Hellboy (Movie Review)

***This review will contain spoilers***

Summary:

A half-demon paranormal investigator questions his defense of humans when a dismembered sorceress rejoins the living to wreak brutal vengeance. 

I grew up watching the Hellboy movies so Ron Perlman is my Hellboy. The second movie ended with a cliffhanger of both Hellboy and Liz expecting twins. I'm disappointed we didn't get a follow up to that but instead we got a reboot. 

Within the first five minutes, I knew this was going to be a tough watch. What made the original movies great was the serious themes and Del Toro (Director and Writer) knew when it needed some comedic relief. This one, however, everyone has to crack a joke or be funny every single scene. Even when flashing back to Hellboy's origin, it's all gimmicky and gives off a almost cartoonish feel to what should otherwise be a dark and occultic moment. 

This was a two hour movie that was tough to watch other than a handful of scenes that piqued my interest. I did try giving this a fair shot but my God! It was a dumpster fire of a movie. Hellboy had no character, no complexity. Even with his father being murdered in front of him, it just didn't pull at the heartstrings. 

This movie was clearly not written well. And it tried too hard to be a fun and edgy movie but it failed at every turn. I don't understand why they would focus on retelling the same things that were already beautifully done in the first two Hellboy movies. We didn't need a flashback of Hellboy's origin nor the whole prophesy/ end of world that Hellboy will usher in. And of course, the end credit scene they teased Abe. Been there, seen that and the OG's were a million times better. How crazy is it that early 2000's movie stood the test of time and is so much better on many different levels than a movie made almost twenty years later. 

One of my favourite actresses is Milla Jovovich. I've loved her in the resident evil franchise for years, The Fifth Element, A perfect getaway, The fourth kind...you name it she's been part of some amazing movies but this one? Her fake British accent was damn painful. You would think someone would have stopped her and said hey maybe drop that God awful accent and just speak normally. Anything would have been better than that. 

Rating:

Clearly, zero stars. I didn't enjoy it at all and as soon as the movie finished I put on Hellboy and all was back to normal. I will pretend like this Hellboy was a weird fever dream and that it never happened. I'm genuinely upset I wasted my time on such a shit movie.