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Posted : 1 year, 10 months ago on 16 July 2022 07:20
It has to be admitted that it did take me a while to get round to watching 'Hellraiser' and its sequels, though had been meaning to see them for some time. Due to having so much to watch and review and with my studying and so many commitments, and the list keeps getting longer and longer. Horror is not my favourite genre, but there is the appreciation for it and there are many very good, great and even classic films (as well as a fairly high number of schlock).
The original 'Hellraiser' is by far the best, being a very good film that is scary, original and very atmospheric with as said a few times already surprising amount of ambition and intelligence. Meanwhile, the sequels were very hit and miss (leaning towards the miss) and the latter films particularly are suggestive of the franchise having run its course. The second film is the best of them, while the third and fourth films were watchable if problematic. It was with 'Inferno' where the franchise went down south in quality, though it was with 'Hellseeker' where things became properly bad and with 'Deader' when it became dead.
'Hellraiser: Hellworld' manages to have pretty much the same faults as 'Deader' and executes them even worse. It is not completely without redeeming merits but the bad outweighs the good significantly and it's abysmal as a 'Hellraiser' film and very bad as a film on its own.
Not much to recommend it, but Lance Henriksen does bring menace to the main villain and Doug Bradley still has it as Pinhead.
Katheryn Winnick does her best and is serviceable and it begins sort of intriguingly.
On the other hand, once again like all the sequels since 'Inferno' Pinhead and the Cenobites are very poorly used, merely being thrown in to try and remind us that the film is part of the franchise and serve no point to the story. They are not just pointless but have next to nothing to do, 'Hellworld' wasting them even more than 'Deader' did which one naturally thinks would have been impossible to achieve. Worse, the Cenobites once again have lost their creepiness, intrigue and mystery completely and Pinhead is in the film too little to properly shine. That is what is meant by 'Hellworld' being abysmal as a 'Hellraiser' film.
But 'Hellworld' manages to be every bit as bad a film on its own. Visually it does direct to video quality all over it and in a bad way, the editing being especially poor and the effects are afterthought-like. The music is placed inappropriately and doesn't fit at all in tone or in the film's context. The direction is limp throughout, while there is a lot of laughably camp dialogue, constant silliness and lack of coherence (if not quite as badly as the previous two films). As well as annoying characters that don't behave logically, no tension, suspense or creepiness, a paper thin story with a lot of overlong padding meaning there is a severe lack of momentum and a far too dragged out and confused ending. The acting, excepting the above, is no better, especially dire are Christopher Jacot and Henry Cavill who are both irritating and very light on charisma.
Overall, very bad. 2/10 Bethany Cox
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