When a franchise hits the ‘In Space!’ part of its existence, I tend to run to the hills, or at the very least make some notes for my next youtube review. Its usually a sign that a franchise has exhausted its creative outputs and hit the ’emergency panic’ button because…well…who DOESNT wanna see a predominantly earth based hero or villain get thrust THEMSELVES into the unknowing dark void of space! Who KNOWS what crazy hi-jynx they could get up to?! Its usually the death rattle.

‘Hellraiser: Bloodline’ is essentially this franchises death rattle. After ‘Hellraiser III’ took the high concept, complex world of the cenobites and their interdimensional quest for pleasure through ultimate pain. and reduced it to a low budget, pinhead-centric ‘Nightmare on Elm Steet’ knock off. I didnt have high hopes for ‘Chapter 4’. In fact, I didnt like ‘Hellraiser III’ so much that I actually put off watching ‘Bloodline’ for the better part of a decade, figuring that, if that was the direction the series was going in, it was probably better to cut my losses and just stick with the first two, than venture any further.

But sometimes, fortune favours the brave. and while ‘Hellraiser: Bloodline’ is FAR from a return to form for the series, I have to admit that I really quite enjoy it.

The premise is simple enough, we open the the far off future of 2150, on a space station as a member of the ‘Merchant’ family is controlling a robot to open the Lament configuration. He successfully opens the puzzlebox. Pinhead and a new set of cenobites appear, but before any kind of showdown can occur, space marines barge into the space station and Arrest ‘Merchant the younger’.

While in custody, the marines question Merchant about why ‘the man who built this space station would cut all communication and access to it and threaten to destroy it?’ At which point it’s revealed that the Merchant family have a long and entangled history with the puzzle box and the cenobites, dating back to 18th century France, and a distant relative of Merchant, who was in fact the creator of the first puzzlebox.

From here, the film essentially takes on an anthology pathway, showing three tales from the Merchant bloodline, starting with ‘Philip Merchant’ the creator of the box, as he battles with a demon from hell called Angelique who may or may not have manifested the box for demonic purposes. Before flashing forward to 6 years after the events of ‘Hellraiser III’ and 1996 where ‘John Merchant’ is the architect who helped construct the ‘Lament tower’ featured as the big twist ending in ‘Hellraiser III’ with Angelique back on the hunt to reclaim the puzzle box. and finally finishing the present day of 2150 with ‘Paul Merchant’ finally trying to put an end to this stain on the bloodline, once and for all.

Im going to be honest up front here, this is a stupid, silly and daft little movie. It is FAR removed from the deadly serious tones of the first 2 Hellraiser movies. But I feel like it does a lot right, that the last film got VERY wrong.

For a starters, this film shifts the tone back away from just, gore for the sake of gore and a slasher mentality, back to a more ‘otherworldly’ quality. there are moments in this film that arnt really fully explained or clarified that reintroduce a little bit of mystery back into the series which is nice. Angelique as a character is a bit of a mixed bag concept. On the one hand, its interesting to learn that their are beings in the Leviathan realm heald in higher regard than the Cenobites…However, at the same time introducing a monarch-esq framework into the series grounds the Cenobites as beings even further and kind of takes a bit more magic away from the series.

They show significantly less of Pinhead, and when he does appear he isnt doing much of the heavy lifting on the gore front. He gets some really nice dialogue here and its nice to see them shift him back to being a more mysterious being (with significantly better make up this time to boot!) without just…not featuring him at all in the movie.

Calling this film what it is, it feels like a ‘closer’ to the series. Clive Barker was back on board as an executive producer (I believe for the final time), and the tone and vibe the film gives off throughout is basically ‘we’re done, this is tying things off.’ indeed, the anthology nature of this basically burns any bridges of future sequels as (mild spoilers here) the film implies that after 1996’s encounter, the puzzle box drifts from place to place, but that no Cenobites are lost and no new victims are collected until 2150. The Puzzlebox basically just waited till 2150, at which point (again, mild spoilers) its destoryed. Which means one of two things, either the series ends with this film (as I assume many people would prefer) or this film…the one Clive Barker worked on…DOESNT count as canon and instead all the films that come after this one DO count.

in either case, for me? this is a perfect jumping off point. With this film, we learn everything we didnt already know about the Cenobites, they get to do some fun last film killings, we get a thorough history of the puzzle box that helps begin and end the timelines for events, and the ending of the film is about as strong a closure as you can get.

I enjoyed the short stories within this film, all of them feel pretty strong, though not quite as strong as the original elements, theres a nice consistency tonally amongst all the stories. The Merchants as characters are all a little bit on the flat side, it maybe would have been nice to see a little bit more character varience rather than them just increasingly modernising the same personality type. But Angelique as a character nicely counter balances it as a seductive and sadistic demon/cenobite…thingie…I dont think the film really clarifies what shes supposed to be.

Technically the film looks sound, with some solid effects work for 1996, I enjoyed the direction for the most part, though I think the middle story does take a bit of a hit, just in the sense of I dont think the set work is as good as the set spaces for the other two films. That being said, the Cenobites look fantastic, they bring back that wonderful cool blue lighting and some decent experimental chiascuro to help really bring things to life, the candle lit sequences in the first story are delightfully handled and there does seem to be an attempt to reignight some experimental cine, with decent compositional choices that genuinely gave Pinhead as a character a bit of menace.

Performances are, for the most part as sharp as always, there are a few wobbly deliveries here and there, but nothing too gratuitous, and we see a VERY welcome return to orchestral and grand soundtracking, after the last films dalliance with rock music.

‘Hellraiser: Bloodline’ is a fantastic jumping off point for the series, if you want to recoup your losses after ‘Hellraiser III’ I feel like this one leaves the franchise in an ‘iffy’ but positive place. Its far from perfect, and very VERY dumb. particularly with the ending. But its not dumb in an annoying way, its dumb in a kind of endearing way. It feels like the people involved really understood the core concepts of the series. They just maybe didnt have the budget or comprehension to fully get it over the line, and the result is a film thats a bit silly, wearing the skin of a higher concept movie.

I enjoy this one because it is what it is, it isnt trying to convince you its better than it is. and I think if you didnt enjoy Hellraiser III, you should probably give this one a go. I’d definitely say its worth catching, and this one will definitely be going into rotation more often. Underrated.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/hellraiser-bloodline/