Hellraiser - Deader
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Movie Reviews of Hellraiser - Deader
Movie Review: Good movie, perfect service.
Summary: 5 Stars
The movie was a good Hellraiser movie.
Looking forward to the next one.
Movie Review: Very Dark, Very Disturbing Hellraiser Chapter
Summary: 4 Stars
The grittiest and bleakest of the "Hellraiser" saga - in everything from the kind of lighting used to the frequent usage of newspaper/'real-life' type horrors - drug addiction, decaying city slums, suicide, etc. - this is a new feel for the series, and it's a step back up from the good-but-not-great "Hellseeker", although not on level with any of the first five movies.
A newspaper reporter (Kari Wuhrer) who specializes in reporting on - or sensationalizing, depending on your point of view - the above type of happening, receives a videotape purporting to show the suicide and apparant resurrection of a member of a cult called the 'Deaders' and is dispatched by her paper to Romania to investigate. It feels kind of good to take the Hellraiser mythos to Romania, home of Transylvania and thus of Dracula and assorted other movie monsters; though one immediately noticeable flaw is how few people in the movie speak Romanian. I know Europe has a higher multilingual rate than North America, but still...you hear maybe fifteen words of Romanian from bit players and everybody else uses fluent English exclusively. There are no horror movies that I know of filmed in this language and this would have been a great opportunity to give Romanian fans one that's about half in their language (with subtitles of course), half in English. Anyway...
The mood gets darker and bleaker as things move into the rundown sections of Romania, not 'horror-dark' but 'mega-gloomy/nihilistic-dark' and it's a credit to the film's makers that it doesn't veer into the territory of being downright depressing, but avoids that trap and uses the bleakness to its advantage (I feel that 'bleak' is one of the hardest atmospheres to use effectively in a movie). The Deader cult is in possession of one of the puzzle boxes, and a plus of the movie is that it actually touches on something mentioned in the very first movie that's never been followed up on until now. The box can, most fans will probably remember, be manipulated into Configurations other than Lament, and can apparantly open doors to a number of realities, not all of them nearly so hellish as that which we've seen. In the first movie Pinhead said that in some cultures they (the Cennobites) are perceived as angels, in other demons. Okay, we've certainly seen the demonic side of things but precious little that anybody would think of as 'angelic'. "Hellraiser: Deader" only runs along the surface of this new ground, but it is an opening. This whole line of other realms/other perceptions is something I'd like to see explored further somewhere down the line. If a user opens a different configuration, do the Cennobites emerge less hostile and 'nicer'? Or are there cults or cultures out there that consider the Cennobites in the form we've seen them to be angels? (What the heck would their demons be like?!?) Are there configurations that will summon forth beings other than Cennobites? If you watch the origin of the boxes in "Bloodline" the answer to that last one would seem to be no, but then again if you look at things from a different angle, perhaps it could be. A passage was built that opens into, apparantly, Hell - could the passage also function - unintentionally? or as a defence backup? You have to watch "Bloodline" and decide for yourself I guess - as a door to and from other places (or times)? And you have to look at what the maker knew and what he didn't know about his assignment. There's a wealth of material here to explore if one chooses to take it up.
Which has little directly to do with "Deader", except to note that it's gotten the ball rolling in these new directions. And while it's done it, it's offered some new ways to look at things (subjectively; it hinted at possible new interpretations without actually contradicting anything from before) and it's carved itself out a nice niche in the Hellraiser mythos as a distinctly grim, and very worthy, chapter in the series.
Movie Review: Still Worthy Of The Hellraiser Legacy
Summary: 4 Stars
I will start with this overview of Hellraiser 7:Deader with this: It STILL isn't the time to ignore the franchise. While I won't waste space here to tell you the storyline of this chapter (Amazon reviewer "Juscelino Liberato De Aquino" has done that just fine earlier here), I will say this, this movie shows Pinhead actually being a needed part of this film. Y'see, ever since Hellraiser 5:Inferno, ole Pinhead has been reduced to a side player, basically showing up at the end to collect his check. Not that he doesn't do that as well in this, the seventh in the series, but at least he seems to have a good enough reason to, which is strange since that this film was originally written as "Deaders", a stand alone film that never was going to get made until it was merged with some Hellraiser writing to make it part of the film series. The result is a great, gory, horror film that's in touch with the original Clive Barker classics, as if he made it himself.
