I’ll confess that the trailer for Hellboy: The Crooked Man looked interesting to me. I know all the previous Hellboy movies were on a larger scale, fighting Golden Armies and so on. The Crooked Man looked smaller-scale and more like a horror.
I haven’t read the Hellboy books or comics. I only know about him from the movies. I recently watched the original Ron Pearlman version again and thoroughly enjoyed it. I have seen the David Harbour one, and remember not really liking it.
This new entry, Hellboy: The Crooked Man, stars Jack Kesy, Jefferson White, Adeline Rudolph, Leah McNamara, Joseph Marcell, and Martin Bassindale. Brian Taylor directs and he wrote the script alongside Christopher Golden and Mike Mignola, based on the comic book by Mignola. Taylor is known for Crank and Crank: High Voltage which are both stupid, but great fun.
The Story
The story is toned down from the bigger previous entries. The official story is:
Hellboy and a rookie B.P.R.D. agent in the 1950s are sent to the Appalachians, where they discover a remote community dominated by witches and led by the sinister local demon, the Crooked Man.
Hellboy (Kesy) and Bobbie (Rudolph) are transporting a dangerous spider back to the B.P.R.D. headquarters. The spider is more than it seems and manages to escape and throw the container off the train it’s traveling on.
Bobbie is definitely dead, as there is no way she survives the crash. No, wait, she’s fine, but they chase the spider down some drain. They have to find a phone and end up in a cabin in the woods.
Inside a young lad is hexed by a witch and may die. Tom (Jefferson) turns up and explains the plot. There are witches who are controlled by The Crooked Man. This evil man must die to save everyone.
A Hallmark Production
The opening, chasing the spider, was really weak. It looked like the CG was done on a Commodore 64. There’s no mention on the IMDb about the cost of production, but not much of it went on special effects.
The entire production felt like a TV movie, right down to the point where there were convenient fades-to-black for the adverts. I don’t know if it was just me, but they seemed really noticeable.
I will say, however, that it got better as it went on. Some of the effects towards the end were actually pretty good, with some touching on excellent as a creepy vibe settled in places.
Annoyingly, some of the creepy moments were very good indeed. This felt like it was too little too late though by this time as I had checked out a little.
The Cast
Kesy was very good as Hellboy. The makeup was good, he played the role well and I believed in him. OK, so I’ve only got Pearlman and Harbour to compare him to, but I thought he did a decent job. He’s no Pearlman though, that’s for sure.
Rudolph is very easy on the eye, so I was happy to just see her on screen. Honestly, I think she’s there for mostly eye candy and her character is there to help the plot along.
Here is a big issue with the movie. Hellboy has no one to really bounce off at all. In the original movie, you had Abe, Liz, and Trevor, all bigging up Big Red. They all conflicted with him, set up lines for him, and generally give him something to play against. Even Manning gave him something to spar with. This is all missing from The Crooked Man.
Rudolph’s character should have been this.
Marcell was very good. I only really know him as Geffory from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. In this, he plays a blind preacher from the Deep South and plays it well. The rest of the cast are all there to help the plot along.
Confusion
There are a couple of major issues that confused me. They aren’t really spoilers.
Near the beginning, we learn about Witchballs. No, not those type of balls, but little bundles of hair and other nastiness. You learn this as a witch breaks the fourth wall and explains to the audience what they are made of.
This really confused me, maybe it’s from the comic book, but it was just a creepy old witch explaining the plot to me. This then never happens again! If you’re going to break the fourth wall, don’t do it once, you have to do it all the way through the movie.
The other thing that confused me is that Hellboy says his mother was a witch. According to the original movie he was “made” when summoned due to some experiment by the Nazis. Here, it’s explained that he was born of a human mother.
Again, this might be something explained in the comic, but for me, a bear of very little brain, it was confusing.
Overall
Hellboy: The Crooked Man is a good idea on paper, but just didn’t work here. In fact, if you took Hellboy out of this movie and just made it about a small village fighting evil witches and a crooked man, it might have worked better.
I like these types of “folk horror”, confined into a small place, creepy and almost impossible odds. I’ve been watching things like Blood on Satan’s Claw, which is very similar to The Crooked Man. Small-town folks trying to fight a rising evil.
There are good moments in this movie, but it doesn’t make up for the fact it’s just not that good or interesting. It’s a shame, as I said, I liked the idea of it, but it wasn’t really worth the watch. I’ll probably never sit down to watch it again.
Hellboy: The Crooked Man is now on streaming.
