Role: Nimue / The Blood Queen
Genre: Action, Adventure, Fantasy
Director: Neil Marshall
Written by: Andrew Cosby, Mike Mignola
Running time: 2h
Release Date: 9 April 2019 (USA)

Summary

Hellboy is a supernatural being who is the son of a fallen angel. He came to our world in 1944 as a result of a mystical ritual. The Occultists of the Third Reich had long tried to gain an advantage in the war, hoping to attract the ideal soldier to the ranks of the fascist army. Hellboy was exactly the one they needed, but they never managed to make their plans a reality. The demon from hell fell into the hands of Americans and began to serve them, protecting the world from mysterious threats. This time he is sent to England to meet face to face with Merlin’s wife. Just a battle with the Blood Queen will lead to the end of the world, which the monster tried to avoid all his life.

About The Blood Queen

Milla Jovovich as Vivienne Nimue, the Blood Queen: A powerful and ancient British sorceress from the Dark Ages who seeks to annihilate humanity. Harbour had stated that Hellboy has a “very special relationship” with Nimue and that the film expands her role from the comics. Jovovich described the character as being “literally the queen of the underworld,” serving as the mother of the monsters, and described Nimue’s plan as “beautiful” and “relevant” to today’s political climate in trying to bring people together.

Production & Release

Hellboy began principal production in September 2017 and filmed in the United Kingdom and Bulgaria. Filming wrapped on December 27, 2017. During Hellboy’s opening weekend, TheWrap published a report that revealed tensions during the film’s production. The report stated that producers Lawrence Gordon and Lloyd Levin had chosen to fire the original cinematographer and director Marshall’s collaborator, Sam McCurdy. Insiders suggested McCurdy’s termination was meant to be a “message” to Marshall that he was not in charge, however, Levin’s attorney, Martin Singer, denied the allegation and described McCurdy’s termination as a “group decision.” Singer accused Marshall of “encouraging” the story.

Three insiders stated that Levin frequently interrupted Marshall before the cast and crew during rehearsals and attempted to give the actors different directions from Marshall’s. Singer denied the claim, stating that Levin talked to Marshall after rehearsals. Two insiders stated that Harbour walked off set, refusing to film more takes for Marshall. Singer countered that Levin had no recollection of the incident. Two insiders stated that the script was rewritten on-set and that Harbour and McShane rewrote their lines. Singer disputed that this was a common practice among film productions. One insider stated that Marshall and Levin had disputes over the design of a tree. Marshall wanted a realistic, asymmetrical design while Levin opted for a symmetrical design and overruled Marshall’s decision. However, Marshall changed the design to asymmetrical during post-production. Singer denied the claim, stating that all the designs in the film went through an “exhaustive design and evolution process.” All parties involved refused to comment on the report.

Critical Response

On Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 17% based on 208 reviews, with an average rating of 3.68/10. The site’s critical consensus reads, “Bereft of the imaginative flair that made earlier Hellboys so enjoyable, this soulless reboot suggests Dante may have left a tenth circle out of his Inferno.” On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 31 out of 100, based on 44 critics, indicating “generally unfavorable reviews.” Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of “C” on an A+ to F scale, while those at PostTrak gave it 2.5 out of 5 stars and a “definite recommend” of 44%.

Owen Gleiberman of Variety said the film wants “to be a badass hard-R epic, but it’s basically a pile of origin-story gobbledygook, frenetic and undercooked, full of limb-hacking, eye-gouging monster battles as well as an atmosphere of apocalyptic grunge that signifies next to nothing.” John Defore of The Hollywood Reporter said that “Neil Marshall’s Hellboy isn’t lousy because nobody wants it, nor only because it fails to live up to both its big-screen and printed predecessors. It’s just lousy. Bloated, vastly less funny than it aims to be and misguided in key design choices even when it scores with less important decisions, the film does make bold choices that might have paid off under other circumstances. But these aren’t those circumstances.” Eric Kohn of IndieWire described the film “as an overzealous attempt to revisit the content of del Toro films without matching their sophistication.” Katie Rife of The A.V. Club gave it a C-, praising the creature and set design but saying “unfortunately that’s where the creativity in this film ends.” Rife praised Jovovich for giving “the most committed, and therefore the best, performance in the film.”

Johnny Oleksinski of The New York Post called the film a “grotesque misfire,” writing, “The race for worst movie of the year is heating up. You could even say it’s hotter than hell, now that Hellboy has taken the lead.” Phil de Semlyen for Time Out wrote, “We get a conventional, if blood-soaked, splurge of folklore, origin story, comic-book fan service and monster movie, all set to a bustling blues-rock soundtrack. Knitting it all very loosely together is a barrage of exposition involving Milla Jovovich’s evil Arthurian blood queen Nimue, a.k.a. the Lady in the Lake, and the threat of another cinematic apocalypse. It feels like you’ve seen it all before, and if you caught Joe Cornish’s The Kid Who Would Be King, you have.” British film critic Robbie Collin of The Daily Telegraph described the film as “Ugly, obnoxious and yowlingly witless, with nothing to say for itself that doesn’t start with the letter F.” John Nugent of Empire magazine gave the film 2 out of 5, but praised Harbour, saying “David Harbour is brilliant, everyone around him less so.” He was also critical of the film’s “alarmingly bad English accents.”

William Bibbiani of TheWrap gave the film a positive review, calling it “a horrifyingly good time,” and adding, “Neil Marshall’s Hellboy is a wellspring of creativity, a major superhero movie made for hardcore R-rated horror fans, overflowing with humor and action and scares.”

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