Hellboy: The Crooked Man

Hellboy: The Crooked Man is a 2024 American superhero horror film, based on the Dark Horse Comics character Hellboy created by Mike Mignola. Produced by Millennium Media, Dark Horse Entertainment, Nu Boyana Film Studios, and Campbell Grobman Films, it is the second reboot of the Hellboy film series and is the fourth live-action entry in the franchise. It is directed by Brian Taylor from a script he wrote with Mignola and Christopher Golden, adapting The Crooked Man limited series written by Mignola. The film stars Jack Kesy as Hellboy, alongside Jefferson White and Adeline Rudolph in her film debut. Filming began in March 2023, in Bulgaria, and was completed in May.
Hellboy: The Crooked Man was released in Belgium on June 20, 2024, and was released direct-to-VOD in the United States by Ketchup Entertainment on October 8, 2024. The film received mixed reviews from critics and has grossed $2 million in international markets.
In 1959, B.P.R.D. agents Hellboy and Bobbie Jo Song are tasked with transporting via train a toxic supernatural spider to their headquarters. However, when they cross the Appalachian Mountains, the spider suddenly enlarges to monstrous proportions, forcing their train car to overturn and the spider to escape. Hellboy surmises that the spider grew due to something evil haunting the area, admitting that he heard it calling to him. Left stranded, Hellboy and Bobbie Jo wander until they meet Tom Ferrell, a local who's recently returned to atone for past sins. The agents accompany Tom to speak with Cora Fisher, a witch and Tom's ex-girlfriend, only to find the house and Cora's body empty.
As they wait for the demonic familiar to return with Cora's full body, Tom regales to the agents he once met Effie Kolb, a witch that attracted him towards witchcraft and convinced him to make a deal with an entity known as "The Crooked Man." At Effie's suggestion, Tom used a cat carcass to summon the Crooked Man, that whatever bone he held once the entity arrived would become his lucky bone. However, the sight of the Crooked Man terrified Tom enough to have a change of heart and discard the lucky bone, but it would always return and kept him safe from harm. Tom intends to face the Crooked Man once and for all. When the familiar returns Cora's body, she reveals to Tom that the local witches want her soul.
To Tom's shock, Effie arrives on a white horse to collect Cora's soul. After Hellboy threatens Effie, Tom removes the horse’s bridle, and it suddenly transforms into Tom's father as Effie escapes. Tom and his father reconcile briefly before he dies. The following morning, Tom, Cora, and the agents walk to a nearby church, owned by Reverend Watts, to bury Tom's father, but Cora is attacked and killed by a demonic snake. Hellboy kills it, but its bites show him visions of his mother Sara, a witch who made a deal with a demon.
The survivors reach the church, where they are confronted by the Crooked Man and his servants. Tom is tempted to return his lucky bone but Hellboy stops him. As Hellboy battles the demonic horde, the Crooked Man attempts to entice the blind Reverend with youth and sight in exchange for giving up Tom. Watts refuses to give in to temptation and blesses a shovel with Tom's lucky bone that allows Hellboy to weaken the Crooked Man and neutralize his forces.
Hellboy and Tom chase the Crooked Man to an abandoned mansion but are assaulted with traumatic visions. Bobbie Jo, believing the Crooked Man draws power from the town's mines, reaches a tunnel system via an access under the church. She disrupts the Crooked Man's power source with a spell, which frees Hellboy and Tom from the visions and they destroy the Crooked Man.
In the aftermath, Effie ages rapidly, and Tom places the bridle that had turned his father into a horse on her. Hellboy and Bobbie Jo are rescued, Tom feels a weight has been lifted from his soul, and a white horse wanders with a warning written on its hide stating, "Beware! I am a Witch!"
In February 2023, Millennium Media announced plans for a new live-action reboot titled Hellboy: The Crooked Man, the first in a potential series of films. Brian Taylor directed the film from a script by comics creator Mike Mignola and frequent collaborator Christopher Golden, based on the 2008 comic miniseries of the same name. The film was co-produced by Nu Boyana Film Studios and Campbell Grobman Films and is presented by Millennium Media in association with Dark Horse Entertainment.
Taylor expressed his intentions to "reset" the film series and depict a younger and wandering version of Hellboy with a folk horror influence similar to the comics; Taylor also confirmed that the film would be R-rated in order to embrace the "dark and scary and violent and adult" elements of the comics. The following month, Jack Kesy was announced to portray Hellboy, and Jefferson White and Adeline Rudolph were cast as Tom Ferrell and Bobbie Jo Song. In September, Ketchup Entertainment announced that it would distribute the film, as well as Joseph Marcell, Leah McNamara, Hannah Margetson, and Martin Bassindale were cast in undisclosed roles.
Principal photography began in March 2023, in Bulgaria, and wrapped on May 15. In February 2024, Millennium Media president Jonathan Yunger stated that, after a practical special effect for a film's demon character proved disappointing, he used generative artificial intelligence to make numerous replacement creature designs, which were passed on to visual effects. A Motion Picture Association article reported that this occurred on the film Hellboy: The Crooked Man; however, in May 2024, the film's director Brian Taylor said that Yunger had been misquoted, and had been referring to the earlier film The Offering.
Taylor said that for Hellboy: The Crooked Man, no AI tools were used in pre-production or elsewhere, and that the characters of both Hellboy and the Crooked Man were created and shot practically, with no CGI enhancements.
Hellboy: The Crooked Man had a limited theatrical release in international markets, beginning in Belgium on June 20, 2024, and the United Kingdom on September 27. It was released direct-to-VOD in the United States by Ketchup Entertainment on October 8, 2024.
Hellboy: The Crooked Man has grossed $2 million from international markets.
The film received mixed reviews from critics. On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 37% of 38 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 4.7/10. The website's consensus reads: "Hellboy: The Crooked Man buckles under its constraints resulting in an uneven, third-rate bag of all tricks and no treats." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 44 out of 100, based on eight critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews.
Sandra Hall of The Sydney Morning Herald gave the film 2/5 stars, writing, "It's all too much. The horrors are piled on in such quantities that any possibility of being scared or even slightly repulsed soon evaporates." The Guardian's Leslie Felperin also gave it 2/5 stars, writing, "No amount of budget could make up for the sputtering mess of a script, or the dead-on-the-inside expressions of the cast – apart from Rudolph who is consistently watchable." Variety's Siddhant Adlakha said the film "has the look of YouTube fan film — not to mention the excess fidelity, aping the story beats of Mike Mignola's eponymous comic to a tee."
Joel Harley of Starburst gave the film a positive review, stating "what The Crooked Man lacks in blockbuster bombast, this ambitious comic book adaptation makes up for with gothic chills and bloody action straight out of an Evil Dead film." Jamie Graham of GamesRadar+ gave the film 3 stars out of 5, writing "The Crooked Man is at its best in a flavoursome first half that serves up crepuscular, shallow-focus photography and backwoods dialect as tangy and prickly as wild gooseberries. But as it wears on, the film descends into a couple of extended set-piece battles. Some sore-thumb CGI amid largely practical effects, and the odd gimmicky edit, are further impediments."