Like the humans who misjudge or underestimate the big red lug on the big screen, I must apologize to Hellboy. Our first encounter, in 2004, was not a happy one. His debut film lurched about in fits and starts, and was compromised by obvious concessions to make him accessible to audiences, as he had tried to win over his peers by filing his satanic horns down to stumps. It didn’t work, and I yawned over the prospect of the sequel, Hellboy II: The Golden Army.

But what a difference four years makes. It’s true that comic book follow-ups, like Spider-Man 2 and Batman Returns, do tend to improve upon the originals: the cumbersome, usually overly reverent and fanboy-ish “origins” are dispensed with, and a more definite tone is established by a returning director who has played a winning hand and is all the more confident the second time out. This is true of the second Hellboy, which for me was the first to show something of the character’s uniqueness. But there is a greater alchemy at work here. With Pan’s Labyrinth, director Guillermo del Toro emerged as a true master of the macabre; that deftness, present but only fitfully visible on Hollywood assignments like Mimic and Blade II, has a transformative effect on this sequel. A movie I thought I’d catch on cable turns out to be one of the best and more satisfying films I’ve seen all year. I’m not worthy, Hellboy.

Given a freer hand, del Toro has made sensible choices. Extraneous human characters are gone or whittled down to size. There is a suggestion that the fantastical ones we spend more time with and come to care more about will free themselves from a plot crutch if the movie gods and demons favor us with a third installment. True, there are some things not even great talent can do. The structure of summer action movies is set in stone, with a whomping event imposed every 20 minutes to so to keep the allegedly impatient audience on its toes. But del Toro has the facility to up the ante, with astonishingly rich and engaged visuals that bear repeat viewings. Where Stephen Scott’s terrific production design, and the masterly art and set decoration, end and the CGI begins I could not tell, so seamless is the work, and the makeup and digital effects are equally fluid. More importantly, the writing, while it has its iffy patches on the comic side, is stronger in emotion, giving the inhuman and grotesque heart.

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