Cursed woods, giant snakes, ravens that catch fire: the teaser trailer of Hellboy: The Crooked Man looks pretty creepy. This is the first preview of this new title in the saga that takes up one of the most beloved comic book characters, taken from the twisted imagination of Mike Mignola. It is the third incarnation of this red-skinned half-demon: after Ron Perlmanwho had played the antihero in Guillermo del Toro’s two films in 2004 and 2008, and David Harbourwho gave him physicality and face in Neil Marshall’s ill-fated 2019 reboot, now it’s the turn of Jack Kesy, a young actor seen in The Strain e Deadpool 2pick up the baton. And the first results are seen in these scenes which are a mixture of horror and grotesque.
As the title suggests, the new film takes inspiration from a series of three comics originally titled The Crooked Manwritten by Mignola himself and illustrated by the artist Richard Corben, released in 2009. In this narrative arc Hellboy ventures, at the end of the 1950s, into a village in the Appalachians who is haunted by this Crooked Man, a 19th century war profiteer who returned from Hell to become the region’s demon par excellence. Intertwining his own destiny with that of some witches and wizardsHellboy will have to resist all temptations and face various threats before freeing the village itself.
The teaser seems very clear: this new Hellboy: The Crooked Man will insist a lot on the in the dimension of horror of the story, while trying to remain fairly faithful to the flow of the comics and focusing on a single story (one of the much criticized problems of the 2019 film was precisely that it wanted to condense together too many narrative lines, some of which were also very consistent). In addition to Kesy, the cast also includes Jefferson White (as Tom Ferrell, the sorcerer who allies himself with Hellboy), Adeline Rudolph, Joseph Marcell and Martin Bassindale. Directed by Bryan Tayloralready director of Crank, Ghost Rider and of the series Happy!the film will be released in theaters soon: at the moment no date has been indicated exact debut date.
