Hellraiser - Deader
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Movie Reviews of Hellraiser - Deader
Movie Review: What in the Hellraiser Was That About?
Summary: 3 Stars
Well, it seems that Pinhead is back, but takes nearly an hour to show up in this latest opus. I am a real fan of Part One and especially III, the rest really I could care less and this one is one of them. Part "The Ring" and part "Star Wars" this film borrows more from other films than its own franchise. Still, like Darth Vader, when Pinhead is on screen he IS awesome and makes up for the slow pacing. The film does pull together nicely by the end, but it is a long journey coming. Fans of the series will still find the usual gore galore.Movie Review: really not a bad movie
Summary: 3 Stars
I personal always felt direct to dvd movies were all crapy. Well folks it true, but on this film and other hellraiser hellworld. These were good movies and even wroth full price. I enjoy them, but also felt the remake of halloween suck. So keep that in mind folks and have lovely day.Movie Review: Dead On Its Feet
Summary: 2 Stars
Benjamin Carr wrote this, the seventh film in the Hellraiser series. It's unlikely that you've heard of any of the other thirty titles he has under his belt as a writer (except maybe for Thirteen Ghosts). Most of his movies have names like The Killer Eye, or Hideous!, or Murdercycle (which is available on this website for $1.61). I kinda wished I known that before going into HELLRAISER - DEADER. Not that I'm digging Benjamin Carr. I certainly haven't written 31 movies, but even he must admit, when he whips out a script entitled Zarkorr! The Invader, he's not really in it for the prestige or the artistic challenge. Good for him for making a living out of it. Bad for you, if you watch this film.
The plot is nothing we haven't already seen in at least two of the HELLRAISER films and a handful of the more commercial projects to hit the big screens in the last five years. The story concerns Amy Klein, a fiesty young reporter who will go to any lengths to get the story. She must be something of a big deal because she's unaccountably arrogant. This is saying a lot, considering how many other arrogant characters have been strewn about the plot. (In fact, if you can last up to twenty seconds into the final credits, the eighth character listed is called The Arrogant Reporter, and they aren't referring to Amy Klein).
Amy's boss, Charles Richmond, endures her with the same snarky respect that you can find in any other boss with a brilliant but reckless charge: M from Bond, Lois Lane's boss (all I can remember is they called him Chief), and whoever happens to be Will Smith's supervisor in three out of four Will Smith movies. You growl, you make snide comments, and then you let your star employee do his/her thing. In an intro gorged with exposition, Charles reveals that this time around he has a special assignment for Amy. It comes in the form of a video tape.
The tape is from a girl who is documenting a group of people known as Deaders, nihilistic ne'er-do-wells led by a man called Winter. "Fear is the place we go to learn," Winter says to a young redhead, in one of the movie's few good lines. (Carr must've known it was good; it is repeated several times.) In the video, the redhead repeats phrases like "I'm not real," and "Nothing's real," before finally killing herself. Then, somehow, Winters brings her back to life. Sounds like front page material.
You know, the funny thing? This homemade video that had been sent specifically to Amy Klein, it's meant to look gritty and real, but the production values on it are at least as good as the larger movie within which it is shown. It's like a little mini-Hellraiser film. "Look here! It's a Cliff's Notes form of the plot you're about to watch."
No. I didn't give the movie away. I hate it when people do that. Suffice it to say that the movie gives itself away, especially after Amy discovers Pinhead's box and -- in a classic move -- does exactly what she's been warned not to do. During her investigation, Amy runs into some kind of kingpin named Joey. Whatever Joey is, he for some reason has commandeered and lives in the last car of a subway train. When Amy visits him, it is a surreal scene of ambiguously disturbing acts of varying degrees of nudity. It's so off-the-wall and well-spaced that it comes across like a museum of depravity, another cheesy room in your neighbor's haunted house. Joey helps Amy because she's "got that [ahem] self-destructive thing going on." Another good line (and in keeping with the Hellraiser spirit). So good that it is repeated several more times.
But parroting a theme doesn't make it real. And if the movie's other good line -- that we learn through fear -- is real, then this movie has two strikes against it, because it is neither scary nor smart. It is actually very much like the video tape that gets Amy involved in this quest to begin with. Both of them pack a bit of a punch in places, both of them are a little too slick to take seriously, and both of them are confusing and unsatisfying. What are their differences?
One of them is about 86 minutes longer.
Movie Review: Deader...Or Just Plain Dead?
