Hellboy: The Crooked Man

For all its faults—and there are many—it's the first of the live-action adaptations to nail the tone of the comics.

Forget about those who are nostalgic about the old films in the franchise. It may not be a million-dollar blockbuster, but it has an interesting and dynamic script.

Where did that 20 million budget go? Would have been a great TV series for a tenth of that. Instead it feels like a season of content crammed into a movie, with the correct style for Hellboy but zero substance. Oh well.

It delivers just what you expect from Brian Taylor: absolutely soaked, sweaty action horror -- here, in folk outings -- and both visual and sound excesses -- at its best and worst --, like countless shallow focus nightmarish, diabolical shots and a score that doesn't know when to stop and feels loud as shit. That said, gotta love its penchant for practical effects and the plot purely constructed upon a series of small supernatural tasks in mannered spaces -- old church, tunnels, even the woods.

Well, at least they should have hired a taller, bulkier actor. The chest plate was very disturbing.

bad edit

what a waste of time

Kesy's portrayal of Hellboy is decent, but The crooked Man is a struggle to get through. The film drops you straight into the story without any real introductions or context, which is a brave move for any film; unfortunately the screenplay isn't strong enough and the plot quickly leans into generic witch horror rather than any Hellboy lore as previous films have. As such, the film is a choppily-edited, often incomprehensible and tedious experience, where nothing stands outs. A waste of time.

Not terrible, but it's not good either. This felt like an early 2000s TV episode more than anything else. I've never been a fan of Hellboy and I haven't really liked any of the movies either but I still felt like this wasn't a good Hellboy movie, even if it was a decent backwoods witch movie. Jack Kesy was the weakest of the three Hellboys I've seen, so there's that.