Starts off pretty well...ends up pretty lame

Rating: 7/10 (5 April 2004)

Let me make this clear at first. It's not a bad movie, but it's not a terrificly brilliant movie either. It definitely had potential to be an amazing popcorn flick, but unfortunately, Guillermo del Toro never really capitalised on that. It started off well enough I suppose, decent plot, light-hearted humour, pretty good acting, but as the film goes on, a slide in quality can really be detected. Whereas the first half is meticulously detailed and specific in its execution, the latter half just gets sloppy. Discontinuity among plot devices
(ie SPOILER SPOILER People getting bashed in the head and then suddenly waking up again as if they just got out of bed and nothing had happened... END SPOILER END SPOILER)
really affected the movie. It got ridiculous and more and more outlandish, and by this time, it started to descend to mindless action, Hellboy going around and killing monsters etc, and a rather boring love triangle being tied in for kicks. Like most movies involving some kind of scary thing, it had its moments of tension and fear, and those were done pretty well. In terms of cinematographically, it's pretty average, just your ordinary joe-schmoe guy who kind of comes in and films a few things from normal angles and then disappears. Nothing too special. Kind of like the movie. /10