The Sharpened Element - Crafting

Where do I even begin.... For starters, I guess I could mention that I got about 30 minutes into this film before I realized I had no idea what was going on. Or I could say it took about the same amount of time before HB made a witty remark. Also I actually forgot about his rock hand for a good chunk of the film. The plot just kinda built itself with Elmer's glue and popsicle sticks, until it collapsed and went to a different set of popsicle sticks and then went back to the FIRST set... Anyway This was not the Hellboy I was excited for, or expected. I have no disrespect towards Jack Kesy, but his portrayal of HB could have been 7 times better, and he might pass for an actual representation of HB at a comic festival. The villain is cool, psycho, powerful and scary, and there's some visceral visuals that were pretty creepy. Leah McNamara did a good job of being an evil soul sucking cringy backwoods sexy hillbilly Harley Quinn. I don't know why but this seems to be set in the great smoky mountains between Tennessee and North Carolina, even though the accents are more south Louisiana in the bayou, BUT it IS in a beautiful evergreen forest with a burn scar made from magic, but maybe I'm just goofing and dunno wut I'm tawlkin bout. The ultimate end of the film, or when Hellboy triumphs, is rather anticlimactic and sudden. The "fight" is not a satisfying action and quip filled spectacle, but rather a more boring brain battle filled with retcon. Many key details and other things are not explained, the original mission is simply shrugged off so we can be fed some world building exposition, while several entirely new conflicts and back stories are explained,, I guess I'll say the CGI wasn't really grade A, but certainly looked nice at times, and definitely looked shoddy at other times. Makeup and acting on all parts was incredibly performed by talented folk, but the direction of the film feels rushed and fails to compliment the source material. I had to go and watch the other Hellboy movies just to feel better about my time wasted watching The Crooked Man. My buddy fell asleep halfway through and I straight up thought I should do the same thing and just use the audio as white noise to fall asleep.