It’s 1959 and Hellboy journeys deep into the Appalachian mountains with a rookie BPRD agent and a junior G-Man after something goes wrong while transferring a dangerous spider supposedly harboring a demon. Well, a train accident thanks to the escaped arachnid (now humongous) has Hellboy and parapsychologist Bobbie Jo Song (the G-Man loses his head almost immediately) stranded in a place that’s older than the trees. Hellboy immediately recognizes the area as being stained with darkness and even hears the call himself. Appalachian folklore is rife with nightmare entities and one of the worse goes by the horrifying name The Crooked Man (a perfect Martin Bassindale). Of course, the duo come face to horrifying face with this evil being when they stumble upon awfulness in a part of the world forgotten and ignored by modern terrors. Witchcraft brings them into local problems and the return of a young man from the war by the name of Tom Ferrell (a game Jefferson White) who ran off after an encounter with the Devil have them deciding to help out with a hex and a reluctant witch by the name of Cora Fisher that Tom once called a friend. Hellboy just wants to get the rookie agent out of the situation but she wants to get her hands dirty and with them tracking the evil spider, they might as well assist where they can. Shit spirals out of control and several more terrifying pieces come into play. Joseph Marcell adds some class as a man of the cloth holding down one of the last sanctuaries in a Godless land and Leah McNamara is loving every minute of scene stealing as the evil and tempting Effie Kolb. Making the smart choice of dropping the cosmic horrors and deep dive into Mignola world history the other films (not that I don’t love them or anything. Yes, I am even one of the few fans of the David Harbour outing) have focused on, this outing for Big Red adapts one of Mignola’s more terrifying tales and turns the volume down on the mythology of our Hell-born protagonist. It’s nice that Mr. Mignola has blessed us with a wealth of excellent yarns (seriously, I don’t believe the man has worked on one bad story from the Hellboy universe) and it’s about time someone brought one of his “quieter” pieces of history to the screen. The adaptation is faithful to the source and that is much appreciated (they even do the witchball tutorial!) and Jack Kesy is an excellent younger version of Big Red. The rookie parapsychologist may be a tad underdeveloped but it ain’t all that distracting and Adeline Rudolph is capable enough in the role. Witches, zombies, demon familiars, empty skin suits, crows, bugs and a whole lot of sarcasm will have anyone in love with the universe Mignola created grinning from ear to ear. A wonderful film with some weak digital effects but if you can manage to pull your head out of your ass for just a minute and accept that it was working with a much smaller budget than most of anything adapted from a graphic novel, you should have a great time with it. I hope they do more because this is a world I’d love to spend a bunch more time in.
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