Hellboy: The Crooked Man (2024)
Running time: 99 minutes (1 hour, 39 minutes)
MPA – R for strong bloody violence and gore throughout, and language
DIRECTOR: Brian Taylor
WRITERS: Brian Taylor, Christopher Golden, and Mike Mignola (based upon the Dark Horse comic book series created by Mike Mignola)
PRODUCERS: Jeffrey Greenstein, Sam Schulte, Robert Van Norden, Yariv Lerner, Mike Richardson, Les Weldon, and Jonathan Yunger
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Ivan Vatsov (D.o.P.)
EDITOR: Ryan Denmark
COMPOSER: Sven Faulconer
SUPERHERO/FANTASY/HORROR
Starring: Jack Kesy, Jefferson White, Adeline Rudolph, Leah McNamara, Joseph Marcell, Martin Bassindale, Hannah Margetson, Bogdan Haralambov, Carola Columbo, Anton Trendafilov, Michael Flemming, and Suzanne Bertish
Hellboy: The Crooked Man is a 2024 superhero, horror, and dark fantasy film from director Brian Taylor. The film is based on the Hellboy character and comic books created by Mike Mignola and published by Dark Horse Comics. The film is also the second reboot of the Hellboy film franchise. In Hellboy: The Crooked Man, Hellboy and a first-time field agent unexpectedly find themselves in a mountain community dominated by witchcraft and ruled over by a local demon.
Hellboy: The Crooked Man opens in 1959. We meet Hellboy (Jack Kesy) and Special Agent Bobbie Jo Song (Adeline Rudolph), both of the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense (BPRD). The two are transporting a supernatural toxic spider by train when something goes awry, and they suddenly find themselves stranded in the Appalachian Mountains. They wander until they come to a backwoods community that is filled with superstition and with the belief in witches.
They meet a former local, Tom Ferrell (Jefferson White), himself a witch, who has home to atone for his sins and to settle a hateful debt he owes. Witches and witchcraft, however, are not the only things that haunt this isolated mountain community. The devil is about in the form of Mister Onselm (Martin Bassindale), also known as “The Crooked Man.” He has come to collect a debt, and Hellboy, Song and Ferrell are the resistance. Soon, the mountain church of the blind Reverend Watts (Joseph Marcell) will be the scene of an epic battle of good versus evil.
I am not a big fan of Guillermo del Toro's 2004 film, Hellboy, the first film in the series. It has great production values, and it is a gorgeous movie filled with fantastical visual elements. On the other hand, the story is executed in a clunky and awkward fashion, and the characters are not particularly interesting. However, del Toro's follow-up to that film, the Oscar-nominated Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008), is one of my all-time favorite films, and I consider it to be one of the best-ever films adapted from a comic book. Director Neil Marshall's 2019 film, Hellboy, was supposed to reboot the Hellboy film franchise. It was a box office bomb, with its worldwide box office failing to recoup even the film's production costs, but Hellboy 2019 is far superior to Hellboy 2004. It is closer to Hellboy II, in terms of quality, and almost seems like a reworking of the plot of the 2008 film.
All that said, Hellboy: The Crooked Man is another try at rebooting or restarting the series. I remember reading press and promotion for The Crooked Man stating that it was the closest of the four films in terms of being faithful to the comic book. I get that being faithful to the comic book is important to comic book people, especially the comic book creators and fans, but in the larger world of the film business, that is irrelevant. What the people behind Hellboy: The Crooked Man should have been doing is telling the world that The Crooked Man is one helluva movie...
...Because it is. Hellboy: The Crooked Man is a mutha f**kin' good movie. I enjoyed the hell outta it, so much so that I might owe The Crooked Man of the film a debt. I am not trying to say that it is perfect, because it is not. Hellboy: The Crooked Man starts off slow, dry, awkward, and forced, and its first act seems like a collection of contrivances.
Then, the movie loses it mind and goes bonkers, and Hellboy: The Crooked Man flips the script so fast that I didn't know what hit me. The Crooked Man's director, Brian Taylor, is known for his work with fellow writer-director Mark Neveldine, and the duo specializes in directing nutty and bonkers film like Crank (2006) and the 2011 comic book movie, Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance. The duo also wrote the kooky horror-Western film hybrid, Jonah Hex (2010).
Going solo on The Crooked Man, Taylor busts out a film that takes the gruesome dead of the 1982 film, Creepshow, and mixes them with hoary hell hounds of director Sam Raimi's The Evil Dead (1981). The result is the most horrifying film in the Hellboy franchise, a film with enough bone-rattling folk horror to convince many viewers that it is a legit horror flick.
I find that David Harbour, who played Hellboy in the 2019 film, didn't stray far in his performance from what Guillermo del Toro's Hellboy star, Ron Perlman, did with the character. The Crooked Man's Hellboy actor, Jack Kesy, is more like Jeff Bridges' “Jeffrey 'The Dude' Lebowski” (from The Big Lebowski) than he is like the dark-fantasy action hero of the previous Hellboy films. It is not that Kesy is better or worse, for the matter; it is just that he takes a different path to bringing the character to life.
There are other good performances in this film. Jefferson White makes a mark as Tom Ferrell, but there are times when both White and his character, Ferrell, seem to get lost in the hell-raising of this film. Adeline Rudolph, however, does not get lost as Bobbie Jo Song, and Rudolph's robust performance makes Song not so much a supporting character as she is a co-lead. I would be remiss if I didn't mention Joseph Marcell as Reverend Watts because he is a scene-stealer in the role. I was shocked to learn that Marcell played “Geoffrey Butler,” the butler on the former NBC sitcom, “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air (1990-96).
Hellboy: The Crooked Man lacks the superhero fantasy, blockbuster bombast of its predecessors, but it is a truly unique superhero movie convincingly cos-playing a scary movie. I don't want to give away too many of its chilling, goose flesh-raising frights. The film did receive mixed reviews, but here, I won't send a mixed message. Hellboy: The Crooked Man is a damn good movie, and I would be damned if I said otherwise.
A-
★★★½ out of 4 stars
Reviewed by Leroy Douresseaux a.k.a. "I Reads You"
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