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David Harbour and Sasha Lane in Hellboy, directed by Neil Marshall, and also starring Ian McShane and Milla Jovovich.

Review | Hellboy film review: Stranger Things’ David Harbour anchors kitsch and excessively gory reboot

  • Starring Stranger Things’ David Harbour, this blood-splattered, ripsnorting reboot, set in Britain, is sure to get your heart thumping
  • Harbour is an excellent Hellboy, delivering his sardonic put-downs just right

3/5 stars

“So I’m devil-spawned and a Nazi – thanks a lot, Dad,” spits Hellboy early on in director Neil Marshall’s comic-book reboot. Well, that’s one way of dispensing with the origin story swiftly.

Mike Mignola’s Dark Horse Comics character, summoned from satanic sanctuary by Nazi occultists, has already starred in two films, directed by Guillermo del Toro and with Ron Perlman in the title role. Consider this the blood-splattered, ripsnorting cousin to those earlier films.

Marshall (Doomsday, Centurion) lets his origins filter through, with a story set in Britain – mainly so Hellboy (played by Stranger Things’ David Harbour) can eat a good old-fashioned English breakfast and the Tower of London can be obliterated.

Gruagach, a “pig-monster” out for revenge on Hellboy, also speaks in a weird Scouse accent – perhaps because he’s voiced by Stephen Graham (This is England), who was born just outside Liverpool, where the British accent is from.

It all creates a rather enjoyably kitsch feel, as Hellboy teams up with his adoptive father Trevor Bruttenholm (Ian McShane) at the B.P.R.D. (Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defence) to take down a medieval sorceress, Nimue (Milla Jovovich) – aka The Blood Queen – who was last seen being chopped into bits by King Arthur with his Excalibur sword. Now Gruagach is helping reassemble her body parts, currently scattered across the British Isles.

Harbour found fame in Stranger Things.

Joining Hellboy on this quest is a scar-faced soldier (Daniel Dae-kim) with a serious chip on his shoulder about monsters and Alice (Sasha Lane), a young prophetess with the ability to projectile vomit ethereal visions out of her mouth. It’s the least you’ll have to endure in a film where demonic beasts tear innocent passers-by apart, as CGI limbs, heads and innards go flying.

Undoubtedly, some will miss Del Toro’s subtleties as a director, though Harbour is an excellent replacement for Perlman, delivering his sardonic put-downs just right (“Don’t you look lovely,” he nods to a one-eyed hag).

While Marshall filches from Predator, An American Werewolf in London and even Studio Ghibli’s Howl’s Moving Castle, he directs as if drawing from the feverish rock’n’roll energy of Muse’s song Psycho, excellently used for one fight scene.

Milla Jovovich in Hellboy.

Amid all the carnage, there’s even time for a wry nod towards Britain’s current political turmoil, when a demonic plague is unleashed and is – according to the news reporter – “heading towards the EU”.

The result, then, is more knockabout action-farce than Del Toro’s introspective efforts. Like the name of the fish’n’chip shop that fronts the B.P.R.D., Hellboy may be “codswallop” but you’ll have fun getting there.

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