Review: Hellraiser: Revelations (2011)

by Trey Lawson - celluloidsheep.wordpress.com

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Best Bad Quote:

“You were fucking – now she’s fucking dead! How’s that an accident?!”

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Hellraiser has always been something of a redheaded (pinheaded?) stepchild in the realm of horror franchises. However, the first two films are incredibly entertaining, creepy horror movies with a style all their own. After Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth the series started to go downhill, and by the fifth film it was merely a straight-to-DVD affair. Even so, one could always count on Doug Bradley to bring gravitas and authority to the role of Pinhead. There has been talk for several years of rebooting the franchise, as has been done already with Halloween, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Friday the 13^th, and A Nightmare on Elm Street, yet production has never progressed beyond the scripting/pre-production stages. In fact, it has taken so long that Dimension Films was in danger of losing the rights to the franchise if they did not produce a new Hellraiser film soon.

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That brings us to this film, the ninth in the Hellraiser series. Shot in just three weeks, with a budget estimated at around $300,000, Hellraiser: Revelations is the worst sequel to a major horror franchise that I have ever seen – and I’ve seen Texas Chainsaw Massacre: the Next Generation TWICE. The whole affair, from the sets and effects to the writing and performances, is strictly amateur hour. The cinematography is awful – a whole section of the film is presented as ‘found footage’ (although this gimmick is mercifully abandoned/forgotten), but even in the traditionally shot sequences there is an overabundance of shaky cam, as though somehow keeping the audience disoriented might distract from the cheapness of the production.

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The plot mostly plays like a Cliff’s Notes of paraphrases and half-remembered moments from the rest of the series. The raw materials are all there – Cenobites, hedonists looking to find the ultimate pleasure, people skinned alive, and mutilation by chains and hooks. Yet all of these things are presented without style, emotion, or any sense of purpose. The same goes for the actors – most of them are doing nothing more than reading/reciting their lines, and I can’t recall a single good performance from the bunch. The worst, of course, is the recasting of Pinhead. Even in the worst of the prior sequels, one could count on Doug Bradley to bring his A-game to the role (if only for a few minutes of screen time). Since Bradley (wisely) turned down the role in this rush-job of a movie, the role of Pinhead went to Stephan Smith Collins, who does not look or sound right at all for the role. Yet in this first Bradley-free Hellraiser, the director and/or producers felt the need to double down on the Pinhead content – not by giving him extra screen time, but instead by adding a second “Pseudo-Pinhead” character. Yes, it is as dumb as it sounds. Also, NONE of the human characters come anywhere close to being likeable. At best they are all spoiled, whiny, upper-middle class jerks who do nothing to earn sympathy from the audience.

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This train-wreck of a horror movie utterly fails at being scary, and it really isn’t even all that funny either. It is full of plot holes, gaps, stupid/unlikeable characters, and bad writing. All of this, combined with the fact that it exists purely to make a quick buck and to keep the franchise in the current producers’ hands, make for a terrible film. I can’t recommend this for anyone other than die-hard completionist fans of the Hellraiser series or masochists with a high tolerance for cinematic pain. For everyone else – Don’t buy. Don’t rent. To watch this film in its entirety is a greater torture than any Cenobite could devise.

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Rating:

1 out of 5 Botched Demon Facelifts

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