Hellboy Animated: Sword of Storms

What's with Hellboy movies and blinding, seizure-inducing flashing lights? Scorch my retinas, why don't you?

Overall, the movie struggled to keep me engaged and suffered a terribly anti-climactic ending, the action was rather lack-luster as well which was especially disappointing because this was an animated film and the sky is the limit in that department, but Ron Perlman playing the titular character is always a welcome delight.

Sword of Storms came out shortly after Guillermo del Toro's film, clearly trying to capitalise on the pull of its popularity. To be fair, one of its strengths is that it features the original actors voicing the main characters, which always adds up.

The problem is that, beyond that, the film doesn't quite work. The story feels slow and lazy, as if it were a succession of Hellboy's encounters with enemies, put one after the other without much order, something that would have fit better in a series format than in a movie.

Furthermore, the whole plot of Liz and Abe smells like pure filler, as if it had been shoehorned in just to justify the presence of the actors. And to top it all off, the editing is a mess: there are scenes that are clearly out of order, which breaks the rhythm of the story even more.

It's not worth it even for die-hard fans, it doesn't do justice to the character or the universe that promised so much.