A Hellboy (2019) Review

Nothing like a reboot of a cult classic to get us ready for some summer blockbusters, right? Well, if you were excited for this movie, you may want to sit down. I went to see Hellboy with already low expectations, I heard the reviews, saw the critics weren’t happy, but hey, how bad can it be. I then left Hellboy thinking it might be one of the worst movies I have ever seen. Inconsistent CGI, continuity errors, terrible puns, nothing really redemptive. In this review I want to go over all these problems and save you a few bucks in the process, but be careful, this is your spoiler warning.

First, let’s dive into the CGI. We open up with a black and white scene of King Arthur (Mark Stanley) confronting Nimue, the Blood Queen (Milla Jovovich) followed by some really bad CGI monsters. The one thing consistent in the movie. We then get a beheading, and you can tell Nimue is in a green outfit and her head is a totally separate from the scene, it just doesn’t fall right. Another issue is our pig best friend, Gruagach (Stephen Graham and Douglas Tait) where we first meet him in the dark, he looks fine, then the second we see him in some light he looks like he belongs in the Christmas special The Island of Misfit Toys. Later on we have, what would been an epic fight scene between Hellboy (David Harbour) and 3 giants, problem being that the giants look terrible, they were on screen for so long but they looked so bad, I’ve seen better CGI in student films. They looked like Thanos did in the deleted scenes of Infinity War, weirdly clay like.

I think the worst use of CGI is when Alice (Sasha Lane) summons the spirit of Trevor (Ian McShane), the adoptive father of Hellboy towards the end of the movie. First he looks surprisingly good then we cut back to Hellboy and when we see Trevor again, he looks real bad. For a movie so dependent on CGI you would hope that they would have spent some of that money on a better team.

My next problem being the 2014 punchlines. It wants to have some comedy which I am all for, it wants to get some good ones in there every so many lines. Really the only good one is when a white van pulls up after Hellboy v Giant and Hellboy gives a good ol’ “I sure hope that’s my uber” way to relate to this generation there. That’s all I really have to say on the matter though, nothing memorable.

My absolute favorite thing though is how stupid they make the people of England look. The 2 instances I want to talk about coming towards the end of the movie so be doubly prepared for spoilers. When Nimue regains her power she sends a plague through England, described as worse than the Black Plague by a news reported. This same news reporter says that the British Government is looking into the cause, the problem being is that Nimue and Gruagach are literally walking through the streets spraying people with Nimue’s blood magic. Like, did no one notice her? Did the people she was blood spraying get too distracted with pig boy to not be able to tell the doctors? And were the police not called? How did no one notice her?

Our second instance of stupidity comes not even 30 minutes after this sequence, possibly a day or 2 in the movies time. When Hellboy grabs Excalibur and summons demons from hell. These demons begin terrorizing the people of London. Problem being, these people are acting like everything is fine, like a plague isn’t spreading through Europe, they are acting like everything is fine and it’s just another day. It doesn’t make any sense continuity wise.

I have nothing nice to say about Hellboy (2019), I found nothing redemptive about it, the only thing it will be remembered for is being the worse movie of 2019 and the reason we will not get another Hellboy movie in this life time.

I give Hellboy a firm 1/10. The 1 being for the Uber joke mentioned earlier, that got a chuckle.

A Pet Semetary (2019) Review

When choosing to see Pet Semetary on opening night I was quite excited. A brand new *reboot* Stephen King based horror movie, with the fond memories of IT and the excitement for IT Part 2 later this year I was beyond ready for a good scare. Sadly this adaptation didn’t live up to King’s name. The movie stayed true to the concept of the original book with the semetary itself as well as how certain events happened, however, it was with the liberties that the director took that made the movie fall flat.

Spoiler Warning

The special effects were phenomenal, seeing Zelda’s (Alyssa Brooke Levine) spine and her agony really came across strong throughout the movie. However the directors didn’t really do anything with her. At first we are made to feel bad for Rachel (Amu Seimetz) since she’s forced to take care of her sister who hates her because she is healthy. However, towards the end of the film she says she was happy when her sister died, making us no longer feel pity towards her. After the death of Zelda, nothing is done with it except flashbacks and jump scares. Throughout the film we can see Louis (Jason Clarke) cares about his practice through his grief when Victor Pascow (Obssa Ahmed) died. However, besides his child’s death, there is no real reason to feel bad for him. There’s no real reason to care about any of these characters.

If you pay full attention and know the source material you’ll be able to tell that a Windigo is the thing possessing people when they’re buried in the cemetery. However that isn’t really explained through dialogue. Nothing ever gets explained and the directors kind of almost hope that you know the book and it hurts the story.

Overall I would give the movie a 4/10, subpar at best.

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton