(REVIEW) “Hellboy: The Crooked Man” is a surprisingly fun crime/horror film that assumes a shocking amount of Christian beliefs in its narrative.

Hellboy is an odd character with a bumpy cinematic history. Based on a comic book series written by Mike Mignola, Hellboy is the son of a demon and a witch who was brought from hell into the world by Nazis. He was rescued and raised by Professor Broom of the BPRD (Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense) who became his surrogate father and trained to help save the world from monsters just like him. 

The character has been adapted into film multiple times before. Twice in live-action by Guillermo del Toro (“Hellboy” 2004 and “Hellboy II: The Golden Army”), in what was going to be a planned trilogy. But the modest box office performance of those films made the studio decide to pivot to a reboot of the franchise in 2019 with a film called “Hellboy” that became an even bigger critical and commercial flop than its predecessors.

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Now, Hellboy has returned to screens, but at a much more modest scale of $20 million (previous budgets were $66 million for“Hellboy,” $85 million for “Hellboy II: The Golden Army” and $50 million for “Hellboy, 2019”) the film features far fewer monsters, characters, fight scenes and a shorter run-time (1 hour 39 minutes). While the other movies got worldwide theatrical releases, this one was released in U.K. theaters but went straight to digital in the United States.

“Hellboy: The Crooked Man” follows the titular hero as he and a new field agent get caught in the crossfire of townsfolk and witches after a routine mission goes awry. Things get worse when they encounter “The Crooked Man,” an undead servant of the devil who grants people wishes in exchange for their souls.

You can definitely see the trimming of the budget in the film. The number of monsters portrayed, and the quality of the effects are much closer to a CW show or a high-caliber fan film on YouTube than a Hollywood blockbuster. Far from weakening the film, these changes have in some ways made one of the better Hellboy projects. This film cuts out a lot of the fat that can distract from Hellboy’s core appeal and focuses on what actually makes him cool and unique.

Hellboy — at its core — is a crime procedural set in a horror film universe with one of the monsters on the side of the good guys. Like “Jaws,” “The Crooked Man” focuses on the terror of the monsters in the dark and leads up to their attacks on the heroes, making the horror elements stronger. When Hellboy starts fighting the monsters, it feels cathartic and earned. And because they aren’t trying to fit five different emotional arcs into Hellboy, the most interesting one (him struggling with his evil instincts and parentage) comes into clearer focus. The film can really rest on the genre tropes that make the concept so strong, rather than distracting from them. The grizzled old cop and the rookie; the hero and villain; the sinner and saint.

Of course, while most of the time the budget constraints work, they don’t always. Some bad CGI is noticeable and some shot choices are distracting. In one scene, they have Hellboy doing the same motion where he puffs on his cigar every time they cut back to him.

At the same time, what’s most interesting about “The Crooked Man” is how Christian it is. Christians tend to be turned off by characters like Hellboy because they seem like they’re making demons (the bad guys in Scripture) into good guys. Similar to the fear of Harry Potter getting kids involved in witchcraft, Christians have stayed away from such movie franchises. And while to some degree that’s true, it’s more complicated than that. In the “Hellboy” films, demons and monsters are the bad guys. And Hellboy’s demon heritage is a source of pain for him. In that sense, Hellboy has always affirmed the evilness of demons and monsters.

But previous movies also emphasized how monsters are misunderstood and the humans who persecuted them were, in some measure, the real bad guys. In “The Golden Army,” we’re told that humans and fantasy creatures lived together in harmony until the greedy humans tried to take over everything and started the war between people and elves (and other mythical beings). And it was the elves, according to the film, who stopped the war out of compassion for the humans.

Likewise, in the 2019 “Hellboy” reboot, humans and monsters lived in harmony until it was the humans who betrayed them.  

Both films also show how ordinary humans hate and fear Hellboy and monsters like him. This creates a tension: Should he really side with the humans? Or become king of the monsters where people will respect him?

There’s also little acknowledgment in previous “Hellboy” movies that Christianity is a force (let alone the main force) that can fight against these dark foes. The heroes standing against “the things that go bump in the night” are government entities that battle monsters, a combination of science and the very forces of magic they’re often fighting against. 

“Hellboy: The Crooked Man” gives no such moral high ground to demonic creatures. In “The Crooked Man,” the villains are the devil and those who’ve chosen to serve him. Satan is unambiguously evil. And none of his servants, such as The Crooked Man and Elfie, are portrayed as unfairly persecuted. These people aren’t evil because humans fear and hate them. Humans fear and hate them because they are evil. Rather, the moral complexity comes from the fact that the temptation toward evil they succumbed to is present in the heroes as well. 

This is especially noticeable when they portray witches and sexual sin. It’s popular today to portray witches — or people accused of being one — as good guys and the bad guys are the Christians burning them. Likewise, it’s popular to portray Christians as oppressive prudes for being against sleeping around. But the film unironically portrays witchcraft as an evil that gives people over to Satan and bondage (with one exception, which I’ll discuss further down). And it uncritically portrays “fornication” as something that binds you to the devil’s control in some way. They even combine these elements by using the trope of the witch as a sexual temptress — something often decried as a sexist projection on the part of men.

This means that Hellboy’s arc is less about being a misunderstood victim of man’s intolerance and more about battling his own sinful nature. This fits in with narratives that are much closer to the heart of traditional Christian teaching. Christianity teaches that we are all born sinners, and must struggle against our sinful nature every day. Hellboy was literally born the son of a witch and the devil. And yet, he wants to be a good person. How does he do what’s right when his instincts are literally from Hell? This is reminiscent of what St. Paul said: “For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do. … O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” (Romans 7:19, 24, KJV version).

Hellboy is also a particularly male expression of this problem. As Nancy Pearcy points out in “The Toxic War on Masculinity,” Western Christianity has associated femininity with Christian values and masculinity with sinful nature since the Industrial Revolution. Jesus — and therefore Christian virtue —became associated with “gentle Jesus meek and mild.” Therefore, men, who tend to identify more with warrior king archetypes, feel those instincts as closer to the darkness they are trying to face. The question then is, how does Hellboy reconcile his aggressive instincts (which he needs to use to fight the monsters) with his morals, and not succumb to the dark side because of them?

In “The Crooked Man,” Christianity is also taken for granted as being true and powerful against this darkness. Demons and witches can’t be on church grounds. A consecrated shovel with a cross emblazoned on it can destroy the demons. The blind pastor is portrayed as a good man able to resist the devil’s temptation and help fight him. 

There’s only one thing that keeps this movie from being a straight-up film that upholds the Christian faith. Bobby Jo Song uses a magic spell to sabotage the villains. It’s a common trope in Hellboy: The heroes use magic and the same goes for the villains. But it’s commonly understood in Christianity that witchcraft is evil as highlighted in Deuteronomy 18:9-12). That doesn’t make this a bad movie, but I have to admit there’s a part of me that wishes I could annoyingly tell people that “The Crooked Man” was unironically a Christian film.  

It’s a fascinating trend that some of these old tropes are making a comeback. While the aughts were full of stories saying “the bad guys are actually the good guys” — from vampires in “Twilight” to witches in “Wicked” and “Sabrina” — now we’re getting movies like “Salem’s Lot” and “Nosferatu” who have flipped the script.

Why? There could be something to the fact that many of these movies are adapted from stories that are older. “Nosferatu,” “Salem’s Lot” and “Hellboy: The Crooked Man” are all based on stories written prior to the deconstructive trend that became popular in Hollywood. In this case, the obsession with recycling past material is bringing back old tropes that have fallen out of fashion.

I suspect it’s also because the old stories still have a power and resonance that hasn’t yet been replaced in our society. The idea of demons who tempt us toward evil, which we often give in to out of weakness, still resonates with our lived daily experiences. The idea of the witch who has given in to that lust for power and destroyed themselves also still resonates. The idea of being tempted away from the right path by someone through sexual appeal also still resonates.

While the budget often shows, and not every artistic choice works, “Hellboy: The Crooked Man” is a very enjoyable mashup to various genres that’s only better for how Christian — and also how true — it is.

Joseph Holmes is an award-nominated filmmaker and culture critic living in New York City. He is co-host of the podcast “The Overthinkers” and its companion website theoverthinkersjournal.world, where he discusses art, culture and faith with his fellow overthinkers. His other work and contact info can be found at his website josephholmesstudios.com.