Audiences seem fond of Hellboy, giving the half-demon superhero's origin story a decent 70% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Movie critics, however, offer up a dismal 12% rating, wishing for a return of director Guillermo del Toro and star Ron Perlman of the first two Hellboy features. Here, Perlman is supplanted by David Harbour of Stranger Things, del Toro by British director Neil Marshall. According to critics, therein lies the problem:
- Following "two much tighter and more satisfying movies," this Hellboy wants to be "a badass hard-R epic, but it’s basically a pile of origin-story gobbledygook, frenetic and undercooked," Owen Gleiberman writes at Variety. He adds there's "a hole where its most fascinating conflict should be" and "an atmosphere of apocalyptic grunge that signifies next to nothing."
- "I found myself checking the time," writes Peter Suderman, who was similarly left longing for del Toro's Hellboy because it was "funny, thrilling, emotionally engaged, a platform for a director's distinctive vision." Marshall's take, on the other hand, is "loud, obnoxious, and pointlessly grotesque" with "trashy" effects and "sloppy" action scenes, Suderman writes at Reason.com, concluding the director is "out of his depth."
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