If Neil Marshall’s 2019 Hellboy had you seeing red, then this rendition by director/co-writer Brian Taylor (Crank, Mom and Dad, Brave New World) will come as something of a relief. It’s the closest big-screen version yet to Dark Horse Comics’ shorn-horn superhero – creator Mike Mignola had a sizeable hand (ahem) in penning the screenplay – and favours gruff ‘n’ rough over the poetry of Guillermo del Toro’s lovingly crafted noughties movies (2004’s Hellboy, 2008’s Hellboy: The Golden Army).
Adapted from the 2008 The Crooked Man series, HTCM is set in Appalachia, 1959. The set-up sees our half-human, half-demon hero (Jack Kesy, nailing the sarcasm-and-soul combo) team up with a rookie Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense agent, Bobbie Jo Song, (Adeline Rudolph, underused) to battle the region’s Devil (Martin Bassindale).
This is an evocative world of mist and murk, blind preachers and sold souls, where a witch climbs back into her human skin after taking skunk form at night to snuffle through the forest.
The Crooked Man is at its best in a flavoursome first half that serves up crepuscular, shallow-focus photography (take a bow, DoP Ivan Vatsov) and backwoods dialect as tangy and prickly as wild gooseberries.
But as it wears on, Taylor’s film descends into a couple of extended set-piece battles. Some sore-thumb CGI amid the largely the practical effects, and the odd gimmicky edit, are further impediments. But there’s plenty here to celebrate – enough to leave you hoping that Taylor makes good on his plan to revisit Hellboy in the '60s, '70s and '80s.
Hellboy: The Crooked Man is released in UK cinemas on September 27.
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