‘Hellboy’ is a nonsensical, gory mess in need of an exorcism

Posted on April 19, 2019

By MARK VIOLA

I’ve said it in many reviews — most recently in my review of the live-action “Dumbo” — that how you receive a remake or reboot depends greatly on your attachment to the original. In the case of “Dumbo,” I had little to no emotional connection with the original animated film, so I greeted the remake with an open mind.

The same can’t be said for the new “Hellboy” film, which serves as a reboot to the two earlier films directed by Guillermo Del Toro (“The Shape of Water”) in 2004 and 2008. I try to walk into every movie I see with the same open mind I greeted “Dumbo” with, but that simply wasn’t the case with “Hellboy,” as I found myself less willing to forgive any flaws I noticed.

That being said, even if I had gone into the movie — directed by Heil Marshall (“The Descent”) and written by Andrew Cosby (“Eureka”) — with a better mind set, I doubt it would have helped. “Hellboy,” sadly, is a mess. Very little about the movie actually works, aside from the basic premise, which is thanks to the graphic novels by Mike Mignola, upon whose story the film is based. But even then, I couldn’t help but feel like I had seen the same basic plot told better, which is because I had in the earlier movies.

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