Hellboy: The Crooked Man

I doubt fans of the Hellboy comic will be talking too much shit about it. For better or worse, it's distinctive enough from other comic book movies to keep fans happy.

Another Hellboy movie was a surprise. I loved the Ron Perlman stuff, but after the David Harbour movie bombed I assumed that killed the franchise. I would not have predicted it would return so soon.

The fact that it's a horror movie instead of superhero action film isn't a surprise. The premise definitely lends itself to that. It's how absolutely low-budget the movie is. You can see these exact same kind of effects on Syfy Channel original movies. I never heard of any of the production companies co-producing the film. There is not a single name actor in the cast, and literally the only one I've seen in something else was Joseph Marcell, who played the butler Geoffrey on The Fresh Prince Of Bel Air.

And the thing is, the low-budget doesn't remotely hurt it. I think filmmakers like James Cameron are dinosaurs. Wasting billions of dollars on visual spectacles, when there are plenty of flashy camera tricks and short-cuts that are just as effective and billions of dollars cheaper. If movies theaters are going to survive, movie budgets need to be reasonable. Would I have preferred an action film? Yes. But using the budget this way was a good idea. I have no idea how it did at the box office, but even if it performed crappily, I doubt it lost much money, if any. Even if this film were only a modest success, almost all of that goes in the studios' bank because it's so cheap.

I mentioned it could be a bad movie. It's Hellboy, so there are funny elements, including wisecracks. The format of the film and the scene of the "witch's ball" are also deliberately humorous, and push up against the fourth wall. The thing is, I find the film funny in ways it shouldn't be. Like all the characters but Hellboy and Jo literally sound like they come from the Adult Swim parody show "The Heart, She Holler". Most of the time I didn't feel the urge to jump. I felt the urge to laugh. Including at stuff I probably wasn't supposed to.

Good or bad? I'll call it good, not because I'm sure it is, but because I believe my film reviews could do with a little more grace. These three and a half stars are me giving this movie the benefit of the doubt. 3 1/2 stars.