I am not too familiar with the source material for this film unfortunately, so my review will focus on the movie and its story and not the comic book it is based on.
This film was an interesting ride. It didn’t do anything extraordinarily bad, but it did little to make the film remarkable. The film is a super hero movie and thus it will follow a lot of the already established tropes. It also follows a familiar story that you have seen so many times so the fact that it doesn’t add anything to make this story feel fresh and new is a bit disappointing. Hellboy will constantly recite cheesy one liners, and most don’t really land. You will have a lot of scenes that try desperately to establish Hell Boy as a bad ass but it becomes a bit distracting. How many times can we watch a hero pretend like he doesn’t care only to find out that he does at the end? I take it not much longer and this movie will probably one that will become obscure over time because it’s the same story.
What hurts this film is the CGI. This story might have been better if it were animated. The cgi in this film isn’t the best and the fights look ugly on the big screen. There were multiple times where I didn’t know what I was looking at because of how cartoonishly bad action scenes would play out. This comes as a huge disappointment because there are a lot of cool designs of demons and monsters that would have looked a lot better if it were all animated. If you want to watch this for the action, wait till you can watch it on a smaller screen, it might look better.
Another issue with this movie is the acting. Maybe it is the scripts fault, but it seems like most people sleep walk through this film. Some of the acting is out right wooden and it kills a scene because if the actors don’t care, I don’t either. You can tell that this was another paycheck for most of the people here. If you are looking for a good story, go elsewhere because this one will feel generic. I honestly don’t know how this film got a theatric review when it feels like a Netflix original. It is a shame because I have seen how cool of a story can be, and I wanted to like this movie so bad but it just doesn’t do the series justice.
I say skip this one. Don’t pay theather price because it isn’t worth it. Wait for it to come on Netflix but even then it would be for background noise as you will probably lose interest in the story. It’s not terrible, but it’s not good.