Hellboy: The Crooked Man (2024)

Aboard a mid-century freight train crossing the Appalachian ridgeline in 1959, senior B.P.R.D. agent Hellboy and his rookie partner Bobbie Jo Song accompany a freight car that contains a captured supernatural spider bound for Bureau custody. While the train navigates a snow-swept mountain pass the spider inexplicably expands to gargantuan size inside its container; its growth tears the car loose, the carriage capsizes, and the creature escapes into the woods. The derailment leaves the agents stranded. Hellboy listens to the woods and confesses that the creature swelled because something malign in the area was calling to it; he admits aloud that he heard that call himself. He and Bobbie Jo leave the wreckage and follow the only nearby road until they encounter Tom Ferrell, a local man recently returned from combat who says he has come back to atone for past wrongs.

Tom leads them to the ramshackle farmhouse of Cora Fisher, a witch he once loved, but when they arrive Cora's body lies on the bed drained of flesh -- effectively "empty" -- and the house smells of ritual smoke. As they wait outside for the demonic familiar that serves the witches to return with Cora's complete body, Tom recounts his history with Effie Kolb, the witch who first instructed him in ritual lore. Tom tells Hellboy and Bobbie Jo that Effie taught him to summon "The Crooked Man," an eldritch entity tied to bargains: at Effie's urging Tom staged a small rite using a cat carcass and designated one bone as his "lucky bone" -- the piece he would hold when the Crooked Man arrived. When the creature manifested, Tom was terrified and discarded the lucky bone to renounce the pact; nevertheless the bone later returned to him and had safeguarded him ever since. Realizing that his involvement had opened a doorway for the Crooked Man, Tom declares that he intends to confront and end the entity he once beckoned.

A demonic familiar soon appears with Cora's bodily shell restored, and the woman -- partially coherent -- tells Tom that the circle of local witches aims to claim her soul. At that moment Effie Kolb arrives at the property mounted on a white horse to collect Cora's soul in payment. Hellboy steps forward and issues threats; Tom rushes the horse, removes its bridle, and in the instant the tack is stripped the animal's form collapses into that of Tom's estranged and long-absent father. Effie flees amid the confusion. Tom and the man who once abandoned him speak briefly and reconcile, but the father's body dies there on the farmhouse floor; no other hand strikes him down, and Tom watches his father expire. The episode leaves Tom shaken.

At dawn the small group carries the father's corpse to the nearest church to bury him. The church belongs to the blind Reverend Watts, who tends his parish with a quiet, stubborn piety. As the mourners make their way toward the churchyard a demonic snake erupts from the surrounding scrub and attacks Cora. The serpent savages her, killing Cora Fisher with a violent, repeated mauling. Hellboy engages the snake; he drives his stone-cuffed fist into the creature and dispatches it, tearing it apart to stop the attack. During the struggle the parasite's venom or contact transfers visions to Hellboy: he experiences involuntary, intrusive memories of his mother, Sara, and of the nature of her dealings -- memories that depict Sara's role as a witch and her coupling with an archdemon that led to Hellboy's conception.

After the burial the survivors retreat into Reverend Watts's church, but the sanctuary does not remain secure for long. The Crooked Man and an entourage of inhuman servants materialize in the churchyard and then press inside. The entity itself appears as a twisted, lanky figure with crooked limbs and a voice like old boards, and its followers coalesce into a demonic horde that assails the windows and doors. Tom, gripped by dread, reaches for his lucky bone and considers returning it to the Crooked Man; Hellboy intervenes and forbids Tom from giving it back. As the Crooked Man and his minions mount an assault, Hellboy steps into the breach and fights through the doorway and down a narrow aisle, striking creatures with heavy blows and fending off clawed attackers so that the others can move to safety. The Crooked Man adapts his tactics: he attempts to bribe Reverend Watts, promising him restored youth and the return of his sight if the blind priest will hand Tom over. Watts refuses, declining the promise of regained vision and refusing to betray Tom.

