Hellboy: The Crooked Man

• Directed by Brian Taylor
• June 20, 2024 (Belgium) / October 8, 2024 (US)
• Based on Hellboy created by Mike Mignola

Hellboy and a rookie B.P.R.D. agent are travelling through the Appalachians where they find a community dominated by witches along with a sinister local demon called the Crooked Man.

After Hellboy 2019 I went into Hellboy: The Crooked Man with low expectations. The original two were ideal though not 100% faithful to the source material followed by a reboot that did not do the trick. Rather than make nice with Guillermo del Toro and finish the original trilogy, Hellboy creator Mike Mignola and pals decided to start yet again.

In the opener it looks like a nicely budgeted YouTube fan film. From the directing to the acting to even the special effects, The Crooked Man comes off as just that. The first three Hellboy films were well budgeted if not big budgeted in comparison to this. The cast is extremely minimal (which in itself is not an issue) and the shots are ridiculously tight.

If this were a fan production devoid of any official blessing from Mike Mignola or Dark Horse Entertainment, I would have plenty of praise for it but it’s not. It’s an official production officially sanctioned by the creator. It’s cheap and adequately acted but it’s kind of boring. Perhaps it’s because they keep trying to switch out Hellboy for another character throughout the film.

Even though Hellboy is the title character, Hellboy regularly takes a bit of a backseat to his rookie partner Bobbie Jo Song (Adeline Rudolph). She gets a little bit too much screen time for not being the title character. She is just generic. Nothing special or interesting.

The film itself engages in lore dumps rather than parsing out info. At 90 minutes or so it doesn’t have much time to develop stuff, but having your characters sit around and hand information to the audience does little to build interest. 

I give them props for going for a horror feel in comparison to the preceding films. Hellboy (Jack Kesy) after all is a demonic entity and makes his living in a very supernatural world. The others were built around the fantastic but not scary. Brian Taylor attempts to use shadow and low light to get your mind to do some of the scaring.

Cora Fisher (Hannah Margetson), a witch in the story, lives in a shack that looks like it was a sublet from The Evil Dead. The quick flashes I saw of it in the trailer were not enough for me to be certain but you get plenty of shots from the outside once you watch the movie. Was this some kind of visual homage or were they just being lazy?

The zombie battle during the climax is kind of cool. I’ll hand them that, but not much else really matters. Especially the evil hot witch. Could they have gotten a worse actress? She’s just bitchy and not a threat. The story never gets exciting or very mysterious or too strange. In the end it is a slog that causes you to lose interest in everything about it.

Hellboy: The Crooked Man is a complete fumble. It’s boring, it’s cheap, and ultimately comes off looking like a fan film rather than a movie authorized by the creator and the company that publishes his work. Enjoy the first two and skip this.