Hellboy: The Crooked Man

 OK, just in case, let's get you caught up in what Hellboy's all about - because this movie all but assumes you're already familiar with him. He's the protagonist of a bunch of comics going back to the 90's about a supernatural investigator who also happens to be a devil. You know: red skin, goat legs, a barbed tail and two horns (which he's cut off). He's an agent for the BPRD (the Bureau of Paranormal Resarch and Defence), a government-sponsored FBI-style organization full of literal spooks. There's been two really good film adaptations made from the comics, a mediocre one that few liked, and now this one, set in the '50s - long before any of the previous movies.

 Hellboy creator Mike Mignola has been pretty open about not being a fan of Guillermo Del Toro's adaptations of his comics. It's a fair cop; Good as they are, their tone strays far from Mignola's more gothic, Hammer-Horror-like roots.

 So here he's fully involved - as executive producer and co-writer (along with frequent collaborator and novelist Christopher Golden and director Brian Taylor) in a new reboot of the series, one where everyone is theoretically aligned in making an adaptation of a self-contained short story arc as faithful as possible to Mignola's vision.

 Shame they went and got one of the directors of the Crank movies to do it.

 I've read a lot of the Hellboy/BPRD comics, but I managed to miss 2008's The Crooked Man side-story. From what I can tell, this is a fairly accurate translation. Hellboy (Jack Kesy) and BPRD operative Bobbie Jo Song (Adeline Rudolph) are transporting some sort of demonic spider on a train passing through the middle of Appalachia. The Spider goes nuts and escapes, leaving its captors stranded in the middle of a witch-plagued part of the country.

 While trying to get back to civilization, Hellboy and Bobbie Jo run into war veteran Tom Ferrell (Jefferson White), a haunted local man who's just returned from his tour abroad (I guess Korea?) Together they start looking into a rash of supernatural goings-on spiralling around a shadowy figure called the crooked man.

 First things first: it is nice to see a Hellboy adaptation that feels closer to a horror movie than a superhero one. And, bless him, director Brian Taylor really does try to put on a folk horror tale. When the film settles down a little - and there are long stretches during the film's first half that do - the dank American Gothic atmosphere, chilly palette, folk-drenched, witch-plagued lore and impenetrable accents really do cast a spell. The best scene in the film is just a normal conversation in a cabin, with a few locals dipping in and out of the chat while a witch-touched fella just lies in the floor. Gave me a very slight When Evil Lurks vibe.

 But... that's it. Taylor, along with partner in crime Mark Neveldine, was among the perpetrators of some the worst cinematic war crimes of the dark ages of American action (from the mid 2000's to, oh, say the first John Wick). You know, the "I think something cool happened, maybe, but I didn't get to see it properly" era of Hollywood action.

 Their movies (the Cranks, Ghost Riders, and Gamer) didn't just fuck up action with some of the worst editing, blocking, and general incompetence of the era, but also were filled with blips, glitches, stylistic bullshittery, and just all sorts of hyperactive crap even on supposedly quieter scenes. Movies for the ritalin set.

 Here, Taylor is a bit more subdued, and at least keeps his bag of tricks mostly constrained within a subset that should, in paper, work under horror. But he doesn't have the discipline not to keep the camera from roving all over the place, putting in speed ramps, glitches, randomly changing focal length, and all sorts of shit that if you want to be charitable at least shows a willingness to experiment to try and find an unsettling aesthetic. I'm not saying he succeeds - he's just nowhere near good enough to make it work - but he does try.
 And that goes double for the action scenes, which are a complete disaster. The Hellboy stories, even the quieter ones, feature a lot of fights; There are quite a few here, and even when the concept's good - like a ghoul calling out sins to force the dead to fight for him - they are all utter shit. Some of it is due to a piddly budget, but most is due to poor blocking, choreography, and a style that seems to confuse incomprehensibility for intensity.
 As for horror... well, it does try to be scary, but aside of some good ambiance, it botches its scares in the most inane way possible. Lots of cheesy jump scares and artless dramatic zooms. The crooked man, for example, is prone to crack his neck suddenly. To remind you that he was hanged, I guess; It looks silly and very, very dated.

 It's not all technical issues, as the script doesn't really work either. It may be faithful to the comics, but that doesn't mean it transfers over to the screen successfully; Hellboy is edged out of the movie by both Bobbie Jo and Tom Ferrell, feeling like a secondary character in his own tale. The others don't fare well either, their arcs shallow and unsatisfying. Supposedly emotional beats, like a painful memory or some silly business with Hellmom (which is a real head-scratcher in a movie as detached from Hellboy's context as this) completely fail to connect.
 There's an arbitrary, episodic feel to the events, including an interlude in which a witch explains how to build witchballs straight at the camera (indulging in some of the worst stylistic excesses of the film, including some extremely cheesy sound effects) - I can see that working beautifully within a comic book, but it would have been wholly excised out of a better film.

 The acting is... well, it's acceptable for a movie of this low a budget. I liked Rudolph and White, but Kesy fails to imbue big red with any sort of presence or charm. There's some of the character's signature bone-dry humour, but none of the lines (which I imagine are lifted straight from the source) are memorable.

 A wasted opportunity, then. Not the catastrophe I'd have expected from one of the Crank directors doing low-budget horror (relatively low-budget; It was much higher than many, many movies that still manage to look much better than this). But the result remains pretty fucking far from even being merely OK.
 Let's hope it doesn't kill the franchise, though. I still really want to see the a good adaptation of The Corpse. Just... get someone else to make it, please.