Reed Alexander's Horror Review of 'Hellraiser: Deader' (2005)

I'll give it this much, it was better than Hellraiser: Inferno. Of course, you could make a movie about drinking a shit milkshake and it would be better than Inferno. Yes, that's right, I'm suggesting that turning 2 Girls, 1 Cup into a major motion would have been better than the absolute festering cesspool of red-hot, bloody diarrhea that was Inferno. And this pretty much means I'm never going to do a review of Inferno. My review would just consist of me spraying diarrhea into a Sunday dish, drinking it, and telling you how much better it was than Inferno. The closest you're going to get is my review of Judgment.

Reed Alexander's Horror Review of 'Judgment' (2018)

So yes, Deader is better than Inferno. So is getting punched in the crotch, and I'm not about to recommend that... unless you're into that sort of thing.

So! Let me take you down, 'cause we're going to... Strawberry fields, nothing is real, and nothing for this movie to hang a lantern on. I get that the whole point is that nothing the protagonist is experiencing is real, but the movie just jumps around too much. It's like the movie 1408. The whole point is that everything is messing with the protagonist's perception of reality, and it makes the horror more cerebral than the usual Dimension Films blood fest. I'll give them points for the attempt, but this movie relied way too much on shamelessly unearned jump scares that are becoming an obnoxious trend in the horror industry. Did the first three movies need jump scares? Fuck no. The Cenobites walked onto the scene and shit got real, really fucking fast! Pinhead shouldn't have to resort to such garbage horror devices. It's not his style.

Now, I'll give it this, beyond it just being not Inferno: It had great acting, a great choice for a lead female protagonist. The atmosphere was on point for Hellraiser, which is something the franchise had been severely lacking. It's just that the story was all over the fucking place. It seemed rushed and padded and was constantly going nowhere. Not even around in circles, just fucking annoying dead ends. It sort of just lead the protagonist by the nose rather than having her make her own discoveries like the first three movies. I also don't like their miserable attempt to link the fourth movie in. Not only is that one of the weakest of the franchise to string into the plot, it also didn't even properly follow its own cannon.

SPOILERS!!!

So, apparently desire is now no longer the only thing you need to open the box. Now, apparently, you have to be the chosen one. Excuse me? What? That makes abso-fucking-lutely no goddamn sense. The whole point is that anyone's desires could get them dragged in. It's what the Cenobites feed on. Your desires are what even leads you to discover the box. When Pinhead was a human, he didn't discover the box because he was the chosen one, he discovered it because he was fucking looking for it. He wanted to push the limits of the conscious human experience. It's the whole mythos of the original fucking movies. You can't retcon the whole fucking mythos.

So apparently, the great grandson of the toymaker from the fourth movie is supposed to be this Winters guy. This also doesn't make any fucking sense either. The toymaker devoted his life to trying to find a way to destroy the box and the Cenobites, and four full generations were devoted to its destruction. There was no point anywhere for one of his lineage to become some fruity fucking messiah. Where the fuck did they come up with this crap?

Finally, I have the same complaint about this movie's ending that I have with the third Wishmaster. The primary protagonist has to commit suicide to "end the cycle." I'm sorry, but the first three female protagonist took on Pinhead just fine without having to sacrifice themselves. It just degrades the whole point of the protagonist in the first fucking place. Face Hell and against all odds, still fucking win. That's the story I want, and that's the story the protagonist deserves. Not some emo self-sacrifice seppuku bullshit.

The ending smacked of a lack of direction, like they just didn't know where to go, like they wrote themselves into a corner. I can't give it a pass.

I guess if you're devoted to the franchise, you should watch this. It was also really good riffing material. One of the few things I like about putting myself and my wife through this kind of garbage is the fun we get from riffing these movies. In any case, I'd just skip this one.