Darkness Prevails

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The new Hellboy is incredible value for money because it's only two hours long but it felt like it was on for a fucking month. The original two instalments of this series were helmed by the visionary director Guillermo Del Toro who created a fairytale world that was somehow epic in scale and yet still managed to focus on the complexities of its characters. I'm not even sure that this new film had any fucking characters now that I think about it.. Of course, it'd be difficult for any film to follow in the footsteps of one of Del Toro's with this being especially true of the Hellboy franchise. The second of his two movies was quite clearly designed to be the middle part of a trilogy and so like an unwanked dick in a massage parlour, we were all hoping that he'd return to finish it off. I understand that the studio couldn't justify the budget that he required for his final film when looking at how much he required and the box office results of those first two movies... but this new version is such a step down from what's come before that it's taking the absolute piss. It's like wanting to go to an art exhibition but because you can't afford a trip to the Louvre to see the Mona Lisa you simply settle to go down an ally to look at a page of Readers Wives that some tramp has stuck to the wall with a piece of his actual shit.  

I'd tell you what this new film was about too but I don't really fucking know. I suppose it was like going to a club and being forced to stay sober, because there was a lot of noise and then I felt depressed by the end. I think the story was something to do with a medieval witch attempting to return to life in order to turn our world into a modern day hell. But with shit like this movie being passed off as entertainment in our world I'd say her job was already fucking done. Meanwhile, Hellboy, a sort of demon looking thing, is trying to stop her from doing this because of... I don't know... reasons. I mean if I were to even describe this movie to you I'd sound like an old drunk man that's lost track of reality after falling asleep under a fucking bridge. At one point a character is poisoned and so they have to travel to a wizard who instantly cures them. The wizard then offers Hellboy a sword that he declines to take which causes the wizard to freak out and die or something? Then Hellboy travels to an entirely different country where the sword reappears and this time he decides to accept it for no real reason at all. This entire section, from the character being poisoned to Hellboy accepting the sword that he'd previously declined, takes place over the course of about four fucking minutes. It was honestly as though an unreliable child had used sign language to translate the gibberish of a severely simple chimp and they'd just filmed whatever shit it had come up with. 

In the Del Toro films, the lead part was obviously played by Ron Perlman who was so perfect in the role of Hellboy that it would be tricky for anybody to take over from him. Especially when he already had such a Hellboy-ish look to him that I'm sure that his transformation into the character involved the costume team making him seem less like a monster than he already fucking did. But if we can still be making Bond films almost half a century after Sean Connery retired from the iconic role then I'm sure that there's no reason that Hellboy can't be recast right? Well, I may not be alone in my hatred of this turd of a film but if the majority of the critics agree on one thing it's that David Harbour does an alright job of taking over the mantel of the character. It's just a shame that those critics are also completely fucking wrong because he's fucking awful in it too. The key to Hellboy is that although he might look like a demon on the outside he's really just a normal working guy on the inside. Well if Harbour's take on him is anything to go by he's less of a normal working guy on the inside than he is very specifically Gerard fucking Butler because I swear to shit that all he does his shout for the entire movie. Like a screaming baby, this Hellboy just seems to make a lot of noise whilst the rest of us are waiting for his fucking personality to turn up. 

The filmmakers claim too that this time they've tried to get the look of the character to be closer to that of his design in the comics. But the last time I checked the comics he didn't look like a cock that had been slammed in a car door. Was there even a make-up team involved here or did they just pop a slice of ham on the actor's face and then force him to lie down in Chernobyl for a few fucking months. Imagine if a psychopath had tried to recreate Sesame Street's Elmo out of their own discarded skin tags before drawing a couple of cats arse holes on its forehead for broken horns and that's kind of what Hellboy looks like now. It's not even the worst looking thing in the movie either. In The Mummy Returns the computer effects on the Scorpion King were so shoddy that it'd have been more impressive to just get The Rock to run about whilst wearing a pair of fucking oven gloves. But the creature effects here are so bad here that I started to get nostalgic even for that. I mean, there were some CG goblin things at one point that looked like the original Frogger but only if you'd wanted to see the prick run over. Oh, and the practical effects aren't much better either with one of the main villains being a human-sized pig with a scouse accent that's trying to bring the witch back to life. Ignoring the fact that I spent half of the movie assuming this overweight, Liverpudlian, spirit-talker, to be Derek Acorah, the pig literally looks like something that the producers of the original Power Rangers would have only put in the original show after a particularly competitive game of 'head-butt the fucking wall'. 

The only character that I found even remotely relatable was that of the evil witch queen played by Milla Jovovich and that's only because she seemed bored as hell too. Was it even Milla Jovovich in this movie or had somebody just bought a waxwork of her and figured that the audience wouldn't notice the difference? If it was her then it's quite the coincidence because, with its paper thin characters, incomprehensible story and embarrassing effects, I was reminded of her piece of shit Resident Evil series. There was also an Uwe Boll vibe running through some of the medieval scenes here in terms of their shoddiness and the exposition felt like it had been co-written by Tommy fucking Wiseau. There's a lot of really obnoxious music in this film too as though we're meant to think that what we're seeing is cool because they've started playing some heavy metal. But rather than making a scene feel cool it has the opposite effect. Like a teacher that's trying to appeal to their students by rapping the periodic table and telling them that their correct answers are “Jolly well peng”. It's just forced and horrible and it's the reason that kids much would rather take pictures of their genitals than pay attention to what's going on around them. 

This is an obvious contrast to the previous two films in which the two main characters, a demon man and a fish monster, get drunk and sing along to Barry Manilow. Admittedly that makes it sound like the streets of Manchester after the gay bars have closed, but they are films of heart, charm, and character. By contrast, this new one is about as charming as a prolapse and even less fun than trying to poke it back inside. But I don't want you to think that I was always going to hate on this movie because of my love for the first two alone. I'm aware that David Harbour is usually a pretty solid actor, and with The Descent and Dog Soldiers in his filmography, the new director Neil Marshall would seem like a great choice to take over the series. Perhaps there were some behind the scenes troubles that have prevented them both from achieving what they're capable of? I'm sure it'll all come out at some point but the film's only a few days old right now and the mud is already starting to get thrown about. Producers are being accused of meddling, actors are being reported as having stormed off set, and Marshall himself hasn't done a single interview to promote his movie. Essentially their working environment and relationships sound about as healthy as a ballsack in a blender. There's a character in this movie that wants Hellboy to rip out his own eyes in order to give them to her. If ever I was in a situation in which I had to watch this piece of shit film again then I'd gladly rip my own out to save him having to fucking bother. I fucking hated it. Thanks for reading, motherfuckers, and see you next time.