Hellboy: The Crooked Man Film Review
Summary: A fan favourite story becomes a bland horror movie.
1.5
Hellish Hellboy
Full disclosure… I’m a big fan of Hellboy and the Mignolaverse… but The Crooked Man isn’t one of my favourite stories. It is however very popular among Hellboy fans and no doubt is why Millenium Media chose it to make into a film.
For those not familiar with the comic… the film’s logline is:
“Hellboy and a rookie BPRD agent get stranded in 1950s rural Appalachia, only to discover a small community haunted by witches, led by the Crooked Man.” With that the film starts with Hellboy, said rookie BPRD agent and a magical spider they are transporting back to the lab. This is where some of the first cracks in the movie appear. Visually as with basically all aspects… the movie isn’t quite there, the train is quite clearly CG as is the spider. The issue is the polish on the visual effects… the CG has that shiny/not in the same environment look that was common when CG started really showing up all over the place.
The carriage they are traveling in comes off the rails sending them into the woods where they fight the spider, weaken it but then lose it. With the spider missing they decided to try and find a phone to call in their status. Before long they come across a secluded house that doesn’t have a phone but they do discover a bewitched child. Not one to let the paranormal go without getting involved, Hellboy makes enquiries and soon is following a young man named Tom Ferrell who explains that Cora Fisher used a witchball against the boy and recounts the history of the town and witches including his own run in with a young woman named Effie.
When they arrived at Cora’s home they find a pile of witchballs and Cora’s deflated body lying on a bed. As they wait for her to return Tom tells them more about the town and his run in with the Crooked Man… the name given to the demon who leads the witches. Cora returns in raccoon form and re-enters the deflated body and soon Cora is back to human form. Cora is indeed a witch but no longer wants to serve the Crooked Man. Effie shows up and demands Cora go see the Crooked Man, she also says he is waiting for Tom and has been waiting for a long time. Effie also reveals that the poorly looking horse she has been riding is in fact Tom’s father, when he removes the bridal the horse transforms back into Tom’s father and dies in his arms.
The group make their way to Reverend Watt’s Church to bury Tom’s father with the plan of continuing on to confront the Crooked Man. The church ends up being their “last stand” of sorts against the witches and the Crooked Man. I’ll leave it there to avoid spoilers.
Storywise it does follow the comic quite closely, so fans of the story will likely be quite happy about that aspect. The movie certainly takes a more horror movie approach (compared to the other film versions which are much more action comedy). Again… for viewers who like horror movies this may be a positive, for me it quickly became very cliche especially once the characters reach the church… it quickly became a pretty bland zombie movie.
No doubt prospective viewers will have seen the promotional image of Jack Kesy as Hellboy… this was my first point of being aware the film was even a thing as it was totally off my radar. It instantly made me hesitant as there was something that felt off about the look of Hellboy. I think part of the issue is the face looks too much like a human with some red makeup on (granted with two giant stumps from cut off horns)… but I think one of the main things that causes it to look wrong is that his eyes aren’t yellow. I had to double check to make sure they have always been yellow before (I could remember seeing him with yellow eyes but wasn’t sure if maybe there had been previous versions where he didn’t have yellow eyes… not that I could find). I’m not sure what lead to this choice… it’s unlikely to be because they couldn’t get contacts as other cast members had them at times… perhaps Jack wasn’t able to wear them… but it certainly breaks the immersion of the character somewhat for me.
To the productions credit… despite Cora’s deflated body looking a bit overly rubbery… the “refilling” was done quite well. The Crooked Man prosthetics and overall look are very well done and arguably my favourite part of the movie. Performances were generally fine, if a little hokey in parts (no doubt a result of leaning heavily into the horror film tropes.). I never found any of the (presumed) jokes delivered by Hellboy funny… I am not sure if that is the delivery itself or the atmosphere… they always just felt flat and sunk as soon as they were uttered. I’m also not entirely sure Jack Kesy really embodied big red with the charisma he needs. It’s picky but I think it would have been beneficial to redo the take when Hellboy enters the house and I presume Jack accidentally caught his foot on the rug… it looks awkward and should have been easy to simply retake. It felt a bit like the booms that were notorious for sneaking into shots in movies in the 80s and it just adds to that feeling of a lack of polish.
Final Thoughts:
I loved the first two Hellboy films… Guillermo is a tough act to follow but I am also one of I presume few who quite enjoyed the David Harbour Hellboy (it has some issues but is mostly quite enjoyable). I can’t say I enjoyed Hellboy: The Crooked Man… I wanted to as I love the character… but it all just comes across as a fan film with an above average budget, as opposed to what this was which is a studio film with a very limited budget (allegedly around $20 million). If you are a huge fan of the story The Crooked Man and or a fan of horror films, this might be worth a look… but for the rest of us I think this is a pretty hard pass.
About the Author
Chris O'Connor Father of four, husband of one and all round oddity. Gaming at home since about 1982 with a Sinclair ZX Spectrum. Moving on to the more traditional PC genre in the years that followed with the classic Jump Joe and Alley Cat. CGA, EGA, VGA and beyond PC's have been central to my gaming but I've also enjoyed consoles and hand helds along the way (who remembers the Atari Lynx?). Would have been actor/film maker, jack of many trades master of none.
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