Hellboy (2019)    Lionsgate/Fantasy-Action-Horror    RT: 120 minutes    Rated R (strong bloody violence and gore throughout, language)    Director: Neil Marshall    Screenplay: Andrew Cosby    Music: Benjamin Wallfisch    Cinematography: Lorenzo Senatore    Release date: April 12, 2019 (US)    Cast: David Harbour, Milla Jovovich, Ian McShane, Sasha Lane, Daniel Dae Kim, Thomas Haden Church, Penelope Mitchell, Sophie Okonedo, Brian Gleeson, Alistair Petrie.    Box Office: $21.9M (US)/$55.1M (World)

Rating: * ½

 It’s only been two hours since I watched the reboot of Hellboy and I’m already hard-pressed to describe the plot in detail. If I’m being completely honest, I’m not even sure I’d have been able to tell you what was going on as I watched Hellboy. It’s a convoluted mess. By way of warning you what you’re in for should you decide to see it, let me say it’s the most ridiculous use of the King Arthur legend since that Transformers movie a couple years back.

 I was looking forward to seeing Hellboy. As much as I like original and its sequel, I always thought the material would benefit from a darker, R-rated approach. After all, the titular character is a demon from Hell whose destiny it is to someday destroy the world. Of course, he doesn’t want to be that demon. He fights for the side of good as a member of the BPRD (Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense), an agency that deals with supernatural matters- e.g. monsters, entities and resurrected evil sorceresses like Nimue the Blood Queen (Jovovich, the Resident Evil series). She’s back among us hundreds of years after she was slain and dismembered by King Arthur. Her remains, which were scattered around Europe, are being collected with the intention of raising her from the dead so she can wreak havoc on mankind. It’s up to Hellboy to stop her.

 This time, Hellboy is played by David Harbour (Stranger Things). I’ll say right now that he’s no Ron Perlman, just like director Neil Marshall (Doomsday) is no Guillermo del Toro. I know what he’s going for with his take on Hellboy. His is a dark vision. While he never betrays its comic book origins, his movie is a lot of noise, bombast and confusion whereas del Toro has an eye for detail and endows his films with a superior visual aesthetic. He did some pretty amazing things in his two Hellboy movies. All Marshall does is give us bad CGI that, frankly, looks more like video game graphics.

 So obviously this reboot of Hellboy serves as an origin story. Just like in the 2004 movie, Hellboy enters our realm due to a failed Nazi experiment during WWII. Instead of killing him, the agent in charge Trevor Bruttenholm (McShane, the John Wick series) decides to adopt him and raise him as his son. He’s not the only one in Hellboy with an origin story. We also learn about the medium Alice (Lane, American Honey) and fellow BPRD agent Daimio (Kim, Hawaii Five-0), the two people who aide him in his quest to stop Nimue. There’s a lot more going on in Hellboy, too much in fact. Marshall tries to cram in way too much (characters, flashbacks, subplots, etc.) in the space of two hours. By the time it’s over, you feel like you’ve been through the ringer.

 I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry during Hellboy. Sure, it’s self-aware about its ridiculousness, but that doesn’t automatically make a movie funny. Ordinarily, I would have laughed at Jovovich’s campy performance and ideas blatantly lifted from the likes of Predator, Clash of the Titans, Lifeforce and An American Werewolf in London. A transformation scene is almost a shot-for-shot redo of the 1981 horror-comedy classic save for the bad CGI. In the right hands, Hellboy could have been a fun bad movie. Sadly, it’s not. It’s about as joyless as they come.

 To its credit, Hellboy has a couple of good points. It’s violent and gory which would be better if it wasn’t all the CGI variety. I liked the walking house that factors into one scene. Thomas Haden Church makes an amusing cameo in the mid-credits scene (there’s also an end credits scene). Unfortunately, the bad outweighs the good here. Perlman and del Toro found the humanity in Hellboy. They made him a full-fledged character, something that Harbour and Marshall fail to do. Here, he’s just a big red demon-guy with a hand of stone for smashing things. Lane’s attempt at a British accent is weak at best. I don’t even like the look of the new Hellboy. I stop short of calling it ugly but it certainly isn’t pretty. Del Toro has a knack for seeing the beauty in horror-type situations. It’s sorely needed here.

 It saddens me to say that Hellboy is a crushing disappointment. I really hoped it would be good but deep down I knew that it wouldn’t measure up to the previous movie which begs the question of why they bothered in the first place. Oh yeah, that’s right, they’re rebooting everything these days. The sad part is that a new Hellboy could have worked. Unfortunately, everybody involved gets it wrong. They took an irreverent comic book character and dropped him into a movie indistinguishable from all the other megabudget Hollywood noisefests that keep ibuprofen manufacturers in the black.

 Oh yeah, I almost forgot. A familiar character makes a surprise appearance (sort of) in the final scene that suggests the (re)start of a new franchise. Feel free to break this promise, guys.