HELLBOY (US - 2019) Directed by Neil Marshall. Written by Andrew Cosby. Cast: David Harbour, Milla Jovovich, Ian McShane, Daniel Dae Kim, Sasha Lane, Thomas Haden Church, Sophie Okonedo, Stephen Graham, Penelope Mitchell, Brian Gleeson, Alistair Petrie, Rick Warden, Nitin Ganatra, Mark Stanley, Laila Morse, Kristina Klebe, Mario de la Rosa, Markos Rounthwaite, Troy James. (R, 121 mins) Following 2004's HELLBOY and 2008's HELLBOY II: THE GOLDEN ARMY, both very well-received big-screen takes on Mike Mignola's Dark Horse Comics character, director Guillermo del Toro and star Ron Perlman never got around to making a much-discussed third installment. As del Toro grew busy announcing more projects than he'll ever be able to make in one lifetime, the third film has ended up being a reboot with a new team of filmmakers headed by Neil Marshall, helming his first feature film since 2010's CENTURION. Hailed as the next big thing in horror after his 2006's acclaimed THE DESCENT, Marshall (who established his bona fides with the 2002's word-of-mouth video store hit DOG SOLDIERS) was subsequently given the cold shoulder by genre fans with his gonzo 2008 post-nuke throwback DOOMSDAY, an absolute blast that just didn't click with its intended audience. Following CENTURION, Marshall turned to television, finding acclaim with hired gun gigs on shows like BLACK SAILS, HANNIBAL, WESTWORLD, and most notably, the instant classic 2012 "Blackwater" episode of GAME OF THRONES. With Marshall working from a script by Andrew Cosby, the creator of the cult sci-fi series EUREKA, the new HELLBOY had some potential. STRANGER THINGS' David Harbour certainly looks the part as the title character, but after a good start, it peters out, looking every bit like what you'd expect from Cannon cover band Millennium Media as things eventually devolve into a blur of corner-cutting Bulgarian CGI, lunkheaded needle drops (a Spanish-language cover of the Scorpions' "Rock You Like a Hurricane" in a scene set in Tijuana, and later on, a video-gamey shootout to Motley Crue's "Kickstart My Heart," for some reason), and all-too-obvious signs of some post-production mangling, apparent even without recent revelations that tensions mounted when the producers fired Marshall's cinematographer against his wishes, then took the film away from him in post (Marshall has done no press for the film's release and was a no-show at the premiere), and that Marshall and Harbour apparently didn't get along during the shoot.
An agent for the US government's Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense, Hellboy is dispatched by his boss and adoptive father Prof. Broom (Ian McShane) to their London counterparts at Osiris Club, where he's informed of his origins as a Nazi hellspawn by the group's blind seer Lady Hatton (Sophie Okonedo, a past Oscar-nominee for HOTEL RWANDA). He's tagging along in their quest to kill three giants when he's ambushed by turncoat Osiris agents and rescued by psychic Alice Monaghan (AMERICAN HONEY's Sasha Lane), who was saved as an infant by Hellboy when she was abducted and replaced by a hell-born hog-like creature called Gruagach (voiced by Stephen Graham). Gruagach still holds a grudge against Hellboy, and is caught under the spell of Nimue, the Blood Queen (Milla Jovovich), a fifth-century sorceress who was captured and dismembered by King Arthur (Mark Stanley) and Merlin (Brian Gleeson), who buried the pieces of her body in scattered locations all over England. Gruagach is gathering the parts to reassemble a vengeful Nimue in the present day so she can complete what she didn't finish 1500 years ago: unleashing a deadly plague upon the world and convincing Hellboy to join her on the dark side where she feels monsters belong.
