Ohhhh I should have known when my ‘Hellraiser’ 4 pack multifilm bluray set missed this one off the list, that it wasnt going to be a fun ride…and Im dissapointed to say that it wasnt…’Hellraiser: Deader’ is a DRAG of a movie. and from top to bottom, its probably the farthest removed from the original intention of the films that we’ve gotten so far.

Right off the top; ‘Deader’ is not a real word. and to someone who hasnt SEEN the movie, they’ll have NO idea what that even means…Because something is either ‘dead’…or its not. you cant be ‘deader’ because you cant be ‘more dead’ than ‘dead’. So calling your film ‘Hellraiser: Deader’ without the vital context just makes the film sound dumb even before i’ve hit play.

What is the plot of this one? Well…we’re once again approaching the series from an ‘investigative’ position, ‘Inferno’ had a bad cop tracking down the cenobites, Hellseeker had a dirty stockbroker trying to piece together fragmented memories while being pursued by Pinhead…and this film? follows an investigative journalist called Amy.

Here is the literal full plot of this movie. Amy is an investigative journalist who specialises in ‘extreme’ or ‘unusual’ cases. Shes called into her bosses office one afternoon and shown a tape of a group of people in Romania who appear to commit suicide, and then get ressurected by a strange man dressed all in white.

Amy is confused and asks if this is some kind of ‘special effects’ joke…her boss confirms it isnt, and they’re a cult like group called the ‘Deaders’ who follow this mysterious man and his life giving powers…for some reason. And Amy is being tasked with heading to Romania to see if she can get the scoop on this.

So…She does, and what follows is about 40 minutes of her wandering around Romania (or an approximation of Romania) occasionally speaking to local residents and a handful of times boarding a ‘Romanian Sex Train’ to try and find this mystery cult. Eventually, she stumbles on a contact who’s died while leaving an envelope for help and clutching a mysterious puzzlebox. And after a short time, Pinhead appears, tells her that the man in white has somehow gained access to ‘his domain’ and stolen an ability to ressurect the dead, in order to try and lead a war on the Cenobites. With Pinhead telling Amy she must confront the cult in order to put things to rest once and for all…cue another 30 minutes of hobbling around Romania and Romanian adjacent locations. Leading to a suffling finale, thats bizarrely the best part of the movie, and probably the worst moment in the Hellraiser franchise so far…

There is VERY little to like about ‘Hellraiser: Deader’ The script is absolutely sedentary, NOTHING really happens in this movie for a good hour of the runtime apart from random wandering around, Bad CGI jumpscares, the occasional bit of guarded nudity, and a little bit of covered up gore. The plot is uninspiring, uninteresting and frankly VERY dull. The dialogue sound stiff and awkward for the most part, the reasoning for the characters to be doing what they’re doing isnt really made all that clear, and what points have been clarified are frankly, quite stupid.

The tone is aiming for straight horror, but it tries to ‘overserious’ itself to the point that it just comes across as flat and really dull. There are elements of ‘Flatliners’ and ‘Elm Street’ transplanted into this film to try and bring some life to it, but its all in vein. The characters arnt interesting or well developed, the act structuring is lumpy for the opening act and then idling for the rest of the movie up until the end.

When they started making these DTV Hellraiser movies, I was cautiously optimistic around the idea of some kind of ‘investigator’ approaching the Cenobites and Lament configuration as an outsider having to piece together the hints and clues, until they’re too far down the rabbit hole to be able to back out…But we’re now 3 iterations into trying this style, and im astounded that its been able to go this catastrophically wrong, THREE whole times…when this should in theory be a pretty easy win.

The fact that Pinhead is in this film for less than 10 minutes ONCE AGAIN and essentially just takes on the role of a ‘hints and tips’ tutorial aid to the narrative is dissapointing. It once again feels like the folks at Miramax just rustled through their ‘rejected script’ files, pulled something out that narrowly avoided being commissioned and forced Pinhead and a Hellraiser-esq narrative into it. Its not even rage inducing at this point…Its just depressing.

The direction is aiming for arty and high aesthetic, but it just comes across as a bit ‘Nice Video; Shame about the song’. They use every plug in imaginable to try and filter the footage to look weird and distorted. And while I will give them some credit in the fact that they make the gore feel somewhat believable and not cheap looking. They counter that with CGI where there didnt need to BE CGI…and its aged horribly and looks terrible. From a directoral standpoint the cast and crew clearly understood the brief. The brief was ‘Im not being paid enough to care about this’ and the directors vision was ‘2nd year arthouse film student’.

The cine is passable…but stale…REALLY stale, theres just…nothing original going on in this film. Nothing memorable, nothing enjoyable, nothing that even makes me THINK of those heady days of the original film and ‘Hellbound’ it looks like someone ground this out over a week and that the editor was more interested in exploring the lunch menu than trying to make this thing come alive.

The performances are AWFUL. full on theater acting at almost every turn, NOTHING sounds naturalistic, NOTHING sounds believable and honestly? i’d say 90% of the performances in this are just irritating. Doug Bradley is the only probably exception here. Here? he actually performs better than the last 2 films. He gets a little bit more to do if nothing else…and even with THAT considered; he STILL sounds like he’s phoning it in…By this point he wasnt even really bothering to memorise the script, he would annotate and improvise the lines on set, because at this point HE knew the character better than the ACTUAL writers. which is Insane….

I also need to say what a HUGE step down the Cenobites have had over the last 3 movies. ‘Bloodline’ reintroduced some new Cenobites that actually looked interesting and had stuff going on…But for the last 3 films we’ve been treated to 2 different varients of ‘Chatterer’ one varient of ‘Butterball’ and a growing issue over the last 3 films, a generic ‘Smooth’ eyeless cenobite. Which is THE cheapest prosthetics…and that one version has had like…3 redesigns across the last 3 films, and here? that ones basically the default other than Pinhead…This series used to be brimming with creativity and mystery…and we’re just floundering SO hard here…

The soundtracks unremarkable, drone and midi orchestral fodder that just makes the whole thing feel SO cheap. and the cherry on top of this rancid sundae? The dialogue is mixed SO quiet into the sound mix that I basically had to watch the whole film with subtitles on, because the soundtrack blasts out any dialogue the second it revs up. Its basically inaudible.

Hellraiser: Deader commits the cardinal sin of cinema ‘Thou shalt not bore’. The ONLY reason to pick this film up is the final 5-10 minutes with Pinhead…which is still not great, but its above the quality of the rest of this movie. It upsets me profoundly when a film has a half okay idea and squanders it so carelessly. Deader is 88 minutes of timewasting and VERY little to show for it. Watch at your own peril, avoid if you have any sense.

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