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Superhero movies aren\u2019t as big as they once were, with Marvel\u2019s latest, Captain America: Brave New World struggling to surpass the box office of Antman and The Wasp: Quantumania, but even then, the fall of Hellboy, from big-budget Guillermo del Toro production to an afterthought tossed onto Hulu, is astonishing. Yet, Hellboy: The Crooked Man, the fourth film in the series, starring the third actor, Jack Kesy, to portray the demonic good guy, debuted as the Number One film on Hulu in 2025. <\/p>\n
Hellboy: The Crooked Man is the most direct adaptation of Mike Mignola\u2019s comic yet, and even a low-budget film with cheap effects can\u2019t keep a good story down.\u00a0If you haven\u2019t seen it, now is the time.<\/p>\n
A Different Type Of Demon<\/p>\n
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Hellboy: The Crooked Man is not a globe-trotting adventure like the other films starring Ron Perlman and David Harbour<\/a>, instead, it\u2019s set in the forests of Appalachia in a small town filled with witches and haunted by a dark presence. Hellboy<\/a> and rookie B.P.R.D. agent Bobbie Jo Song (Adeline Rudolph), a character not found in the original graphic novel, get wrapped up with Tom (Jefferson White) a soldier coming home to confront the The Crooked Man (Martin Bassindale) and reconcile with his witchy ex-girlfriend. Tom explains that the demonic entity provides power for a steep price, and though this is a younger version of the hero since the film is set in 1959, the B.P.R.D. agent knows a thing or two about contracts with demons.\u00a0<\/p>\n The local coven of witches, disciples of The Crooked Man, gets involved, while Reverend Nathaniel Watts (Joseph Marcell) lends his blessings to the good guys. As with every good Hellboy story, The Crooked Man culminates in a final battle in a decaying, gothic structure as threats both real and imagined engulf the heroes. It\u2019s a satisfying, fairly comic-accurate story that has delighted most of the fans of the original series, but it is by no means perfect.\u00a0<\/p>\n No Budget, No Problem<\/p>\n Right from the opening scene on board a train, you can tell that Hellboy: The Crooked Man will not be nearly as visually interesting as del Toro\u2019s two films. Everything looks washed out, and if you didn\u2019t know any better, you\u2019d think it was a mid-2000\u2019s SyFy<\/a> original movie. To say that the film is carried by the strength of the dialogue, parts of which are word-for-word from Mignola\u2019s comic, is an understatement, and that\u2019s before The Crooked Man himself makes an appearance.\u00a0<\/p>\n Martin Bassindale plays the monster of folklore with the right amount of creepiness, accented by the sounds of bones cracking and readjusting whenever he moves, but it\u2019s hard not to imagine how much better he would have looked with anything resembling a budget behind the film. Shot on the cheap by director Brian Taylor (director of Crank, Gamer, and creator of the bonkers detective series, Happy), Hellboy: The Crooked Man has the look and feel of a fan film, in the best way possible, and was clearly a labor of love for the source material and not an attempt at another blockbuster. It was destined to be a streaming<\/a> hit, and thankfully for fans of the B.P.R.D., that\u2019s exactly what it is today. <\/p>\n Not only is Hellboy: The Crooked Man proof that a scaled-back superhero film can work if expectations are kept in check, it\u2019s also a love letter to the off-beat supernatural gothic comic that never quite hit the mainstream. The film has more in common with Evil Dead<\/a> than it does Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness, but thanks to everyone giving it their all, it\u2019s one of Hulu\u2019s best movies, and if the streaming numbers impress the right people, there\u2019s a chance it could even relaunch the dormant franchise. <\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Hellboy-The-Crooked-Man-1-900x506.jpg\")
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