Based on a fairly niche comic book series, with probably pretty limited intrinsic appeal for mass audiences, the Hellboy series nevertheless managed to achieve blockbuster success with Guillermo del Toro’s Hellboy and Hellboy II: The Golden Army. With their strong casts, great scripts, and huge amounts of visual flair, del Toro’s entries in the series are standouts in his career and some of the best action-adventure films of the period. The 2019 reboot was a non-event, however, the kind of flop that seemed to put an end to the franchise. I was a bit surprised therefore to see that a new Hellboy film, The Crooked Man, has been released, without much fanfare at all.

The plot follows the half-demon Hellboy (Jack Kesy) and paranormal investigator Jo Song (Adeline Rudolph) as they transport a demonically-possessed spider across Appalachia. The spider escapes, responding to some darkness in the environment, and as they attempt to recapture it they are drawn into a battle firstly with a coven of witches, and then with an undead miser, the Crooked Man, who collects souls for the Devil.

The first thing that has to be noted about The Crooked Man is that it is quite low budget. It’s obviously unfair to compare it to the colour and vibrancy of del Toro’s films, which had much larger budgets and also benefited from del Toro’s powerful visual imagination. Still, the drab grey-brown palette does not do the film any favours in this regard. The film is lacking visual flair generally, which cannot be wholly attributed to a lack of financing. The Adams family’s 2021 film Hellbender is made for almost nothing with some striking sequences and great special effects. Apart from a few okay practical effects, like when a witch reenters her empty skin, The Crooked Man is simply not very interesting to look at.

There are also some problems with the film’s tone. At times it seems to be trying to evoke the atmosphere of an A24-style occult horror. This does not work very well; any film with a character as silly-looking as Hellboy is simply not going to be scary. Additionally, the Hellboy of The Crooked Man is a little too brooding and tortured – again, it’s possible to play into the pulpy charm of the character without sacrificing atmosphere and even gravitas (the comics do a great job of this, as do the del Toro films, at times). The Crooked Man does not strike the right balance.

There are also issues with pacing. The film opens with an action sequence, before any context is given or any introduction made to the characters (a basic familiarity with the Hellboy universe is definitely assumed). It then grinds to a halt for nearly 40 minutes as Hellboy and Jo encounter various Appalachian rustics, some of whom turn into major characters without ever leaving much of an impression on the audience. Things pick up a little bit about halfway into the movie, with the introduction of the Crooked Man, but a lot of the film simply feels dreary and prolonged. I had the feeling that the film was hampered in its action sequences by its low budget, but that nothing was really envisioned as a substitute.

The Crooked Man isn’t all bad. The action scenes are reasonable if not especially imaginative. Jack Kesy is pretty good as Hellboy. It’s probably not the worst thing that could happen to the franchise, but by the same token it will hardly inspire a longing for more instalments.

 

Hellboy: The Crooked Man is currently playing in cinemas.