Kat Robles

How can so little be done with so much? The quick and dirty: It’s poorly directed, the soundtrack is bafflingly bad, but the writing.. That's unforgivable! The long story: (may contain spoilers) I went into this movie with an open mind, the GDT interpretation of HB completely compartmentalized, and honestly hoping for the best because I love Mignola’s HB. My heart sank almost immediately. HellBoy in Mexico is some FANTASTIC stuff! I urge anyone reading this to go out and read it if you haven’t already (thank me later); that being said for all it’s violence and gore, attempts at humor and emotion and some seriously respectable special effects, this sequence misses all the marks. Unfortunately the remainder of the movie is more of the same. I will set aside Camazotz‘s bad Mexican accent and a Mexico almost devoid of Mexicans, this movie has bigger problems... like the aforementioned directing. When you have such a great cast and they still look inadequate and unconvincing in their roles that’s bad direction. While you can blame an overtly whiny HellBoy getting constantly flummoxed and pitching teenage tantrums at every turn on bad writing (more on that later). Nimue coming off as a clingy Tinder date and the Professor as a pontificating “I-was-never-taught-how-to-show-love” bad dad cliche, it’s on the director. Also, why Daimio’s bad tough guy voice? He is and ex-Marine, with “badass” scars on his face and a no-nonsense attitude, oh, and he turns into a jungle cat when he is angry! Ever hear of the expression “hat on a hat”? The characters lacked gravitas which is insane when you consider how “larger than life” they were in the small format of the original comics. Which reminds me the amateurish scene framing didn’t help either, stripping the performances of what little the poor dialogue hadn’t already decimated. Speaking of decimating dialogue, the music was so disproportionately loud in comparison to the dialogue that at times you couldn’t make out what they were saying, why anyone would blast bad heavy metal(?) over Mila Jovovichs smoky voice is beyond me. This offense aside, I found myself bewildered by the wildly inadequate music choices and their jarring entrance and presence in scenes. Last but not least in my short albeit often perpetrated list of unforgivable transgressions committed in this movie is the atrocious writing. There is no excuse for it, Mike Mignola is a wonderful writer, the HellBoy franchise is built literally on this (and his magnificent artistic vision but it’s a movie interpretation and it’s just not fair to compare them in that department). The man wrote a script they could have used but instead they went with this festering pile of twattle! Inane dialogue, gratuitous overuse of profane language that brought absolutely nothing to the table, and a plethora of feckless gory sequences that managed to somehow be both appalling and desensitizing at the same time. By the time you see the hellspawn slaughtering crowds in the streets their victims have ceased to be people and just register as masses of digital guts and gore being ripped apart and tossed about in a pagentry of “really cool” rendered monsters. It wasn’t all bad: David Harbour swings for the fences, his performance did not lack an iota of conviction. I just wasn’t a fan of the angsts and teenage energy brought to the character. Viewed through the context of it being a younger version of the character than what we are used to it becomes a choice. The special effects were predominantly very good, there were some bad design choices (see Baba Yaga’s ridiculously sagging breasts that somehow defy gravity when she is upside down like grotesque prosthetic stalagmites). The Baba Yaga scenes were well scripted and rang true to the comic. The color palette was on point. Above all it was cool to see the Wild Hunt (the costuming was beyond) and Baba’s house was downright magical. There was just not enough. In summation: It’s HellBoy for Resident Evil fans.