Perhaps the best defense that can be mustered in support of Marshall’s “Hellboy” is that the director’s affection for the material is no less real or exuberant than Del Toro’s; it’s just a lot more crudely, monotonously expressed. The movie seems to spring from a curious awareness of how unnecessary it is, and it responds in the manner of an uninvited guest, with no interest in behaving or ingratiating itself. We are hurled, with a rude but fitting lack of ceremony, into a smorgasbord of R-rated horror and fantasy conventions, replete with weird detours into Arthurian legend, Mayan mythology and Slavic folklore, and rendered in the director’s preferred visual idiom of disemboweled corpses and beautifully art-directed entrails.

Source: Los Angeles Times April 10, 2019 21:56 UTC