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It has to be admitted that it took me a while to get round to watching the 'Hellraiser' franchise. Due to having so much to watch and review, and the list keeps getting longer and longer. While horror is not my favourite genre, 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 first 'Hellraiser' is a very good film, not a favourite of mine but it is well made, very scary and remarkably ambitious and intelligent. It is the only one to be above very good, the sequels were very variable (leaning towards the disappointing) 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, although that was not a terrible film and the best of the sequels post-'Bloodline'.
Although the later sequels were worse, 'Hellraiser: Hellseeker' just didn't work for me and it felt pointless at the end of the day. Not a complete catastrophe but misses the mark quite badly and easily the worst of the series up to this point.
'Hellraiser: Hellseeker' is compensated by Ashley Lawrence returning and making the most of her limited screen time. Even better is Doug Bradley who is as frightening as ever, despite having far too little to do, it is not hard to see why Pinhead is an iconic character in horror.
Despite a twist that renders the rest of the film pointless, the last 15 minutes are the best part with there being urgency and an unsettling vibe. Some of the photography is nice.
Something however that cannot be said for the editing, which is pretty atrocious and at worst incomprehensible. The visual effects are pretty cheap this time round, while the direction is neither alert or accommodating, at best it's routine at worst it's amateurish. There is very little tense or suspenseful, and the creepiness and ambition are gone and replaced by camp and over-silliness.
Particularly problematic about 'Hellraiser: Hellseeker' is that it doesn't feel like a 'Hellraiser' film. Instead feeling like a dull, bland and paper thin psychological/mystery/horror, playing as basically in the first half a series of unimaginative and long-winded hallucinations and dream sequences, with Pinhead and the Cenobites thrown in with little to do and not much relevance to what has come before their appearances, pretty much as an afterthought. They generally have lost their creepiness and mysterious and Pinhead's dialogue is rambling and forgettable in a film chockfull of toe-curlingly bad script writing. The acting is poor apart from Lawrence and Bradley, with a charisma-free Dean Winters.
Concluding, weak fifth sequel. 3/10 Bethany Cox
3/10