Realizing that Watts must be kept whole as an ally, Watts performs a ritual of his own: he presses Tom's lucky bone into the metal of a shovel and pronounces a blessing. The bone imbues the shovel, which Hellboy seizes and uses as a focused instrument to drive back the Crooked Man's servants. Each strike with the bone-inlaid shovel splinters the way the Crooked Man's minions cohere; demonic shapes recoil, grotesque limbs are severed, and several of the horde dissolve into ash or scatter. The shoveled blows progressively weaken the Crooked Man until he flees the church with Hellboy and Tom in pursuit.

Hellboy and Tom follow the Crooked Man out of town and trail him to an abandoned, decaying mansion on the edge of the mining district. Inside the mansion the Crooked Man invokes hallucinatory assaults tailored to each pursuer's deepest regrets and fears; viscous images and auditory distortions assail both men, dredging up Tom's wartime guilt and Hellboy's memories of his mother. The visions disorient them and slow their progress. Meanwhile, Bobbie Jo deduces that the Crooked Man draws strength from the town's old mines and their bound souls; she finds a hatch beneath the church that opens into a network of tunnels and shafts. She forces the hatch, descends into the dark, and moves through the narrow passages accompanied by Reverend Watts. Deep within the mine passages the Crooked Man's influence manifests as clutching, whispering phantoms; Watts and Bobbie Jo come under assault from flocks of demonic birds that swarm in the shaft air.

A sudden, violent surge of the creatures descends on Watts. The flock of spectral birds overwhelms the old priest and tears him apart in the confined tunnel; the birds peck and rend him until he dies there amid a shower of black feathers. Bobbie Jo is driven to flight by the same onrush of horrors, but she regains her composure. Realizing the birds and the haunting phantoms are bound to captive souls used as a reservoir of power by the Crooked Man, she performs a counter-ritual underground: Bobbie Jo chants, draws a circle in the dust, and then releases a focused spell that severs the tether between the trapped souls and the Crooked Man. Her incantation loosens the spirits from their forced service; the phantoms cease their assault and the birds lose their ferocity and scatter. As the captive souls are freed, the hallucinations tormenting Hellboy and Tom in the mansion abruptly break; the two men shake themselves free from the Crooked Man's psychic traps.

With the tether severed and the visions lifted, Hellboy and Tom renew the fight. Hellboy reenters the mansion wielding the blessed shovel; he drives the bone-edge into the Crooked Man's flesh and strikes at his tendrils. Each blow ruptures the Crooked Man's anchoring to the mortal plane, and Tom presses forward to land strikes where Hellboy cannot reach. The Crooked Man convulses as the freed souls withdraw their sustenance; its limbs unravel, and its servants collapse into nonexistence as Hellboy and Tom pulverize their forms. The pair combine their assaults until finally the Crooked Man collapses into a heap of splintered wood and shadow. The body of the entity fractures, its voice falls silent, and the last of its servants crumble into dust; Hellboy and Tom stand amid the ruin of the mansion as the immediate threat ends.

In the immediate aftermath of the Crooked Man's destruction Effie Kolb -- who had earlier fled after the horse-to-father transformation -- is subjected to the reversal of her bargain. The enchantments that conferred her apparent perennial youth fail; she rapidly ages before the eyes of those gathered, her skin puckering and her hair whitening in moments. Tom, witnessing Effie's rapid decline, takes his father's enchanted bridle -- the same piece Tom removed from the horse earlier and which had briefly brought his father back -- and fits it around Effie's head. The enchanted bridle arrests the acceleration of her aging and stabilizes her condition; Effie no longer appears to be youthfully eternal, but the worst of the sudden senescence is halted. Hellboy and Bobbie Jo are extricated from the scene; emergency efforts from the Bureau and local hands remove them from immediate danger and treat their wounds.

Tom stands among the survivors with the sense that a burden has finally left him. He explains that the bone that once belonged to him and the confrontations he endured have closed the contract he made, and that the town's witchcraft-driven traffic in souls has been interrupted. Outside, in the pale light, the white horse that had earlier transformed and then vanished wanders alone through the fields. Someone -- or someone's hand -- paints a warning across the animal's flank: "Beware! I am a Witch!" The horse moves on past church and farmhouse, the painted admonition exposed to any who pass, and the scene closes with the town quieted and the Crooked Man's immediate menace extinguished.

