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48%
Overall Rating
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Ranked #4,217
...out of 20,702 movies
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Gamers playing a MMORPG based on the "Hellraiser" films find their lives endangered after being invited to a rave, the host of which intends to show them the truth behind the Cenobite mythos.
--IMDb
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Review by Chad
Added: September 29, 2005
Three months prior to this movie, Dimension released the seventh entry in the Hellraiser series in the form of "Hellraiser: Deader." Rick Bota, the director of that movie, is the same guy responsible for Hellworld. While I found Deader to be decent enough, I was extremely let down by what could have actually been one of the more interesting storylines from the long-running series.
The storyline starts out like any good teen-horror movie. Five friends are attending a funeral in the opening scene, and we soon find out that their friend has killed himself thanks to an online video game known as Hellworld (naturally) that the members of the group were obsessed with. "He took it all too seriously, nobody made him kill himself" is the general attitude amongst his surviving friends, and they carry on with both their lives and their game-playing. Two years down the road, they get a message from within the game inviting them to a real-life Hellworld party. Of course, the group - consisting of Chelsea (Katheryn Winnick), Allison (Anna Tolputt), Mike (Henry Cavill), Jake (Christopher Jacot), and Derrick (Khary Payton) - decides to attend. Upon arriving at the house where the party is being held, they meet the host (Lance Henriksen) of the party, who turns out to be just as obsessed with the Hellraiser / Hellworld mythos as these avid gamers. One thing leads to another, and we find that Pinhead (Doug Bradley, as always) may very well be loose in this house looking for victims.
Most people that pick this movie up will likely have seen a few of the previous movies from the series; I doubt that anyone is going to walk into a store and say "Hellraiser? What's that? Ahh... well, I'll find out by watching part eight." With that in mind, it's common knowledge amongst viewers and potential viewers that Pinhead's involvement with the storylines has decreased as the series trotted along. Whereas he was the main focus of the first few movies, he turned out to have small bit parts or minor end revelations in the latter movies of the series. Therefore, I was fully expecting that when I popped in the movie. I thought that the storyline would unravel with a shocking shortage of cenobite goodness and that Pinhead would turn up in the last ten minutes, reveal that he was behind all of this madness, and that the credits would roll. Do I agree with this shortage of Pinhead? Not at all... he is the main reason people watch these movies, after all. However, what I got from the movie disappointed me even with these low expectations.
<Major movie-ruining spoilers>
You see, Pinhead actually gets quite a bit of time in this movie. He gets an appearance in every three or four scenes, and he even kills someone with his own hands... something that I don't think he's done very often if at all. I was quite happy with all of this, until I found out that it was all an illusion and that Pinhead had absolutely nothing to do with the movie whatsoever. You see, the host was the father of the guy that killed himself two years prior, and he invited the friends that "could have saved his son's life" to this house in order to poison them and get his revenge. This poison caused them to hallucinate everything involving Pinhead, the cenobites, and the infamous box... the real, and only, villain of the movie was the host. There's a brief thirty-second scene to finish the movie off which involves Pinhead for real, but this was obviously added to the movie late in the shoot solely to make up for the cop-out seventy minutes that the viewers had just witnessed. This wasn't quite as bad as the "it was all a dream" ending, but it definitely ranks up there close to it.
</Major movie-ruining spoilers>
Needless to say, I didn't enjoy the storyline aspect of the movie. Take my word on it if you chose not to read the spoilers... there's no way to explain it without ruining the movie. The rest of the movie is no better - we constantly witness the "BOO!" scare (that turns out to just be a cat / friend / party-goer / mirror), obnoxious music from no-name bands, and more corny one-liners than I ever thought possible from one movie. The acting is just as bad, as none of these leading ladies and gentlemen (with the exception of Lance Henriksen, who somehow avoids looking bored to tears) seem to have had any sort of experience prior to this movie. The only saving graces of this movie are some interesting ideas and some good death scenes... but ideas aren't worth anything if they aren't properly explored, and death scenes can only do so much for an otherwise mediocre movie. I would go into the gaping storyline holes found as the movie progresses, but that would require another spoiler warning... and by now, I think you readers should get a good idea of how awesome this movie is.
Avoid. As a movie unrelated to the Hellraiser universe (which it basically is, if you avoided the spoilers), it's yet another mindless teen-horror flick at best. As a movie sporting the Hellraiser title, it's pure trash. 3/10.
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#1:
bluemeanie
- added September 30, 2005 at 6:34am
The last halfway decent installment in this series
was...you guessed it..."Hellbound: Hellraiser II",
and it was better than the original. After they
killed off the original Cenobites, the rest was
downhill. Now, they seem more laughable than
anything else. The original was good, the sequel
was great, and the rest are garbage. Pinhead is
starting to go about the same kind of adventures
as the Leprechaun. Maybe a crossover...Pinhead
vs. Leprechaun.
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#2:
Ginose
- added January 12, 2006 at 11:17am
Regardless of how shitty the last 5 have been (I
say 5 because I liked Hellraiser 3), I will still
and forever remain loving to Pinhead an the
Cenobites. I was glad that the Cenobites were in
this movie so much, but hated that it was a
fuckin' illusion. I give this a 4.5/10. Pinhead
and Chatterer were in it, so who cares how bad the
premise was?
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