Summary: 2 Stars
Just like the "Changeling," I remember how much I loved the original "Hellraiser" when I was growing up. Along with its authenticity and intense gore, it had a killer plot that one rarely ever sees in horror films. Clive Barker's "Hellraiser" was originally not intended to be the progenitor of seven (or is it eight) cheap, slasher-based sequels. Not to say that I'm totally dissing the films, especially since they're much more intricate and well made than any "Jason" or "I Still Know What You Did 'Two Summers Ago'" sequels. Hellraiser itself was meant to be a human-based, psychological thriller where demons like Pinhead existed merely to shed light on the film's central theme- -the dangers of mankind's unchecked desires.
Hence, "Deader" comes out straight to DVD. Of course, no one expects too much from a straight to DVD/video release. However, "Deader" exhibits a great deal of potential that unfortunately is never realized. The first two-thirds of the film are very interesting...A bold, yet rather self-destructive reporter with a dark, hidden past is sent out to investigate a cult commonly referred to as the "Deaders."
Throughout the film, the only thing that is for certain about the cult is that its members are led to commit suicide, and are then inexplicably raised from the dead. Naturally, along with the mystery behind the Deader cult comes the interminable Pinhead and the famous puzzle box found in all the Hellraiser films. The box itself is known as the Lament Configuration.
Apparently, the creator of the original box (the box's origins/creator are revealed in "Hellraiser 4: Bloodline") is the great-grandfather of the leader of the Deader cult. So not only does he raise his followers from the dead, the cult leader basically lures them into opening the puzzle box and then brings them back. But then...it doesn't really make sense that a substantial mass of people can open the box and then go back to the real world without being tortured or even taken down to hell by Pinhead and the other Cenobites.
What's more, any lucid explanations pertaining to how the cult leader can bring his followers back from the dead are NEVER given. Despite a few cryptic hints, the film never explains why the cult leader really wants to kill people and bring them back, only to become a bunch of rotting, corpsy-looking sycophants. More importantly, the film doesn't give enough clues as to how the cult leader's plans coincide with hell, Pinhead, and the puzzle box.
All in all, this has the makings of a great horror film, yet the end sort of makes you feel like you've just sat through one big 90 minute tease. I give kudos to the guys who tried to make this low-budget sequel. After all, from what I hear the director (or whoever) may have simply run out of money to fully complete the film. But like most people, I don't really enjoy being teased. So in the end, I think "Deader" should just remain dead.
Movie Review: Endurable B-movie instalment in tired saga
Summary: 2 Stars
Hellraiser: Deader is the eighth (or so) in the series kicked off by Clive Barker's cinematic magnum opus of gore: Hellraiser, which brought to eighties audiences the ultimate slasher villain: the immortal, vain and verbose Pinhead. This film, however, is far removed from the master's original vision of a pleasure-seekers' purgatory.
More importantly for fans, the series' Cenobites, grotesque, pleasure-and-pain-inflicting supernatural entities led by Pinhead, do not appear at all, except in the DVD extras, and the storyline itself was clearly intended to be a Pinhead-free affair. That is, until the Dimension straight-to-DVD department signed a cheque and made a sensible commercial decision to adapt the story for the Hellraiser canon.
I certainly am not one to be riled by capitalism and its inherent compromises, and this film unquestionably presents decent, low-grade genre fare, with an easily-digestable side of gore.
Our lead screamer, Kari Wuhrer, an exploitation-film actress who found fame on the syndicated Sliders TV show, is watchable, overcoming some dodgy dialogue and terrible costumes. Shot in Romania, no doubt for budgetary reasons, the film-makers manage to find several spooky locations and evoke a cool, wrong-side-of-the-iron-curtain creepiness throughout proceedings.
The plot is as follows: a star writer for a sleazy Fleet Street (London) tabloid begins to investigate a strange cult of young people in Bucharest, who appear to rise from the dead after having committed ritualistic suicide. Hellraising elements become merely an adjunct to our self-destructive heroine's temptation by, and ultimate victory over, these nasty young hedonists: the "Deaders".
Solid production values - considering what it is - and a moderately interesting underlying concept, see this film make the grade (just) as far as this horror fan is concerned. And, while reduced to side-show status, the Hellraiser cycle's iconic bad-guy does get to spout a few lines and chuck a few chains around, even if the lines are uninspired and the chains cheesy CGI.
Nonetheless, it really is hard to get past those shocking costumes the film-makers force our leading lady into. Beautiful as she is, Wuhrer is no teenager, and the character she is playing is portrayed as younger than she clearly is. But decking her out in boots and grunge jackets and tying her hair into goofy teen styles does not mask her age, it just looks ridiculous. And what single woman, travelling alone, wears a man's shirt (and no bra) to bed? Really, it was all highly alienating! Call me unreasonable or unfair, but I am rounding down the 2½ stars just for that.
I cannot recommend you buy the DVD, but check out your local video library for some guilty, spooky pleasures, then make a decision as to whether you want Hellraiser: Deader in you collection.