Review: Hellboy (2019)

Hellboy
Cert: 15 / 121 mins / Dir. Neil Marshall / Trailer



Hang on, I thought we'd all agreed to stop putting King Arthur in movies for the next hundred years or so? It doesn't work. We know it doesn't work*¹. And it especially doesn't work when you open your movie with Ian McShane grasping the mantle handed to him by the departure of dear John Hurt, the faux-gravitas of his acerbic voiceover setting the scriptual bar at a clunkingly low level before stepping into the shoes of Professor Broom, erstwhile father-figure to David Harbour's Hellboy.

Born in the latter days of the Second World War from a crazed Nazi experiment to attain victory by channelling the forces of the netherworld, an infant demon has been raised to adulthood by Broom and the Bureau For Paranormal Research And Defense, now an agent for the organisation where he assists in keeping the world safe from unspeakable terrors. So far, so much like the previous two movies. But this relative harmony is shattered by the return of the Blood Queen, Nimue (Mila Jovovich), dismembered and scattered by King Arthur centuries earlier, but being gradually re-assembled for reanimation by her loyal henchman, Gruagach (Stephen Graham). Because, as with so many resurgent tyrants, she's coming back to ensure humanity's destruction...

IMAGINE

And it's even sillier than you'd imagine, somehow. As noted above, the film does not get off to a good start. Andrew Cosby's screenplay is clunky, preposterous and without a cast who can really carry off most of it. That said, within ten minutes Hellboy is all-in battling an errant demon at a Mexican wrestling match while Scorpions' Rock You Like A Hurricane plays over the top. If that's not a signpost for the weapons-grade silliness to follow, nothing is. Of course, it's at this point that the casual viewer may well think 'hang on, this has gone full 'Dusk Till Dawn' incredibly early - where is there to go from here?' The answer comes in the metaphorical form of director Neil Marshall pointing at a dial and saying "...but this film goes up to 11".

Despite this full-on action being activated from the off, the film's first act suggests that there's not really enough 'new' content here to justify a full cinematic reboot for the franchise (although it was initially slated to be an in-universe prequel). Without Guillermo Del Toro's melancholy touch*², Hellboy becomes Kingsman-meets-Nightbreed. And it turns out the differently-labelled bottle that no one asked for is the tonic we all needed.

SWEET LORD

It's difficult to un-learn Ron Perlman's anti-hero but Harbour makes this interpretation his own in short order, giving a surprisingly rounded turn (for this film) as a character with a demon's body, a hero's responsibilities and very human limitations. McShane barks his way through the script as only he can, yet he's still like Laurence Olivier compared to Milla Jovovich, gnawing her way through the scenery in full pantomime-mode. The plot structure is by now par for the course with this sort of thing, and scripting issues continue way past the opening scene-setting. It's unclear how much of this is inherent to a property which carries its corniness with more sincerity on the printed page.

But when the talking's over and it's time for action, Hellboy is good fun. Bloody good fun (and often very bloody). Perhaps more fun than someone like Guillermo knows how to have, in all honesty. It's a movie made by someone who seems to genuinely not care what the critics think; which is either the ultimate in artistic purity, or a staggering lack of self-awareness. Possibly both.

STAND TOGETHER

Basically a live-action horror cartoon, Hellboy is unapologetically schlocky. Whether this is a good or a bad thing will depend almost entirely on the viewer. Despite the many words which will be written about Marshall's project (including these), it's a film which boldly defies critical appraisal. Acutely aware of how daft it is and just not caring anyway. And is all the better for that. Marshall and Cosby initially do a solid enough job of starting things in medias res, with backstory left for the viewer to pluck from between the heavy-handed lines of conversation.

As things move on however, it becomes clear they're both buggers for an expository flashback, taking 'show-don't-tell' to startling new levels of superfluousness. They also absolutely adore a casual fuck-bomb. Hellboy more than earns its hard 15 certificate on the language alone, the vast majority of which is delivered with a very British facetiousness that may well pass over the heads international audiences*³.

Your humble correspondent went into this with no real baggage, struggled with its unwieldy nature, yet found himself grinning like an idiot by the third act. Mötley Crüe playing over a laboratory shoot-out? Yes, yes, yes, yes and yes. Embrace the ridiculousness and it's one hell of a ride. There are industrial amounts of sequel-baiting going on, including mid- and end-credit stingers, but that's okay - a movie's got to at least try and leave its options open.

2019's Hellboy is demonstrably not a great film. And it's still the most gleefully excessive fun I've had in the cinema this year…

Oh, Drive Angry. Fuck yeah.



Well, me and about five other people on the planet think so.



With the best will in the world, see this BIG or don't bother.
As much as I love it, I'm not sure how it'll translate to the small screen.



I can't call that one. I absolutely loved Marshall's Dog Soldiers back in the day, but have to admit that it's not aged well.



Well it's looking that way, isn't it?



Not that I heard, but there's a shit-ton of screaming going on here, so I may well have missed it. Yet at the same time, a movie like Hellboy would wear a Wilhelm on its sleeve proudly, so let's go with 'no'.



Level 1: Well, there's a definite Taun-taun reference when they're at the chip shop, but also General Draven is in this.





*¹ Yeah, I just didn't go to see The Kid Who Would Be King, recently. Heard nothing but good things about it, yet every time I sat through the trailer in a cinema I could feel my ulcer loosening its belt another notch. That film looks custom-designed to annoy me and I see no reason to confirm that it fulfils its remit. ^{[ BACK ]}

*² While I don't actively dislike his work, Guillermo Del Toro is basically Tim Burton for film-snobs. There. I said it. ^{[ BACK ]}

*³ One of the film's low-key standouts is where Gruagach - the seven foot tall boar-headed demon with a thick Scouse accent who uses the fuck-word as punctuation - offers Nimue the Blood Queen some actual Jaffa Cakes. Fantastic stuff. This is hands-down the best product placement since Seabrook Crisps rocked up in The Fast & The Furious. ^{[ BACK ]}


DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.

