HELLRAISER: HELLWORLD (2005)

Hellraiser fans obsessed with an online game called Hellworld attend a party hosted by the mysterious Host (Henriksen). They attend despite the fact that two years ago, a friend of theirs was killed because of the game. It all seems like a night of fun, frolicking and fornication, until it all starts getting bloody…

First thing’s first, I’m actually not a die-hard Hellraiser fan myself, though I do respect the series to some degree. The original was well-made and featured a fantastic-looking horror villain in Pinhead, but was also cold and unpleasant. I missed Hellraiser: Deader, but have seen the rest of the series, which have mostly gotten worse and worse. Hellraiser: Hellbound was virtually plotless but visually interesting, Hellraiser: Hell on Earth was a mediocre Freddy Krueger wannabe, Hellraiser: Bloodline was inexplicable, and Hellraiser: Hellseeker wasn’t quite as abominable as its predecessor Hellraiser: Inferno which made no sense whatsoever. On my “Hellraiser” scale, I’d put this latest (and perhaps last, though Clive Barker has made a few statements to suggest otherwise) entry above “Inferno” and “Hellseeker”, but none of the others. In other words, it sucks, just not as bad as I had expected. Take that for whatever it’s worth, folks.
The plusses are few and far between, and not exactly earth-shattering anyway. Lance Henriksen, despite clearly not in an especially demanding role, looks to be having a whale of a time, and is always fun to have around even in junk like this. Secondly, the music score opens rather impressively with a more traditional and creepy horror score, before falling back on the lame rock tunes we hear far too often these days (remember when metal was metal and not some lame hybrid?). Thirdly, and most importantly, the film has some enjoyable gory moments here and there. A terrific decapitation (one of the best I’ve seen in a while) comes to mind, and the film’s final murder is very nasty indeed.

Unfortunately, that’s it for positives in this otherwise tired old hag of a horror film. Aside from Henriksen, the majority of the acting and all of the characters are of the vacuous Friday the 13th variety, and sadly that includes Doug Bradley as Pinhead. Bradley looks to be more than ever going through the motions, in a role that has been demeaningly diminished to a single dimension. How can such a cool-looking, nasty horror icon be so poorly treated by the film series it appears in? Our heroes, meanwhile are too dull and irritating to care one iota about (Winnick, from Satan’s Little Helper is the best of the lot), and are never for a second believable as horror fans either. Not only do we get a token black character here, he’s also an asthmatic for crying out loud…can you say dead meat?
Which brings me to my other main complaint, the story, and how it is presented. Not only does the archaic plot smell of Halloween: Resurrection and the equally lame (but better-looking) Feardotcom, but it isn’t the slightest bit convincing. The so-called “Hellworld” club, looks like a rave party on Halloween night, hardly home to all manner of S&M decadence and debauchery. And who the hell thought it was a good idea to rip-off Feardotcom anyway? Was this the best that they could do? Even some of the recent horror remakes have had more inspiration to them (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre comes to mind). Sadly, all the gore (and gratuitous nudity- of which there is some, at one point even calling itself out!) in the world cannot save a tired and derivative story with no characters of much interest.

It gets worse, though. The film has an 11th hour twist (is that officially a cliché yet?) that is not only monumentally dumb, it is so shockingly underwhelming that it might make horror fans think that the twist in Friday the 13th Part 5: A New Beginning wasn’t so bad after all. At the end of the day, none of these Hellraiser sequels are any good, they merely have a different flavour of suck. It’s not the worst in the series, and if that sounds like praise to you, perhaps you might get more out of this than me.