Curator Watchlist
A visually exuberant dark-fantasy sequel with richer creature design, stronger world-building, and more personality than the first film. It’s less about tight plotting than about mood, monsters, and melancholy charm, but for viewers who want imaginative spectacle with a weird romantic heart, it delivers.
Where to watch: Buy
Fri · 2h 0m
Director: Guillermo del Toro
Starring: Ron Perlman, Selma Blair, Doug Jones
Hellboy, his pyrokinetic girlfriend, Liz, and aquatic empath, Abe Sapien, face their biggest battle when an underworld elven prince plans to reclaim Earth for his magical kindred. Tired of living in the shadow of humans, Prince Nuada tries to awaken an ancient force of killing machines, the all-powerful Golden Army, to clear the way for fantasy creatures to roam free. Only Hellboy can stop the dark prince and prevent humanity's annihilation.
Guillermo del Toro
Ron Perlman, Selma Blair, Doug Jones
A visually exuberant dark-fantasy sequel with richer creature design, stronger world-building, and more personality than the first film. It’s less about tight plotting than about mood, monsters, and melancholy charm, but for viewers who want imaginative spectacle with a weird romantic heart, it delivers.
Hellboy II: The Golden Army is the rare sequel that feels freer, stranger, and more alive than its predecessor. Guillermo del Toro leans hard into his love of folklore, ornate production design, and sympathetic monsters, building a world that feels like a cracked-open storybook full of grief, romance, and menace.
The plot is serviceable rather than gripping, but the film’s pleasures are overwhelmingly visual and tonal: inventive creature work, lush practical makeup, and a playful sense of scale. It’s also funnier and more emotionally open than you might expect, with Hellboy’s outsider status and Abe Sapien’s tenderness giving the movie an unexpectedly soft center.
If you respond to fantasy as atmosphere, texture, and imagination, this is a strong watch. If you need narrative momentum above all else, it may feel shaggy, but for many viewers that looseness is part of the charm.
Matt Singer (4.5★) · 1313 likes
Now this is more like it. The Golden Army improves on the first Hellboy in basically every way. The boring characters from the first movie have all been jettisoned (they even joke about the fact that Hellboy got the milquetoast perspective character transferred to Antarctica) and the villains are vastly more interesting this time around. (Also, given that their main motivation is “Humanity sucks,” they’re basically the tragic heroes.) The effects are sharper, the creature design is way more del… more
karen h. (5★) · 1034 likes
this movie is singlehandedly responsible for my instant-cry reaction to “can’t smile without you”
˗ˏˋ suspirliam ˊˎ˗ (3.5★) · 703 likes
they just don’t do creature design like this anymore!!!!!! gdt’s mind truly is the most wonderful place
David Sims (4.5★) · 465 likes
makes pan's labyrinth look like reheated trash soup more like pan's lamebyrinth
Ralph (3.5★) · 465 likes
Hellboy Retrospective: Hellboy II: The Golden Army Hellboy II is a worthy successor to the original, with stunning special effects and a funny sense of humor. Both the old cast, as well as the new characters were very enjoyable. The film features a plethora of inventive character designs. There are so many different creatures in this film that it makes the first film look like a low budget movie in comparison. This film is a testament to Guillermo Del Toro’s… more
The clearest tonal companion: dark fairy-tale imagery, tragic mythmaking, and exquisite creature design.
Shares the tenderness toward monsters, romantic melancholy, and tactile visual storytelling.
The direct predecessor, for viewers who want the setup and character dynamics that this sequel expands.
Another kinetic, creature-heavy genre film with the same director’s taste for grotesque beauty.
A haunting ghost story that balances wartime dread with elegiac fantasy imagery.
Opulent gothic atmosphere, romantic doom, and lavish production design.
A surreal, baroque fantasy world driven by invention, oddball creatures, and melancholy wonder.
Classic adventure fantasy with a playful, handmade feel and a strong sense of magical world-building.
For viewers drawn to ornate fantasy visuals, mythic stakes, and dreamlike production design.
A beloved fantasy about wonder, loss, and the emotional power of imagined worlds.
If the appeal is fairy-tale wit mixed with adventure and romance, this is an easy overlap.
A darker, storybook-inflected fantasy with monsters, folklore, and a slightly ragged charm.
outsider identity, monsters as sympathetic beings, mythic fantasy, family and belonging, humanity versus the supernatural, tragic romance, power and succession, ecological or civilizational collapse
dark fantasy, creature design, gothic adventure, practical effects, fairy-tale tone, comic-book adaptation, whimsical grotesque, 2000s fantasy, monster romance