31 Days of Halloween: Hellboy: The Crooked Man

2024, Brian Taylor (Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance) -- download

As this movie started I had the distinct feeling I was watching a fan-flick that had been given a budget. In a fan-film there is no time for backstory or explanation, they just jump into the action, full understanding that anyone watching the movie/short understands the world into which the viewer is entering. Sure, there have been three Hellboy movies prior to this one, from two other franchises (that's being liberal with the word), but usually a movie at least tries to establish itself assuming a viewer may have not seen the previous examples. But nope, boom, Hellboy is on a train with a coworker transporting something evil when everything goes wrong and he is deposited in an Apalachian Hillbilly Themepark. 

Unlike the other examples, this one is adapted straight from an actual Mignola story. The thing about Mignola comics is that they are often contained stand-alone stories, refined examples of horror-meets-adventure. He infuses them with world building, in this case Appalachian witches, war profiteers returned from Hell and haunting the land, magic trinkets, etc. I applaud trying to turn it into a movie. Trying. 

The previous Hellboy movies were definitely all adventure, and this one wanted to embrace the horror elements, whiffs of Evil Dead in that the woods are haunted, demons and witches are everywhere in the mists and shadows, and there is a local legendary "devil" called The Crooked Man. Hellboy (Jack Kesy, Without Remorse) and his sidekick Bobbie Jo Song (Adeline Rudolph, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina), a BPRD researcher out for some field work, are trying to be focused on getting back their cargo but are distracted by the local story.

The problem with this movie, which surprisingly wasn't as humdrum as the last example, presents as a horror movie but without embracing it. I have been writing stories in my head & in my notebooks for years about characters, like the brothers from Supernatural, who come into a horror movie as heroic adventurers to defeat the evil. I am saying I am fully onboard with Hellboy wandering into a horror movie and sarcastically fighting all the monsters that would frighten the average horror movie character, but you have to fully be onboard with the horror movie you are presenting. This one just seemed to jump from one example of the trappings to the next. If the last Hellboy movie jumped one mythological example to the next, this pretty much did the same with horror examples. 

In the end I still say I was surprised it did rise above feeling like a low budget fan-flick, but it did not satisfy anything for me, neither my Hellboy interest, nor my horror movie fan.