For a while, HELLBOY is agreeably dumb fun, throwing in everything from vampirized Mexican wrestlers, the legend of King Arthur and Excalibur, Rasputin, witchcraft, Nazis, Leni Riefenstahl, Baba Yaga, and various gothic horror tropes. Harbour brings a more downbeat, rumpled sensibility to Hellboy that's not nearly as enjoyable as Perlman's classic interpretation, though some of the supporting actors fare better, particularly Jovovich, who sees this for the junk that it is and has fun with it, hamming it up and playing to the back row throughout (there's also an amusing scene where she grows annoyed with endless reality TV shows while waiting for Gruagach to return with one of her legs). Lane and Daniel Dae Kim (as shapeshifting agent Ben Daiamo; Kim stepped in after Ed Skrein dropped out upon learning that the character as Asian in origin) are fine as Hellboy's sidekicks, and the always-excellent McShane offers some effortless paternal gravitas in a role previously essayed by his old friend, the late, great John Hurt, even if he's undermined by some truly embarrassing CGI near the end. Thomas Haden Church plays Dark Horse fan favorite Lobster Johnson in an appearance so fleeting that calling it a walk-on would be charitable. He does turn up again midway through the interminable 13-minute (!) closing credits crawl, presumably to set up a sequel--along with yet another end credits stinger--that ain't gonna happen.
Turning HELLBOY into a hard-R gorefest with copious F-bombs isn't a dealbreaker, but once it plays out, there's no real reason for it, unless it's to pull in the gamers who like their movies to look more like Playstation and Xbox. It's also rough-going at times, especially with the introduction of Alice, where the scene unfolds as if we're supposed to know who she is, looking suspiciously like an earlier scene with her was cut. It also loses all sense of internal logic after Nimue arrives in London and embarks on a rampage like General Zod in Metropolis, destroying everything and unleashing her deadly plague, with breaking news reports warning everyone to stay inside and that the plague is set to overtake all of England in a matter of hours and the rest of Europe by the end of the day. Why then, a few scenes later, are London streets just teeming with calm pedestrians, cafes and stores operating business as usual? I mean, if you're gonna take the movie out of the hands of its director, at least pay attention to what you're throwing together in the editing room. In fairness, HELLBOY isn't terrible (though it does get perilously close to loitering at 121 minutes), but in a world where we already have two terrific HELLBOY movies that haven't aged a bit, its biggest crime is that it's just pointless and ultimately forgettable, as a reboot to both an established brand and to Neil Marshall's filmmaking career.
FRONTERA's topical subject matter of immigration and US/Mexico border security leads to a well-acted but nevertheless routine and predictable drama with a late plot twist that almost threatens to turn it into a Paul Haggis version of EL NORTE. Honest, hard-working Miguel (Michael Pena) seeks a better life in America for his pregnant wife Paulina (Eva Longoria) and their young daughter. Sneaking over the border into Arizona with the duplicitous and lazy Jose (Michael Ray Escamilla), the pair run into Olivia (Amy Madigan), a sympathetic woman on horseback who offers them water and a blanket. She tells them she and her husband own the vast swath of land they're on, known as "The Wash," which is so extensive that they're on safe ground for at least another day. In the distance, overlooking the land, three teenagers are gleefully firing warning shots at the illegal immigrants, causing Jose to flee and Olivia to be thrown from the frightened horse. Hearing the shots, her husband Roy (Ed Harris), the recently-retired local sheriff, speeds from their ranch and only gets a few moments to say goodbye before Olivia succumbs to a massive head injury. Roy only sees Miguel leaving the scene and once he's picked up, the new sheriff (Aden Young) is certain they've got their man. The sheriff didn't really conduct much of an investigation, but Roy isn't convinced Miguel is guilty and starts snooping around ("Somebody's gotta do your job for you," he tells his successor), finding shells and casings on his land that corroborate Miguel's version of what happened, but the sheriff will hear nothing of it. Meanwhile, the three teenagers responsible start panicking and one (Seth Adkins) seems destined to crack, and receiving word that Miguel is in jail, Paulina's family pays coyote Ramon (Julio Cesar Cedillo) to take her over the border, which takes the story into altogether new and grim direction.
