Director – Brian Taylor, Screenplay – Christopher Golden, Mike Mignola & Brian Taylor, Based on the by Graphic Novel Hellboy: The Crooked Man (2008) by Mike Mignola, Producers – Jeffrey Greenstein, Yariv Lerner, Mike Richardson, Sam Schulte, Robert Van Norden, Les Weldon & Jonathan Yunger, Photography – Ivan Vatsov, Music – Sven Faulconer, Visual Effects – Terminal FX (Supervisors – Vasyl Goncharov, Mieszko Lacinski & Serhii Stolyarov) & Worldwide FX (Supervisors – Alexander Alexiev & Veselina Georgieva), Special Effects Supervisor – Ivo Jivkov, Prosthetic Designer – Kristiyan Mallett, Production Design – Orlin Grozdanov. Production Company – Millennium Media/Dark Horse Entertainment.
Cast
Jack Kesy (Hellboy), Jefferson White (Tom Ferrell), Adeline Rudolph (Bobbie Jo Song), Joseph Marcell (Reverend Nathaniel Watts), Martin Bassindale (The Crooked Man/Mr. Onselm), Leah McNamara (Effie Kolb), Hannah Margetson (Cora Fisher), Bogdan Haralambov (Young Tom), Suzanne Bertish (Grammy Oakum), Carola Colombo (Sarah Hughes)
Plot
Hellboy and Bobbie Jo Song, a research assistant from the Bureau of Paranormal Research, are transporting a demonic funnel spider through the Appalachians, only for the spider to grow to giant size, get loose and derail the train. They wander through the area in search of a phone and come to a cabin. There they meet Tom Ferrell, a local who has returned to the area after many years. They decide to accompany Tom as he travels to a cabin to find his ex-girlfriend Cora Fisher who is said to have become a witch. Tom tells the story of when he was younger meeting with Effie Kolb who conduted a summoning of The Crooked Man, Mr. Onselm, a rich man from the 19th Century who was sent back from Hell to collect souls. Effie used animal bones in the summoning and, as the legend goes, the bone Tom was holding when The Crooked Man appeared has been empowered. Tom tried to throw it away but it kept reappearing and has protected him. Effie now returns taunting Tom that The Crooked Man is waiting to collect his soul. Effie has also transformed Tom’s father into a horse with a magic bridle and leaves his dead and wasted corpse. Tom decides that he must take his father’s body to the church up the mountain to be buried. As they arrive, The Crooked Man surrounds the church, determined to collect Tom’s soul.
Hellboy is the creation of Mike Mignola and has been appearing in comic-book form since 1994. The character has gained such a popularity there have been spinoff series, a series of novels, figurines and videogames, even a Hellboy licensed brand of whiskey. One of the most popular incarnations was the duo of films directed by Guillermo Del Toro starring Ron Perlman in the title role with Hellboy (2004) and its much superior sequel Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008). Perlman also lent his voice to two animated spinoffs with Hellboy Animated: Sword of Storms (2006) and Hellboy Animated: Blood and Iron (2007).
Guillermo Del Toro failed to find the funding for a third Hellboy film. At some point, the rights passed over to Millennium Media, the company founded by several former Cannon Films associates who have been known for taking previously established franchises and generating further sequels as with the likes of the Rambo sequels of the 2000s, Conan the Barbarian (2011), The Mechanic films and assorted Texas Chainsaw sequels, among others. Both Del Toro and Perlman declined involvement. The film emerged as Hellboy (2019) under director Neil Marshall with David Harbour was cast as Hellboy. The result was politely termed a disaster and box-office bomb with stories of Marshall fighting with Harbour and the producers interfering with the production. With Hellboy: The Crooked Man, Millennium Media seem brave enough to try making a second Hellboy venture.
Millennium seem determined to make up for the mistake that was the 2019 film. The role is recast – indeed, the whole film is cast with largely unknown actors. Moreover, there is a concerted determination to go back to the source material. In this case, the film is adapted directly from Mike Mignola’s Hellboy: The Crooked Man (2008), which was originally published as a three-issue limited series, and Mignola himself is one of the credited screenwriters.
Hellboy (Jack Kesy) and Bobbie Jo Song (Adeline Rudolph) fight off the resurrected dead in the church
The new director is Brian Taylor, formerly one half of the team known as Neveldine/Taylor, along with Mark Neveldine. Neveldine/Taylor made the hit Crank (2006), followed by Crank: High Voltage (2009), Gamer (2009) and Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance (2012), as well as wrote the script for Jonah Hex (2010). The two appeared to part ways after that. Neveldine went on to make The Vatican Tapes (2015) and Panama (2022) as a solo director. By far the most interesting career path has been Taylor’s where he has co-created Happy! (2017-9), possibly the most demented and messed-up thing that anybody has ever put on television, and the Dystopian future mini-series Brave New World (2020), while making his directorial debut with Mom & Dad (2017), an also demented film where a virus causes parents to start killing their children.
This Hellboy is immediately different – if just for the fact that Brian Taylor abandons the brighter colours of the previous films for something colour desaturated and muted. It is a much smaller film in scope, having only been afforded a $20 million budget, and without the extravagant creature effects that marked Del Toro’s films. And yet it also has something unique and different that makes it much more authentically Hellboy and the next best in the series to Del Toro’s Hellboy: The Golden Army.
Mike Mignola’s script takes the character of Hellboy in some quite different areas. While the other films have tossed up fairly generic Lovecraftian entities and demonic creations, this delves into an arena of Appalachian backwoods Folk Horror. This is the unique variant on the genre that turns up in occasional films like The Legend of Hillbilly John (1972), Pumpkinhead (1988) and Jug Face (2013).
The Crooked Man (Martin Bassindale)
One of the most extraordinary pieces of writing is when Jefferson White tells the story of how he was persuaded by Leah McNamara’s Effie and made a deal with The Crooked Man without intending to and ended up the recipient of an empowered bone that he cannot throw away but has allowed him to go through the War unscathed. White’s retelling of the story is followed by a striking scene where a small animal returns and inhabits witch Hannah Margetson’s abandoned body and we watch as the body re-inflates and she returns to life. This is before Effie turns up at the door riding a white horse and demanding the return of Tom’s soul, before the dead horse’s magic bridle is removed to reveal it is Tom’s father transformed and ridden to death.
The film is a wild array of these half-folk, half-comic book elements and it invigorates the Hellboy franchise in new and unique ways. Be it wild images of Hellboy descending into Hell and encountering the soul of his mother as The Devil looks on in the form of a giant raven. I particularly liked the siege in the church with The Crooked Man tempting the blind pastor (Joseph Marcell) with youth and the return of his sight, before reaching into the soil of the graveyard and resurrecting the buried sinners as an attacking zombie army, which the pastor fends off with a spade that has been emblazoned by a crucifix power sigil from the bone.
Brian Taylor’s directorial sensibilities are far better tamed here than they have been in previous outings. He is no longer focused on frenetic thrills and energy of the Crank films and Spirit of Vengeance – there is still the occasional shakycam action scene here but mostly the focus is on establishing things like mood and a sense of uncanny dread, which he does well. There are one or two slightly dodgy CGI effects – Hellboy’s fight with a snake – but mostly the film holds up extremely well. Jack Kesy makes an okay Hellboy. Ron Perlman is still the definitive actor of the part. Against Perlman, Jack Kesy is much more subdued. He gets the gravelly voice but only hits the mark of the wry humour on occasions.
