Prime Time: Hellboy: The Crooked Man (2024)

A new Hellboy movie that has both a new actor portraying Big Red (Jack Kesy takes on the role this time) and a new director at the helm (Brian Taylor, he of the fun Neveldine/Taylor film-making duo), I was prepared to seriously dislike this. I have enjoyed previous Hellboy movies, but they had directors and stars I was more interested in. This seemed to be destined to disappoint me, considering the lack of major names and what looked to be, from the trailer anyway, a restrictively low budget.

I ended up not being disappointed.

To boil the story down to the core of the premise, Hellboy and Bobbie Jo Song (Adeline Rudolph) end up in a remote area where they discover someone in need of their help. Tom Ferrell (Jefferson White) has been put in a very difficult position, which makes him a target for a witch (Leah McNamara), and also has him apparently owing a debt to the titular crooked man (Martin Bassindale). 

With Mike Mignola helping to adapt his own comic book, joined by Taylor and Christopher Golden, this is a decent little slice of supernatural action that, as I have been assured by fans of the Hellboy comics, actually feels more in line with the source material than previous live-action films. I still have a soft spot for Perlman in the role, and the fact that his Hellboy was surrounded by the gorgeousness of Guillermo del Toro world-building, but there's actually nothing here to be overly critical of.

Yes, this cast and crew seem to be working with more limited resources, but that doesn't stop them from presenting a nicely-constructed number of set-pieces that allow Hellboy to face off against supernatural beings with his usual mix of brute strength and an inability to be too fazed by anything. The opening sequence, involving a speeding train and a troublingly large spider, may not inspire the most confidence, but things improve once we then move to the start of the main storyline.

Kesy is alright in the main role, and perhaps his performance only seems slightly lacking due to my own bias. He certainly does well with what he's given, and the character has the right weight and attitude for almost every minute of his screentime. Rudolph often feels like she's just around to be placed in danger, but the same could be said of others who have shared the screen with Big Red in past adventures. White is enjoyably shaky, even as he tries to stop showing how worried and tortured he is, and both McNamara and Bassindale are a lot of fun as two of the main entities causing trouble for our leads. Hannah Margetson and Joseph Marcell also do well, playing two people caught up in the unfolding events in different ways that could lead to them sharing a very similar fate.

I started to happily recommend this to like-minded friends as soon as I'd seen it. That doesn't mean that I think it's great, but I definitely think it is better than many (including myself) would expect it to be. I keep describing it as being akin to a one-shot comic, which makes sense when you consider the source material, and I suspect that fans of the main character will end up as pleasantly surprised as I was.

7/10

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Mom And Dad (2017)

Written and directed by Brian Taylor (THE Taylor from the Neveldine/Taylor relationship that gave us the likes of the Crank movies and Ghost Rider: Spirit Of Vengeance), Mom And Dad is a mix of horror and black comedy that allows the writer-director to creep into fresh territory while not having to move too far out of his comfort zone. You still get moments that are full of quick editing and action, you still get a film that sets up the main premise and then follows it through to a satisfying finale with pacing that seems to gather momentum through every main sequence, and you get plenty individual moments of outright madness.

Nicolas Cage and Selma Blair play Brent and Kendall Ryan, respectively. They have a teenage daughter (Anne Winters) and a younger son (Zackary Arthur). They seem like quite a decent family unit, squabbles and stresses and all. That looks unlikely to last when a mysterious force starts to cause parents to turn into raging psychos who must kill their children. Can Cage and Blair resist the force? Considering how crazy he can be at the best of times, it seems unlikely that Cage will resist for long. And Blair is just as susceptible as everyone else.

Taking every minor irritation and turning it up to 11, Mom And Dad quickly becomes a collage of seething resentment and retribution. It's almost, perhaps, a dark and extreme fantasy for every parent who has been pushed to the very edge of sanity by a foot-stamping child. It's the ultimate punchline to any of those arguments that end with parents calling for a little gratitude and for their offspring to just consider how much they have had given to them over the years. The tagline sums that up: "They brought you into this world. They can take you out."

Cage and Blair are both a hell of a lot of fun, whether trying to make sense of the situation unfolding around them or unleashing all of their rage. Even their "quieter" moments, shown at the start of the film and very occasionally throughout the film, are enjoyably off-kilter. That's not because they're acting badly. It's because viewers know what is going on and can enjoy the weight in each line of dialogue and the small inconveniences that may well help to fuel them once they start to see red. Winters and Arthur are also very good, both spending a lot of their time trying to keep themselves alive while wondering just what the hell is happening around them, and Robert Cunningham has some very good scenes. He's going out with the daughter of the Ryans, making him an even more obvious target for the anger as it starts to burst out of the adults.

But all of this talk of the comedic nature of the material and performances (and I should also mention that Lance Henriksen makes a welcome appearance, although not for too long) shouldn't make you think that this is an easy watch. It IS, for the most part, but there are some scenes here that are unrelentingly tense and brutal, including one scene that has immediately become one of the most uncomfortable things I have seen in the past decade. You might think I'm exaggerating. See how you feel once you have watched the film for yourself.

Taylor has, for better or worse (depending on your views on their work), given people a film that easily sits alongside his collaborative efforts with Mark Neveldine. If he keeps going along this path, making the best of a strong central premise while pushing at the edges of territory he is more familiar with, then he might end up with a damn fine filmography to look back on. If we all continue to overlook that second Ghost Rider movie. And maybe Jonah Hex, even if I am one of the few people who quite enjoyed it.

8/10

You can buy the movie here.
Americans can buy it here.