if not for a certain Clown Prince of Crime.) But even with all the allowances you can make due to the assuredly limited budget, Hellboy looks awful in this film. The makeup just doesn’t work, and he looks like he’s on his way to a neighborhood Halloween party rather than a battle against supernatural evil. I will say that the tone feels more in keeping with the comics, based on the ones I’ve read, but that’s not a plus for me; I found the comics dull and lifeless, while the Guillermo del Toro movies brought that world and its characters to life. I think this will likely be Hellboy’s last hurrah in theaters, and it doesn’t look like he’s going out on a high note.