Now I'm sort of biased in this movie since I own & enjoy all the films in the series (and plan to buy Hellraiser 8:Hellworld when it comes out in September of '05), but this one actually proved to me that there's still some legitmate life left in the series. Where as Parts 5 and Part 6:Hellseeker were entertaining, but they constantly reminded me of pilots for "Hellraiser:The Television Series", and no one really wants that! This one truly has a classic 80's horror vibe, with a scary script that works and plenty of non-airable on the public airwaves graphic footage. This one should bring the people that left the franchise back, after leaving probably around maybe Part 4:Bloodline.
Oh, and one final thing, as a horror movie fan who enjoyed them through the late 80's, and then suffered through all the bad ones of the 90's, and now almost skip any original one made now (should horror ever, and I mean ever, be rated PG-13?), this one gave me hope that a good one can still be made in this day & age. While this isn't the best of the series, it ranks up there after say Part 3:Hell On Earth (which remarkably STILL isn't availible on American DVD after all this time, probably because of all the music right issues). So follow Pinhead again and remember that "He Is The Way!"
Movie Review: Good Horror: Minimal Hellraiser
Summary: 4 Stars
This is a turf war with Pinhead being on the outer fringes. The Deaders have somehow impinged on the world of the Cenobites and Pinhead, and this illustrates their struggle, and only minimally does the role of Pinhead actually drive the narrative.Probably the most surprising character element is the identity of the leader of the DEADERS... it is a male descendant of Le Marchant ( the maker of the original Puzzle box),
The film is a high toned horror film, with some great supernatural scenes, but the Pinhead components are almost an afterthought; but, as you will discover, the original script had some superb horror elements as sub-plots, and these were pared back so that the Hellraiser components could be forced in to the film. It is clear from Bota's comments in the making of featurette that budget drives most of the changes.
The Disc extras are brilliant. Many extra features, 2 sets of commentaries, even a short "gag" reel, with some rather strange mistake moments by Doug Bradley. The FX guy does make the comment that the work in HELLWORLD, the next film, is more "Gnarly" so, given that it seems that the FX guy is a bigger Hellraiser fan than the director, I think we can expect some better Pinhead elements... however, expecting one thing, and having it delivered are two different events. Especially since the Director Rick Bota, reveals in his commentary that after a 25 day shoot for DEADER, they began shooting HELLWORLD virtually immediately after they completed DEADER. Just how did the director see the DEADER project through ? If it is the DIMENSION execs are behind this, then someone should give them a wakeup call. I honestly hope that PINHEAD and the Cenobites, plus the superb FX of the first few films are present in HELLWORLD, but like a darn fool, I'll buy it mainly because of Doug Bradley's consistently good work. If Joel Soisson can do the magic with PROPHECY that on the HELLRAISER films, then I would hope he gets the gig. And they wonder why Theatre release films tend to tank so much.
Movie Review: "Hellraiser: Deader" - Finally here but a bit of a let down?
Summary: 4 Stars
Well finally "Hellraiser: Deader" has arrived after a few years gathering dust on the shelf. I agree with other members that it does seem to breathe some life in to this once outstanding franchise, but as with the other sequels it just lacks what the earlier films had in abundance. My personal view is that you can really tell that this wasn't written as a "Hellraiser" film. For the first half hour or so except with the odd reference to "The Box" this could have been any other horror film and it kind of remains that way throughout. The one thing really missing for me as with "Hellraiser: Inferno" and "Hellraiser: Hellseaker" is we just don't see enough of the "Cenobites". I don't just mean "Pinhead" I mean all of them. You see a few glancing shots of them, but I'm sorry its just not enough. To be fair "Pinhead" did seem to play a bigger part in this than Parts V or VI, however he has almost become a extra these days. I have read a few comments from other users saying that these films are not about "Pinhead" but there is a reason he has been in all of the franchise to date. I agree that one of the strengths of "Hellraiser" is they are stand alone stories, but in any franchise you need a recurring factor and the "Cenobites" and in particular "Pinhead" is it. The "Cenobites" are "Hellraiser", which is why the later films don't feel like "Hellraiser" movies at all. "Hellraiser: Deader" is a good and one of the better sequels to date and should give all fans hope for "Hellraiser: Hellworld" but as I remarked with "Hellraiser: Hellseaker" the fleeting glimpses of the "Cenobites" just are not enough. Get back to the essence of the movies and set the story around them or let them play a major part again. The later films in this series sadly, could have been so much more.