Mike Mignola’s Hellboy and its myriad spinoffs are up there as my favorite comics of all time. The mix of Gothic, cosmic, and monster horror with a helping of gallows humor works for me so, so much. Guillermo del Toro famously made a couple of Hellboy movies with Ron Perlman. While good in their own GDT way, neither of them (especially the second one) truly felt like a proper adaptation of the source material. The 2019 Neil Marshall Hellboy movie with David Harbour adapted the source material directly, but the movie itself was very, very bad. Now we get Hellboy: The Crooked Man and…well, just take a look. Then we’ll talk.
First some context. The Crooked Man was a three-issue arc from Mignola and artist Richard Corben from 2008. It detailed one of Hellboy’s earlier missions for the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense. In 1958 Appalachia, Hellboy encounters some witches and witch-adjacent people and eventually cross paths with the titular Crooked Man, a hanged war profiteer from the 18th Century who has returned from Hell to act as the region’s resident Devil. He’s pretty terrifying, especially as Corben illustrates him.
Hellboy: The Crooked Man looks to be a very faithful (and small) adaptation of that particular story. On its face this is a good thing. One of the major issues with the 2019 movie is that it adapted way, way, way too many stories, not least of which The Wild Hunt, the longest and most epic story in the Mignola canon. Focusing on a one-off adventure and maximizing the horror is a pretty good idea.
However, just looking at it, you can see the very low budget. You may have noticed the movie comes our way from Ketchup Entertainment. KETCHUP ENTERTAINMENT. Brian Taylor (of Crank franchise fame) is directing, with himself, Mignola, and Mignola’s Baltimore collaborator Christopher Golden on screenplay duties. Jack Kesy (who very briefly played Black Tom Cassidy in Deadpool 2) portrays Hellboy and he just kind of looks unfinished. If Harbour was TOO made up, Kesy looks like a decent amateur cosplay attempt.
So who knows! It may be good. It certainly seems focused more on the actual horror. Which is the proper direction to go following the dark fantasy mishmash of the last movie. But I’m not convinced after this wack first look. I would love it if one day any live-action outing properly snags the tone of the comics. Whether Hellboy: The Crooked Man can do that will have to wait until it comes out later this year.
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This Is Not The Hellboy Movie I Wanted
The first trailer for Hellboy: The Crooked Man has been released and I have to say that this is not the Hellboy movie I wanted – so far. Despite the 2019 Hellboy reboot, the franchise has been in a minor form of development hell ever since Guillermo del Toro’s Hellboy II: The Golden Army in 2008. First it was going to be del Toro’s third Hellboy movie, then that fell apart, Millennium Media bought the rights, and it turned into the 2019 version directed by Neil Marshall. Considering how that one panned out, I was more than a little dubious when I heard the Hellboy franchise was being rebooted yet again.
Considering my feelings and the general internet reaction to the first reveal of the latest reboot, I’m not sure I was wrong to have those doubts. The new Hellboy movie follows “The Crooked Man” comic book arc written by Mike Mignola. Set in the 1950s, the story finds Hellboy and a rookie BPRD agent stuck in the mountains of Appalachia. There, they stumble across a small community being tormented by witches led by a devil with a connection to Hellboy’s past. While the story is promising, the Hellboy: The Crooked Man trailer is anything but. Still, I haven’t written it off completely yet.
The Crooked Man Trailer Is Not Promising
My first thought upon seeing the Hellboy: The Crooked Man trailer for the first time was “Oh no” and I don’t appear to be alone, judging from the general reaction online. There’s no way to sugarcoat it: I was not impressed. Tonally, it’s very different than previous Hellboy movie adaptations, and while that’s not necessarily a bad thing, I don’t think the tone of this trailer works. It feels less like a Hellboy movie and more like an A24 movie trailer. The folk horror aspect isn’t bad – in fact, I quite like folk horror and that’s the horror subgenre I’ve tended to gravitate to in recent years. But it doesn’t work, for me at least, to drop the comic book character of Hellboy right into the middle of it.
The overall quality of the production also gives me some concern. Even if Hellboy: The Crooked Man is leaning more into rural folk horror, there’s a certain level of quality and production design we’ve come to expect from those sorts of movies. Right now, The Crooked Man is not hitting that mark. Its budget is clearly constrained to a noticeable degree; it’s Hellboy, but Hellboy on what appears to be a bargain bin budget. While low-budget movies can still be excellent, I’m not sure the Hellboy franchise is one of them.
There Are A Few Reasons To Hope For Hellboy
That said, there are a few reasons that I’m making room to hold hope in my heart for Hellboy: The Crooked Man. For starters, this is the first Hellboy adaptation that creator Mike Mignola is intimately involved in; he’s a producer on the project. He finally gets to make the Hellboy movie he’s wanted to make. That’s not to say he’s hated previous adaptations or that he has been completely uninvolved in any of them. Still, Mignola has been open that this is exactly the Hellboy movie he’s always wanted to see; he’s talked about how this is one of the best things he’s ever written. Even Hellboy: The Crooked Man‘s budget is what Mignola wants:
For years, we’ve been saying, if you’re going to make a Hellboy movie, make it small. And the perfect story to do that with is my personal favorite, ‘The Crooked Man.’ I think it’s one of the best things I’ve ever written. It’s beautifully illustrated by Richard Corben, and it’s a solid story that doesn’t involve a million different characters. Everybody actually agreed from the very beginning, ‘Yes, we want to do that one.’ Budget-wise, it’s good because it’s a lower-budget kind of a story. It’s not the Hellboy origin. It’s not Hellboy saving the world. It’s not huge. It’s a subtle, dark, little folk horror story.
Speaking of that horror, that’s the second reason I’m hopeful. Yes, the trailer is tonally jarring, but I’ve learned it’s foolish and shortsighted to immediately judge a movie from the teaser trailer alone. Sure, sometimes what you see is what you get, but we’ve also seen many a solid movie ruined by mediocre marketing. With the right setup, the folk horror vibe could work quite well. It’s certainly a lot closer to the actual graphic novel roots of Hellboy, which are steeped in cosmic horror, folklore, and old pulp genre magazines and comics. In that way, The Crooked Man is the truest adaptation we’ve gotten yet.
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