🔥 Hellboy (2019) 🔥

“A Hell of a mess.”


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Let’s start by showing y’all the trailers, shall we? 🎥

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Non-Spoiler Plot Overview

Unlike Guillermo del Toro’s original duology, this reboot went in a wildly different direction. Directed by Neil Marshall, rated R for “strong bloody violence and gore throughout, and language,” this Hellboy tries to be edgy and gruesome instead of stylish and fun.

David Harbour (yes, Hopper from Stranger Things) takes over as Big Red. He’s angsty, brooding, swears like there’s no tomorrow, and for some reason sports long black hair like he just got out of a goth band audition. Gone is the snarky-but-mature Ron Perlman version. In his place? A moody teenager in a demon body.

The plot? An ancient witch called the Blood Queen (Milla Jovovich) gets resurrected and wants to end humanity so that monsters can roam free. And, because the script says so, Hellboy is caught between his duty to the BPRD and a prophecy that says he’ll be her king. What could go wrong? Answer: everything.


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Character Rundown

Hellboy (David Harbour) – A constant contradiction. Looks cool in still shots, but on screen he’s all teen angst, bad hair, and F-bombs.

Professor Broom (Ian McShane) – Less loving father, more grumpy drill sergeant. Zero warmth, all stubbornness.

The Blood Queen (Milla Jovovich) – Wants Hellboy as her king. That’s it. No depth, no menace, just “join me or else.”

Alice Monaghan (Sasha Lane) – Can talk to ghosts, but is otherwise bland. Her “remember me” moment is tied to reciting poetry at Hellboy, instead of just… saying her name.

Major Ben Daimio (Daniel Dae Kim) – Supposed to be badass. Instead, mostly spends the movie glaring at Hellboy while secretly being able to turn into a jaguar. Because sure, why not.

Baba Yaga – Crawling witch who eats children. Creepy but shoved into the script like leftover stew.

Lobster Johnson (Thomas Haden Church) – Yes, that’s a real character. Yes, he burns lobster symbols into people’s foreheads. Yes, he’s played completely straight.



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Pacing / Episode Flow

Jumbled. Frantic. Overstuffed. In the first ten minutes we’ve got King Arthur, Merlin, the Blood Queen being chopped up and boxed, and Hellboy in Mexico killing a vampire luchador. The movie never slows down—it just hurls monsters, gore, and exposition at you until your brain taps out.

Instead of feeling like a cohesive film, it feels like five disconnected Hellboy comic arcs stapled together with no breathing room.


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Pros ✅

Practical monster designs are occasionally cool.

David Harbour is legit the best part of this film, the script hes handed not as much. But the actor throws in his all.

Some kills and gore effects are brutal in a “wow they went there” kind of way.

David Harbour does try. You can tell he wanted to make it work.



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Cons ❌

Harbour’s Hellboy feels like an angsty teen, not a snarky adult.

Way too many monsters crammed in: giants, witches, vampires, Baba Yaga, a giant pig, forest creatures, zombies, ghosts… it’s exhausting.

Awkward tone shifts: slapstick one minute, faces being ripped off the next.

Zero emotional weight. Characters die and the movie shrugs.

Constant exposition dumps that treat the audience like they’re lost.

The script is so self-aware it tries to be funny but lands as cringe.

🟥 The Dumbest Moral Crisis Ever 🟥

One of the most head-scratching parts of this movie is when Hellboy suddenly starts questioning whether the B.P.R.D. (Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense) are actually the bad guys because, according to the Blood Queen, they’ve spent decades “slaughtering his kind.” And look — if this was a younger, more naïve Hellboy, maybe you could sell that angle. But this version of Hellboy has been working with the B.P.R.D. for seventy freakin’ years. He’s hunted down demons, vampires, eldritch horrors, and flat-out monsters who don’t give a damn about human life. He knows better.

So when the Blood Queen leans in with her “maybe you’re the real monster” speech, it doesn’t feel like a legitimate moral dilemma — it feels like the script forgot who Hellboy is. He’s already lived decades fighting actual evil, and now we’re supposed to believe he’s suddenly confused about whether his team is the bad guy? Sorry, movie, but after 70 years of experience, that crisis of conscience just makes him look dumb, not conflicted.




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Final Thoughts

This isn’t just a bad movie—it’s an offensive one for Hellboy fans. It tries to be gory and edgy but forgets that what made Del Toro’s films work wasn’t just spectacle—it was heart, warmth, and mythological weight. Instead, we get a Frankenstein patchwork of gore, cheap one-liners, and empty spectacle.

If you have a weak stomach, avoid it. If you’re a Hellboy fan, avoid it harder.


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Rating

3/10 💩


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Spoiler Warning ⚠️

From here on out, abandon hope, ye who enter.


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Spoilers

The film opens with King Arthur decapitating the Blood Queen, chopping her into pieces, and having her remains locked in boxes hidden around the world. Already, tone whiplash. Smash cut to Hellboy in Mexico, where he kills his vampire luchador friend. Sad? Not really. We barely knew him.

The giant pig monster (Gruagach) wants revenge on Hellboy because… years ago Hellboy revealed a changeling baby was actually him. The scene involves a cussing pig baby allergic to iron. Yes, really.

Hellboy is betrayed by the Osiris Club (who dress like deer-headed cultists in green capes) while hunting giants. They die, he kills the giants, and it’s all gratuitously gory.

Gruagach digs up the Blood Queen’s body parts with Baba Yaga’s help. At one point, he rips a monk’s jaw off to force him to read the incantation to open her box. The monk somehow does this. Because the script says so.

Alice shows up, grown from the baby Hellboy once saved, and proves she can punch souls out of zombies. Daimio joins the team, grumbles, and secretly hides his jaguar-shapeshifter powers.

The Blood Queen tempts Hellboy to join her: “Be my king!” Hellboy: “Sorry, I’m a Capricorn and you’re nuts.” The tone is whiplash at its finest.

Alice gets poisoned, but the team walks for days to Merlin’s tomb. Somehow she survives. Merlin rises, pulls the poison out, gives Hellboy Excalibur, and tells him he’s Arthur’s descendant. Hellboy refuses to draw the sword because it’ll unleash Hell. Merlin turns to dust, a butterfly flies out of his mouth, and a bird eats it. Symbolism? Comedy? Who knows.

Baba Yaga demands Hellboy’s eye as payment. He refuses. She shrugs. The Blood Queen unleashes plague, shrinks and explodes Gruagach in a spray of blood, and kidnaps Broom. Broom dies. Hellboy finally pulls Excalibur, which summons full-on apocalypse demons ripping people in half and skinning them alive in graphic detail. It’s gross, overlong, and utterly joyless.

Hellboy beheads the Blood Queen, tosses her head into Hell, and cracks a dad joke: “You should quit while you’re a-head.” Kill me. Yep that definitely happened, why did that happen?

Everything resets magically. The cracks close. The blood and corpses vanish. Because the script says so.

The movie ends teasing Abe Sapien in a tank—sequel bait that will never happen. Post-credits, Lobster Johnson’s ghost tells Hellboy to stop crying, and Hellboy fanboys over him: “I LOVE YOU LOBSTER JOHNSON!!” And that’s how the film ends. Wow. That happened.