Review: mother!

mother!
Cert: 18 / 121 mins / Dir. Darren Aronofsky / Trailer



Before what could be politely described as 'a challenging piece of work', and after the usual run of ads for products that no-one is actively bothered about, sat a selection trailers. This was the distributor's demographically-charged opportunity to showcase upcoming content to an audience already somewhat on-side, by means of them being perched in front of a tonally-related film. And so, on Friday afternoon, we had the promo reels for The Ritual, Jigsaw, Flatliners and… A Bad Moms Christmas. It appears that Paramount aren't entirely sure who Darren Aronofsky's mother! is for. And having since watched it through, I know the feeling…

We centre around a couple played by Jennifer Lawrence and Javier Bardem, building an idyllic life for themselves in a recently restored house in the countryside. But when a stranger arrives unexpectedly and is offered hospitality, it begins an irreversible chain of events that will change their lives forever. It's nowhere near as linear or formulaic as that setup makes it sound, I assure you.

Notwithstanding my snarkiness at the choice of pre-film trailers above, the other thing which caught my attention was the BBC-card's brief cautionary summary: "Strong violence", it said*¹. Just that. Strong violence. Which, with a work like this, translates roughly as "The two lines afforded to a description on this screen are nowhere near enough to even begin listing all the things which an audience could find problematic. Seriously, mate. I mean, you've seen the trailer, right? However, there are moments of violence in there which, while they aren't intended for shock-value alone, are nonetheless over-and-above what we could normally squeeze into the 15 bracket. So let's just say 'strong violence' and leave it at that. In all honesty, the violence depicted will be the least of your worries if you start actually thinking about what you've sat through, but hey. Strong violence."

Right, four paragraphs in. Better start critiquing the film, really. And that's very much the thing; the more you think about this, the more you'll back away from examining too closely. mother! is frankly insane*³, albeit in a marvellous way; a two-hour fever dream, grinding together domestic farce and escalating psychological horror, like Terry and June on an absinthe and mescaline-fuelled bender. Aronofsky's screenplay is an allegorical symphony of religious*⁴, social and ecological notes, where not a single frame, line of dialogue nor pause between them is wasted. Less of an enigmatic scalpel, more an intricate sledgehammer.

Lawrence and Bardem are on excellent form, absorbed completely into their characters. Ed Harris with Brian and Domhnall Gleeson are strong (if fleeting) support, and Michelle Pfeiffer is utterly terrifying. As the story unfolds and the cast grows larger, Aronofsky never loses the focus on his leading pair. All in all, this is great direction of a great cast.

And how it makes the audience work, like only art can, and is all the better because it's not trying to appeal to the widest possible audience. None of the characters are specifically named, so the spoken references to him, her, he, she, they and you gets irritating around ten minutes after the house-guests arrive. The hand-held camerawork spends a fair chunk of time in close-up / extreme close-up position and is constantly moving, lending the atmostphere an air of genuine claustrophobia unlike anything else I've seen this year. This is a horror movie in the truest sense, showing what can me achieved when a writer/director has the courage to let madness expand organically.

The only real issue I have with mother! is that I'm not sure if I want to see it again (just yet, at least), in case I find it less enjoyable the second time round. Ironically, watching with the knowledge of what's to come feels like it will rob the screenplay of its power, despite bringing the opportunity to pore over its foreshadowing in greater detail.

It's rare that films come so close to being classified as an art installation, and rarer still that the multiplexes screen them, but Aronofsky's work really is the jewel in the ashes.

Go and watch mother!

Requiem For A Dream, A Ghost Story.



The close-quarters shaky cam is arguably better suited to a small screen. This film looks gorgeous but I wouldn't be surprised if it gives some viewers headaches/nausea.



I think so?



It could well be.



Absolutely not.
There is a fair chance you'll despise this, and I delight in you telling me why…



Not that I heard, although there's a lot of hullabaloo in the third act and it would be easy to lose one in there.



Level 1: General Hux is in this.


(I can't give the film a 7 without watching it again; I can't watch it again without letting my brain process it; I can't let my brain process it without speaking to other people who've also seen it. So go and watch this then report back, yeah?)


*¹ Speaking of which, this was the second 18-rated movie of the week, and the second to feature very specific capitalisation in its title. And while I know it's a thing I can't seem to let go of, that exclamation mark at the end of mother! isn't going to hashtag well. And it'll look even worse without the capitalisation normally given to a film title. Any online buzz will be lost in people talking about their mums*². It's almost like Aronofsky just wants to bring life to his artistic vision and doesn't give two fucks about social media marketing. I know, right? ^{[ BACK ]}

*² Maybe that's why we got the trailer for Bad Moms Christmas? Very meta. Speaking of which, yeah - a footnote within a footnote. That's quite meta, too. Although a film like this fully deserves it. ^{[ BACK ]}

*³ Now it's one thing to have the title stylised as mother! with the lower-case 'm' and exclamation mark permanently attached making spell-checkers think the sentence has just finished. As it's a conceit of an already unique film, I'm fine with that. But it feels very, very wrong to be starting a sentence with the title and keeping the small-m. ^{[ BACK ]}

*⁴ If even I can see the biblical references scattered throughout this film (but still know that's not what it's specifically about), there are probably way, way more that I'm not picking up. ^{[ BACK ]}


DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.