If you can’t make the Hellboy movie Guillermo del Toro wants to make, make the one that will at least turn a profit. Putting snark aside, there’s a lot to respect about Hellboy: The Crooked Man. Based on one of Hellboy creator Mike Mignola’s graphic novels, Hellboy: The Crooked Man actually has a script by Mignola himself with frequent writing collaborator Christopher Golden.
From the looks of it, this film moves Hellboy firmly into atmospheric but low-budget movie territory. After the disastrous showing of the previous reboot, that’s a smart decision. Because studios have tended to position Hellboy as a weird superhero, which perhaps he is, but what made the comic book popular was how downright eerie Mignola and his friends could make it. Set in the 1950s, The Crooked Man sees Hellboy and the B.P.R.D. struggling to free an Appalachian village from a supernatural killer.
I’ll give it a third plus, in that the plot seems more focused and straightforward than the aforementioned 2019 effort. That one tried to cram in as much as it could from Mignola’s mythos. You might have gotten a couple of cool monsters but how about a plot? So this has that.
Did I mention it was low-budget? That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but this trailer gives off a vibe that says “we plugged Hellboy into a different script.” It’s not true, but that’s the vibe. Starring Jack Kesy as Hellboy supported by The Vikings’ Leah McNamara as Effie Kolb and Sabrina the Teenage Witch’s Adeline Rudolph as Bobbie Jo Song, it’s a cast of competent unknowns.
Production company Ketchup Entertainment has taken an interesting shot here, putting the script into the hands of Brian Taylor. He knows weird comics, having co-written the script for Jonah Hex (allegedly much better than the final product) and adapting Happy! to television. That one was great. So as always, I hold out hope. I just don’t know when the payoff is, because they’ve released a trailer, but not an actual release date.
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