When it comes to horror movies I’m the opposite of Morrissey’s “We Hate It When Our Friends Become Successful.” I enjoyed Get Out, though I’d have enjoyed it more (and, in a directly related phenomenon, paid less attention to its plot holes) had the whole goddamn story and vibe and theme and specific bits not been spoiled for me prior to seeing it. I’ve never enjoyed a Guillermo del Toro film before so I don’t anticipate enjoying, or frankly even watching, The Shape of Water. But I love horror, I’m a horror person, del Toro and Jordan Peele are horror people (also Mexican and Black respectively, and not doing corporate franchise work to boot), and the fucked-up movies they made won Best Screenplay and Best Director and Best Picture. Normie World doesn’t matter, but my favorite genre just stole some awards from Normie World, and I’m delighted.

…nearly all of the “Mignolaverse” titles are shot through with a sense of tremendous loss, of mind-warping waste. The world Hellboy and his friends inhabit is a brutal one, rendered unspeakably ugly by a combination of venal people whose minds are too small for empathy and the unstoppable forces they therefore unleash.

Moreover, there’s a specific sense throughout the saga that the violence wielded by its protagonists is futile, even counterproductive. The most gung-ho member of the B.P.R.D., heavily scarred ex-Marine Captain Ben Daimio, secretly harbored an evil spirit that eventually took over and rampaged through the team’s headquarters. An attempt by the artificial man Roger the Homunculus to ape Daimio’s hard-charging attitude led directly to his own death. The depiction of violence as causing more problems than it solves is a self-critique that few superhero stories attempt, and even the ones that attempt it usually ultimately reject it.

Yet Hellboy and the B.P.R.D. soldier on, fighting a menace they are too weak, and too late, to stop. Their goal, to the extent that they have one, is simply to survive, and to preserve what little light and life they can — to write an epilogue for a story that has already ended.

Apocalypse now and forever: I wrote about Hellboy, the BPRD, and pop-cultural armageddons for Grantland.