I'm normally not strictly against gore -- loved the opening scene of Lake Placid where the guy is bitten in half -- love the blood splashing artistically in Conan the Barbarian -- love the ludicrous social commentary and accompanying blood-letting in RoboCop. However, this has soooo much gore -- like Event Horizon, it's egregious and unnecessary. The one kudo I can give is the nice little plot twist in re Hellboy's origins. And I like the Alice character, as well as the addition of a very unpleasant Baba Yaga. This may be a version closer to the original Dark Horse comics, but I miss Del Toro's chill touch and the solid empathy of Perlman's Hellboy. The new Hellboy still seems familiar enough, but the plot path of the film was soaked in crimson, obscuring what otherwise would have been a good story.