If anything, director/co-writer Michael Berry and co-writer Luis Moulinet III try to cover too much ground in FRONTERA. As a result, the film is torn between being a grand statement on border and immigration issues and an intimate drama of two old-school, self-reliant men brought together by an unspeakable tragedy. Pena, who delivers his performance entirely in Spanish (as does Longoria) is good as an upstanding man whose morals only seems to get him in trouble while schemers and criminals like the vicious Ramon always get ahead, and Harris is all steely convincing grit as a hard-edged, modern-day cowboy, but FRONTERA is all over the place. It's scattered and ponderous, and its third-act twist is obvious and completely collapses under any serious scrutiny. OK, follow me here: the just-retired sheriff owns the biggest piece of land in the vicinity (The Wash), and these local, small-town kids specifically say "Let's go to the Wash and shoot at some illegals," but they apparently have no idea that Roy owns it or that the woman on the horse might be Mrs. Roy, who, it's later revealed, was a teacher at the local high school?! FRONTERA, please! A film with a more focused and hard-hitting statement to make certainly could've made better metaphorical use of the notion of Roy and Miguel bonding and taking that first step toward rebuilding their lives by taking up their shovels and working together to clean the horseshit out of Roy's stable. (PG-13, 103 mins)
SOULMATE (UK - 2014)
Neil Marshall (THE DESCENT, DOOMSDAY) produced this low-key British ghost story for his wife Axelle Carolyn, a sometime actress making her feature writing/directing debut. Avoiding the splattery chaos favored by Marshall in his films and in the occasional GAME OF THRONES episodes he's directed, Carolyn goes quaintly retro, fashioning SOULMATE as something that has a distinct Hammer/Amicus vibe. Light on gore aside from a bloody wrist-slitting in the opening scene, SOULMATE focuses on recently-widowed Audrey (Anna Walton of HELLBOY II: THE GOLDEN ARMY), who's so distraught over her husband Tristan's (Guy Armitage) death in a car crash that she attempts suicide. Checking out of the hospital, she decides to rent a small cottage in the Welsh countryside to clear her head and get back on her feet again. It isn't long before she's hearing strange noises coming from a locked attic room and property manager Theresa (Tanya Myers) and her doctor husband Daniel (Nick Brimble, who played the Monster in Roger Corman's FRANKENSTEIN UNBOUND) are evasive about it and write it off to "the house settling." Soon after, Audrey starts seeing the spectre of Douglas Talbot (Tom Wisdom), the homeowner who committed suicide in the cottage 30 years earlier. His ghost has been trapped in the house and has never been seen by anyone until Audrey. A friendship forms between the two as Douglas' loneliness is relieved and Audrey finds in Douglas someone who understands the torment of wanting to end one's life. Matters are complicated Audrey tries to convince Theresa and Daniel that Douglas' ghost continues to inhabit the cottage and Theresa, still carrying a torch for Douglas, her lover all those years ago ("I'm well aware that you settled for me when you couldn't have Douglas," Daniel tells his wife), grows jealous of the attention his spirit is giving to Audrey.
As you can see, the story careens into a silly, soap opera direction when it becomes less focused on eerie chills and comes perilously close to becoming a supernatural Harlequin romance. It's too bad, because Carolyn establishes a foreboding, vividly chilly atmosphere in the first half of SOULMATE and has it moving along like the kind of film the alleged new "Hammer Films" should be making. Shot on location in the vast hills and mountains of the Brecon Beacons in South Wales, SOULMATE looks absolutely beautiful and drawn-out scenes like Audrey lying motionless in bed while hearing the floor creak as something slowly moves down the hallway are terrifying. But once Douglas makes his presence known and all the way up to the formation of the Douglas-Audrey-Theresa love triangle, SOULMATE just starts rapidly disintegrating. Perhaps things would've worked a bit better had Wisdom played Douglas more or less resembling himself rather than looking like a ghost in a Benny Hill skit, with his face powdered in white pancake makeup and dark circles drawn around his eyes. It not only undermines the credible performance of Walton but also the film as a whole. Through no fault of Wisdom himself, it's just hard to take anything seriously after he gets a couple of closeups. It does work in Carolyn's favor that she avoids the obvious after what initially looks like a terrible job of telegraphing twists--obviously, you're thinking the cottage is some sort of purgatory and Audrey is alerady dead, and Theresa and Daniel's dog being named Anubis may have you thinking of the Egyptian god whose main duty was escorting souls into the afterlife, but it's some welcome misdirection on Carolyn's part, or just an excuse to put Anubis, the Marshall family dog, into a movie. SOULMATE gets off to a terrific start and really could've been something, but it just starts stumbling and bumbling along to nowhere special. Carolyn obviously has the directing chops to make a serious and enjoyable old-fashioned fright flick, but her script just doesn't get the job done. (Unrated, 104 mins, also streaming on Netflix Instant)
