Hellraiser: Revelations – to watch or not to watch, that is the questions?

Movie poster saying: I am about to suck!

You know when you are a tr00 fan or something, you always take something new coming out of it with a cup of cautiousness, but either with excitement or with a first-aid kid ready at your side, in case of emergency. There’s no news in fact that I love Hellraiser , of course I am talking about the first film from 1987 and the novel The Hellbount Heart, written by an awesome guy named Clive Barker. To be fair, the sequel Hellbound:Hellraiser II  was an extremely good sequel to it, but later on since Hellraiser III: Hell On Earth they kind of lost it. Hellraiser VIII: Hellword was an abomination of this lovely franchise, coming a regular teenage/college kids countdown, but at least it still had Doug Bradley in the role of the leading Cenobite, Pinhead, who is – you like it or not – the alpha and the omega of everything Hellraiser films are all about.

           

Unfortunately a little bird came by and told me that I am yet to see another horrible Hellraiser film and let me tell you, the bird did not lie. Just a few days back Hellraiser 9: Revelations came out on DVD and I hesitated a lot whether to lay my eyes on it or not. Well, curiosity killed the cat and luckily didn’t kill me, but I was well prepared in case I needed to call an emergency.

Mr. Potato Head

First of, no legendary Doug Bradley. Mr. Bradley kindly declined the role of Pinhead in this film, because he’s obviously a very smart man and saw how bad this is going to be, when he read the script. So we get this ‘’new guy’’ whose name I don’t even remember and is not even worth goggling for, looking more like a very anaemic Mr. Potato Head who had a terrible accident while building a fence around a house and hit his head on some pins. Several times. His acting skills…. Not so much skills as kills, as in ‘’kills the joy out of watching this film’’. None whatsoever. The story? Do you really want to know? Ok, two guys decide to go partying in Mexico and take a video camera with them and don’t come back. So we’re jumping from present, where we see the families of these two guys having dinner together, to past, learning that the guys, stupid as two guys together on a journey of seeking fun can be, took the Lemarchand’s Box from, because they’re stupid and let a homeless guy (remember the homeless guy from the end of Hellraiser? I thought so. Many more resemblances are to follow) convince them to take it, because it leads to ultimate pleasure. Oh boy, if only they knew Cenobite’s kind of pleasure and the pleasure (sex, drugs & rock’n’roll) they were seeking don’t really resemble. So of course, they open the box and the crazy Mr. Potato Head appears, trying to be all ‘’Doug Bradley awesome kind of Pinhead’’, but fails miserably, which isn’t 100% his fault, but also the fault of whoever was stupid enough to write such a bad script. Pinhead & co. are known for their obscure way of talking, trying to explain whoever summoned the Cenobites what he did and what is about to happen, but man, give it a break! It has to be done with elegance and the right proportion of mysticism in it, but this guy sounded like a bad record repeating over and over again. Ok, where was I? Oh yea, so one of these guys comes back,  he’s a bit shaken and then we realize that it’s not actually him, but the other stupid guy, who killed this one to take his skin, after he lost his (of course, in resemblance to the original film, this time we also see a skinless guy needing victims to shamelessly steal their skin, and they have to be provided to him – remember Julia picking up men in the bar and taking them to Frank? What a coincidence!). So this guy is back, terrorizing his family, shooting around, then Cenobites come to action, do their stuff, none of which is explicit and therefore loses it’s credibility of being a bloody horror movie, and then the film ends. Say what? Yea, it just ends right there, in the middle of something and nothing. 75 minutes of pure nothing I say.

This is the real deal!

What a shame. No wondering Clive Barker has stated loud and clear he didn’t have anything to do with him or his original story, I would do the exact same thing. This is just such a great epic fail in the Hellraiser franchise, has nothing to do with the original story, has no story of its own, no suspension, no mystery, no horror and no real demons. And what’s the moral of this story? Where, before weird stuff begins to happen, the phone line in the house where the families are having dinner is off, there is no signal and the cars are gone. So, logically, one comes over an idea Pinhead is actually a car theft, waiting beyond this world to get his chance of stealing a car and driving away to… Hell, I’ve got nothing.