And lo, there came a fourth live action Hellboy film—featuring a brand new leading actor and a markedly lower budget. Expectations among the brethren are cautiously optimistic, with a few caveats.
How to watch Hellboy: The Crooked Man in the UK
Hellboy: The Crooked Man is now playing in UK cinemas.
Hellboy: The Crooked Man
What is Hellboy: The Crooked Man about?
Adapted from the cult horror comic of the same name created by the legendary Mike Mignola, which has already been filmed by the great Guillermo Del Toro and the formerly great Neil Marshall (but we live in hope), Hellboy: The Crooked Man comes to us this time out from Crank director Brian Taylor.
It sees the world’s greatest occult investigator off in the remote Appalachian Mountains in the 1950s, tangling with a backwoods witch coven and the eponymous, mysterious and terrifying demon. Based on the titular acclaimed comics miniseries, the script comes to us from OG comics creators Mignola and Cristopher Golden.
The cast of Hellboy: The Crooked Man
Not Ron Perlman, that’s for sure! And not David Harbour, although nobody seems too upset about that. Our new Hellboy is Jack Kesy (Deadpool 2), with Martin Bassindale as both Jeremiah Witkins, the demonic Crooked Man, and Professor Bruttenholm, head of the B.P.R.D. and Hellboy’s adoptive father. Plus there’s Adeline Rudolph as rookie B.P.R.D. agent Bobbie Jo Song, and co-stars such as Jefferson White, Joseph Marcell, Leah McNamara, and Hannah Margetson.
Hellboy: The Crooked Man trailer
Why we’re excited about Hellboy: The Crooked Man
Hmm, it could go either way, couldn’t it? While this latest offering is more modest in scope than its predecessors, the source books are filled with creepy little folk horror stories like this. And the script by Mike Mignola and Christopher Golden bodes well.
But let’s be real: everyone loves GDT and Ron Perlman (and some of us will go to bat for Neil Marshall and David Harbour) so there’s a bit of an uphill battle to be won with the audience. So far the critics have been handing the film a thrashing, though. Maybe the best we can hope for is good but not great.
