It's too soon to say whether The Dark Knight will live up to the hype (signs and whispers point to YES!), but it's safe to say it will look nothing like Hellboy II: The Golden Army. That's because director Guillermo del Toro still likes to stylize his comic-book movies like comic books: bright-colored make-up, water that's too clear to be real, and creatures that go creepy-crawly into the night. Perhaps because of this, it's popular to call del Toro "visionary"—just ask MTV, Entertainment Weekly, the Washington Post, or Premiere. And they're all correct, if by visionary they mean he creates cool-looking things that get under the skin.

Following the crossover success of his fairy-tale-cum-Spanish-war-tome Pan's Labyrinth, it seems like del Toro has been given free reign to properly blow his CG load with Hellboy II—and he does (especially with a forest god that grows to giant proportions—just add water!). But 110 minutes and about 12 set pieces later, it can also be too much of a good thing. Big on details and short on heart, del Toro has made the kind of sequel for fans who already know he's brilliant—and don't need to be told again.

The Hellboy blitzkrieg starts with an opening credits sequence revealing a series of gears—the kind of old-school flourish that shows off del Toro's attention to detail—and dispatches the rest of the plot (ancient myth, ectoplasm, trolls, mutant pregnancy) with similar mechanical efficiency. After his surrogate dad passes away, Hellboy (Ron Perlman) holes himself in the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense drinking cheap beer, eating Baby Ruths, and arguing with his new off-and-on girlfriend Liz (Selma Blair). As in the first film, the villain—a prince bent on destroying the world—is beside the point. The real conflict is between the mutant world and the human one: hecklers call Hellboy "ugly" on the street, and a shot superimposes his face with the monster's mangled mug from Bride of Frankenstein. (It's hard out here for a super-demon.) Everyone's looking for love, and del Toro uses the Eels' "Beautiful Freak" to suggest the unspoken solidarity between Hellboy and the other freaks.

But then just as quickly as del Toro brings his characters to the front, they're pushed back again by his overzealous myth-making. Every punch or sword fight is pitched so high and packed so tight, after a while it's hard to see anything in between.