After the disastrous Hellboy reboot in 2019, a second reboot seemed like it might actually be a good idea, although not nearly as good an idea as a third installment in the Guillermo del Toro series. Brian Taylor’s Hellboy: The Crooked Man is a much lower-budget affair, but can it wash the taste of the 2019 film out of fans’ mouths?
In this film, Hellboy (Jack Kesy) and Bobbie Jo Song (Adeline Rudolph) end up in rural Appalachia by accident when they uncover an outbreak of eldritch evil that they are obliged to exorcise. They take up with Tom Ferrell (Jefferson White), a local man who has done a reluctant deal with the Crooked Man (Martin Bassindale), a demonic entity that is haunting the region.
There’s a fair amount to commend in Hellboy: The Crooked Man. One of the better aspects of the film is its recreation of the unearthly feel of country ghost stories. The devil walks in the woods with pockets full of coins, seductive witches cast spells and levitate in gauzy nightgowns, and the sun wheels through the sky to set and cast a nightly shade upon the land when required. Where it doesn’t work is making a character like Hellboy fit into any of this. Taylor has got a lot out of his tiny budget, but the film really does look like they struggled with it. The cinematography looks acceptable, if a little muddy in darker scenes, but the choice of shots really makes Kesy look like a man in a costume walking around in front of a video camera. There’s a visual flair required to frame a character like Hellboy, and this film lacks it.
The script isn’t completely terrible, but again, poor Kesy has to deliver those sardonic Hellboy soundbites in a film that has the tone of a very spooky horror and so everything he says falls flat. This is a film with tonal clash problems. Putting in a nice performance is Joseph Marcell as the blind Reverend Watts, but even he isn’t given a lot to do.
It’s sad to be hard on a film that clearly tried hard within its limitations, but Hellboy: The Crooked Man is just a bit too messy to recommend. If this hadn’t featured Hellboy at all, it could have been a pretty decent folk horror. As it is, you get a folk horror with a barely explained cartoon character strutting around, and it’s just too much of a mixed bag.