Hellboy defeats the Crooked Man by shooting off his head, freeing Tom's soul with a golden coin and leaving him to watch over the town, while he and Bobbie Jo are airlifted out by the BPRD. Effie rapidly ages and is transformed into a horse marked as a witch.

Tom and Hellboy track the Crooked Man through the dark woods to a derelict mansion, where Hellboy is suddenly beset by traumatic visions, including one of his mother Sarah, causing him to nearly shoot himself with his own gun. At the same time, in the mines beneath the church, Bobbie Jo and Reverend Watts enter the tunnel system; the Reverend is killed by supernatural forces there, but Bobbie Jo draws on her painful memories to finally cast a powerful spell against the giant demonic spider from the film's start. The spell expels the dark magic from the spider, shrinking it back to normal size and capturing it in a small jar, which disrupts the dark magic across the area and immediately snaps Hellboy out of his vision just in time. This weakening allows Tom, in the mansion, to force-feed the Crooked Man one of Cora's witchballs--a mystical object made by the local witches--directly into his mouth during a moment of distraction; piles of pennies spill from the Crooked Man's pockets as he weakens severely. Hellboy then recovers fully, lands powerful blows on the taunting Crooked Man, hurls him down a flight of stairs, and finishes him by shooting his head off with the Good Samaritan pistol. The Crooked Man's head explodes in a shower of gold coins, each representing a stolen soul over the years; Hellboy spots a particularly shiny one among them, picks it up, and hands it to Tom, lifting the curse and freeing Tom's soul from the deal he made long ago. Bobbie Jo and Hellboy emerge from the mines into the ruins of the tunnel, where she has found an emergency telephone; she calls the BPRD for extraction, and soon a helicopter arrives. Hellboy and Bobbie Jo board it, strolling out of town first while reflecting on the end of the 1950s, with Hellboy uncharacteristically cheerful saying he feels good times are coming; on the chopper flying home, Bobbie Jo snuggles up to Hellboy, who looks confused but pleased by the attention. Meanwhile, Hellboy and Tom find Effie in the woods, now rapidly aging from looking eternally young like Tom to a withered old woman, her youth revealed to have come from her own deal with the Crooked Man. Tom approaches the aged Effie with the cursed bridle she once put on his father; he uses it on her, transforming her into a white horse. Hellboy paints the words "Beware! I Am A Witch!" on the horse's side. They leave Tom in charge of overseeing the region now that the Crooked Man is destroyed. Hellboy flies off with Bobbie Jo for more adventures, his fate ongoing as a BPRD agent. Bobbie Jo survives empowered by her unlocked magic, comfortable in her bond with Hellboy. Tom survives freed from his curse, empowered by his own latent real powers rather than just the lucky cat bone, and takes responsibility for the town. The Crooked Man is killed and obliterated. Effie is transformed into a marked witch-horse. Reverend Watts is killed in the mines.

No, Hellboy: The Crooked Man (2024) does not have a post-credits scene. After the story concludes with Hellboy and B.P.R.D. agent Jo capturing the shrunken demonic spider, Hellboy defeating the Crooked Man by shooting his head to explode into soul-trapping coins, freeing Tom Ferrell from his pact, transforming the witch Effie into a horse marked "Beware I am a Witch," and escaping by helicopter, the film cuts directly to the end credits without any additional scenes, teases, or "Hellboy will return" caption.

No, Hellboy: The Crooked Man (2024) is not family friendly, as it carries an R rating for some violent content, nudity, and language.

Potentially objectionable or upsetting aspects for children or sensitive viewers include: - Graphic violence, such as fights with giant spiders, undead sinners, witches coming back to life, and other supernatural creatures. - Creepy horror elements like folk horror atmosphere, misty forests, rickety graveyards, visions of orifice-invading snakes, and surreal demonic encounters. - Nudity and strong language. - Sudden loud noises, twitchy editing, and intense jump scares in a gritty, low-budget horror style.