Hellraiser: Judgment

It has come to this.  Sure, there were ten Friday the 13th movies, but did there really haveta be ten Hellraisers?  Especially given the lack of quality seen in the last six or seven?

I was gonna touch on it in a new series, which may or may not ever happen (we’ll see!), but I loved the original Hellraiser.  It was a unique concept, a cool design, and was dark and gory without going too far with it.  The first and second sequels were solid follow-ups, even if Hell on Earth had some massive and glaring deficiencies.  From then on, from Bloodline to the horrendous Revelations, there was less and less of Hellraiser in the films: from the fifth on, the entries weren’t even originally meant to be part of the franchise, the Cenobites tacked onto existing material to wring some extra profit from their humdrum returns.  The iconic Doug Bradley even left the series after the eighth entry, Hellworld, and his replacement just plain made me sad.  This has been a franchise on forced life support, “Fortitude” with even less consent, and the offerings we’ve been given exist mainly to keep the rights within Dimension’s control.  This newest entry doesn’t look like it wants to buck the trend, either.

Let’s start off with some positives for once, shall we?  This actually does look to have been made with an eye toward actually being a Hellraiser movie.  Paul Taylor does a decent job as the new Pinhead.  The plot revolves around the Cenobites and their doings (to an extent), and the supporting action stems from them and leads back to them, just like the earliest entries in the franchise.  There was also some creative thought put into this one, with a nod toward an expanded mythos for the Cenobites to fit into.

And, funnily enough, these positives also serve as the jumping-off point for the litany of negatives.

That’s right, this thing is an absolute pile.  The plot is basically a ripoff of Seven, just with less style and less knowledge of the Bible (according to the script, “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” is from the Good Book, rather than, y’know, the Babylonian law books and such).  Shots are repeated, grossness replaces genuine creepiness, and most of the sets look like music video sets (I’m thinking “Closer” and “Sober” mostly) without the style and atmosphere.  There’s poor sound editing, and many of the sound effects sound like stock offerings.

The budget for this thing was listed at half a million dollars, but it feels even cheaper.  Alongside the crappy sound is a plethora of cheap visual effects, including some poor-looking fog at the beginning, muzzle flashes that look like they came straight out of a program I could use, and even Chatterer doesn’t quite chatter right.  One of the newer characters’ dialogue isn’t matched right with his mouth movements, and his makeup clearly made it difficult for the actor to speak.

Said actor was also the director, writer, makeup effects designer, associate producer, and costume designer, one Gary Tunnicliffe.  He had worked on some of the previous entries in makeup and special effects, but hadn’t written or directed anything of note before this.  And his greenness shows, unfortunately.  The script is painfully bad, riddled with some atrocious dialogue, horrific allusions to the Bible and literature, and callbacks and references to other franchise films and beyond (including an unnecessary reading of “We have such sights to show you!”, the appearance of Nightmare on Elm Street vet Heather Langenkamp (as Ashley Laurence’s cameo days are finally done), and the use of the name Ludovico, a clear reference to A Clockwork Orange).  I guess no one told him not to reference better films in his shitty one.  Moreover, the object of the main policemen’s hunt is alternately called the “Perceptor” and/or the “Preceptor”, depending on how the actors felt like reading it that day (it’s meant to be the latter, by the by), and it’s insanely distracting throughout.

Tunnicliffe’s story is also rote and inane, ripping off Seven and making absolutely no sense along the way.  His additions to the Cenobite mythos, including the character he himself plays and the others in his coterie (including a cameo from Feast director John Gulager), are kinda neat and interesting, but don’t really fit with the feel and tone established for this franchise.  In fact, they might actually be decently well suited for their own series, but I guess that’s been ruined.  Moreover, the actual Heaven comes into play in this entry, mostly in the form of the apocryphal archangel Jophiel (and, hey, I learned something today!), but the way she’s dealt with makes no sense in a grander way (spoilers: how is it possible to kill an archangel, much less torture her and making her bleed?), and the larger mythos thereby hinted at just waters down the Cenobites and their terror (all while being written so cynically that you’d think a sixteen-year-old me was responsible).

In sum, this is a pitiful excuse for a Hellraiser movie, or any movie, for that matter.  It’s poorly made, poorly conceived, just poor.  I guess I should’ve expected such pain from the tenth entry in an already battered and bruised franchise, but, hey, even I can have my optimistic moments.  Don’t waste your time on this unless you are as much of a completionist as I.