The new Hellboy movie, now on Hulu, is the most faithful Mignola adaptation yet

A cartoonish, computer-animated raccoon sneaks through an open window of a dimly lit old house and crawls into what can only be described as a dead woman’s deflated skin suit. As the body begins to inexplicably reinflate, its limbs contort at unnatural angles like a rolled-up air mattress springing to life. Suddenly returning to consciousness, the woman screams out in pain. All the while, our heroes look on with horror, as the camera frames it all in grainy, tight close-ups and unnerving Dutch angles.

This one scene perfectly captures both the impressive highs and disappointing lows of Hellboy: The Crooked Man, a low-budget reboot of the beloved superhero franchise that made an extremely muted debut in 2024 (the film was dumped on digital storefronts last October in the U.S. and received a limited theatrical release in Europe). This ambitious, unabashedly scary movie offers a no-frills adaptation sprung straight from the mind of Hellboy creator Mike Mignola (who co-wrote the script), but it’s also held back by some of those very same attributes. Now that Crooked Man is finally streaming, courtesy of Hulu here in the U.S., it’s worth checking out this delightfully imperfect movie that is way better than its Rotten Tomatoes score may lead you to believe.

The plot of The Crooked Man is relatively straightforward: Hellboy finds himself stranded in an Appalachian town infested with witches and an undead soul collector called the Crooked Man, so he teams up with a few locals to save the day. It’s simple, self-contained, and dedicated in its devotion to the source material (a three-issue comic book miniseries with the same title).

This gives the film a distinctly different vibe compared to previous Hellboy adaptations. Both the acclaimed Guillermo del Toro movies and Neil Marshall’s derided 2019 reboot took the basic premise of Hellboy and turned it into something else entirely, whether that was a steampunk extravaganza for del Toro or a quippy superhero flick full of CGI slop for Marshall. 

The Crooked Man is neither of these things. Directed by adrenaline auteur Brian Taylor (Crank, Crank 2, and Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance), the movie attempts to recreate one specific Hellboy comic as accurately as possible. “I’ve never seen something that is that close to my work,” Mike Mignola told The A.V. Club, adding: “This was kind of always the way I thought a Hellboy story should be treated. It should be small.”

The movie certainly feels small, and mostly in a good way. It’s a self-contained story that isn’t focused on setting up sequels or cinematic universes. Instead, the goal is to convey the horror and dread of this 1950s town and its story, and The Crooked Man accomplishes that goal. There are moments of genuine horror throughout its 99-minute run time, thanks to some impressive practical effects, ghoulish makeup, and standout performances by Leah McNamara as a witch named Effie and Martin Bassindale as the Crooked Man himself. (Jack Kesy is totally fine as Hellboy but lacks the gravitas of his predecessors Ron Perlman and David Harbour; Joseph Marcell, aka Geoffrey Butler in The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, threatens to steal the spotlight as Reverend Watts, a blind old priest with more courage than you might expect.)

Overall, this cast of mostly unknowns only adds to the sense of horror that pervades the movie. With no recognizable faces for audiences to cling to, the movie’s grotesque body horror and well-timed jump scares dominate the experience. In one particularly memorable scene, which the studio leaned on heavily to market the film, a large snake slithers out from underneath a woman’s dress only to enter her mouth and complete the cycle again, creating a sort of demented ouroboros. As this hypnotic event plays out, Taylor’s camera circles the action, mimicking the behavior of the snake, only to occasionally stutter and glitch as if to emphasize the surreal horror at play.

Throughout The Crooked Man, Taylor and his cinematographer, Ivan Vatsov, often angle the camera upward as if to emphasize the massive scale of their story (or perhaps to try to convince us of it). And although the world looks gray and gloomy during the day, it comes alive at night, reveling in the shadows and hiding more from us than it shows. When the grounded story finally does give us a glimpse into Hellboy’s underworld, it’s dark and impressionistic, with the devil himself appearing as a massive black bird.

But while there’s plenty of creativity on display, its small budget also holds The Crooked Man back from greatness, especially when it comes to all those CGI critters. The choice to film this world in mostly grays and yellows also means that the stunning visuals you’d expect from a Hellboy comic are missing in action — although, to be fair, no director has ever managed to bring Mignola’s vivid brushstrokes to life, even if del Toro came close.

So yes, Hellboy: The Crooked Man has its flaws, but if you’re a fan of the original comics — or you just love low-budget horror — then this one is worth checking out. It’s nothing like the Hellboy movies we’ve seen before. In this case, that’s a very good thing.

Hellboy: The Crooked Man is now streaming on Hulu.