Though the team behind the upcoming Hellboy reboot continues to insist that the film will be a gory work akin to a horror movie, the promotional material for Neil Marshall’s flick has yet to offer much evidence for these claims, with the first trailer in particular raising some eyebrows with its lightly comedic tone and ’80s dance pop soundtrack. But while this new image shared by USA Today may not offer anything in the vein of the decapitations and literal bloodbaths teased by actor David Harbour last month, it at least hints at a potentially brutal set piece.
In the new still, we witness Harbour himself charging into the action, rushing past some uniformed figures who appear to have been forced to the floor if they aren’t outright dead. Much like the various marketing material we’ve seen previously, this particular still shies away from showing anything too gruesome, but given the movie’s R-rating, you can imagine that the ensuing conflict could get very messy.
All the same, with just over three months to go before the film arrives in cinemas, the promotion for Hellboy has its work cut out for it when it comes to winning over the project’s many doubters. For those who enjoyed the acclaimed take on the Dark Horse property offered by Ron Perlman and Guillermo del Toro over the course of two movies, it was always going to be a little jarring to see someone else in the lead role, and after the mixed response received by the reboot’s first trailer, fans seem more skeptical than ever.
Nonetheless, if Hellboy really is the horror show that Harbour says it is, then perhaps the film can still find its audience when it hits theaters on April 12th, 2019.