The tenth entry in the ‘Hellraiser’ franchise…and expectations were the highest that low expectations can be set. After ‘Hellraiser: Revelations’…existed. Almost entirely for the purposes of retaining the IP to ‘Hellraiser’ long enough for Dimension films and Miramax to complete the preproduction work on an ‘ACTUALLY GOOD’ Hellraiser movie. I went into this one with a bit of a cocky swagger, I’d been promised a ‘good’ Hellraiser movie after burning through most of my October watching quite possibly the biggest flameout a horror series has ever had.

The DTV years for Hellraiser wernt kind, and after suffering through ‘Inferno’, ‘Deader’ and ‘Hellseeker’, only to experience the splash of cold sick to the face that was ‘Revelations’ This film was all but certain to get nailed on as one of the top 5 Hellraiser films by simply NOT randomly deciding to be anything other than a ‘Hellraiser’ movie and sticking the landing. and I think they kinda sorta largely succeed in the brief honestly.

Up front, I’ll be frank. this is SO far removed from the quality and standards set by the first 2 ‘Hellraiser’ movies, that it cant even really be mentioned in the same company as them. However; for me? this film grinds all the DTV entries into the dust, and even gives ‘Bloodline’ and ‘Hellraiser: III’ a run for its money. In the same year 2018’s ‘Halloween’ soft reboot hit screens, This film kind of attempts similar…but not really.

The plot? Its basically ‘What if Hellraiser, but also ‘Se7en’…but we already did that kind of movie…so what if that…but again…but good.’ as were reintroduced to the world of Hellraiser via ‘The Auditor’ a Cenobite working on behalf of Pinhead judging the scourge of mankind to punish them effectively. Enter; ‘The Preceptor’ a sadist serial killer who murders his victims in line with the 10 commandments. his…particularly gory and unpleasent murders have drawn the attention of a trio of detectives who begin working on tracking down the mysterious killer. However, when the detectives find a clue that leads them to a child murderer from a previous case whos mysteriously gone missing. The detectives cross paths with the Auditor who takes a shine to one of them. Leading to a VERY dark rabbit hole of mystery and a centuries long holy war…

And I feel this is the first film in a LONG time to really get close to nailing the aesthetic, tone and vibe of what I feel a ‘Hellraiser’ film should be. Most of the DTV era of Hellraiser films were either horror/thrillers that had been re-written to force Pinhead into them, or they were ‘hellraiser’ films written by people who’d failed to understand what the cenobites really were, and just kind of…focussed on Pinhead and turned him into whatever kind of ‘slasher’ adjacent being the narrative called for him to be.

‘Hellraiser: Judgement’ is a viscerally nasty film with some genuinely unpleasent imagery that at times had notes of the original and ‘Hellbound’ and while thats welcome, it does kind of end up ultimatley being its folly. Because, in my opinion, they do rather overegg it. One of the reasons I kind of love ‘Hellbound’ is because they use graphic gore sparingly, but when they do it, it’s intense and works a contrast against the rest of the movie, genuinely making me wince at times.

Here? it happens a LOT, even in places it isnt really needed, they just do it anyway…And it kind of ends up heading in the direction of the ‘Hostel’ films as a result, which I wasnt as keen on.

By this point the ‘Hellraiser’ series has had at least 4 entries that have seen some kind of ‘investigation’ or investigative lead tracking down the cenobites. And this is absolutely (in my opinion) the best film to tackle that style, but to say im fatigued with this setup, would be a bit of an understatement.

The plot itself is fine, a little derivitive, but we’ll take what we can get at this point. The characters are all fairly well developed with some nice twists and turns that genuinely caught me off guard on the first watch, but make sense in retrospective. I like how they frame the cenobites in this entry restoring a bit more of the mystery to Pinhead and introducing a kind of ‘holy war’ between heaven and hell.

It feels like an entry that shows the Cenobites nearer to the end of their power than their beginning and their is a bit of a whiff of finality about it all. Which I honestly kind of appreciated at this point. While some could argue it contradicts ‘Bloodline’ to do so. I personally was always of the opinion that Cenobites are interdimensional and that we’ve been seeing their chronology out of order in order to see our chronology linerly.

I will say, I did have mixed feelings on the films need to tie things back to the first two films, they dont really do anything overt, which I appreciated after several botched ‘homages’ in previous entries…But at this point in my viewing life. I find the idea of referencing other better films, even in a subtle way, a bit ‘ick’ inducing if im honest.

The pacings pretty decent, at an hour and 20 its about as long as i’d like a movie like this to run, the act structuring is solid and tonally it mixes some very light humour with ‘The Auditor’ into a jet black horror thats splatterific, obscene at times and managed to hold my attention throughout.

The direction is pretty rock solid. Barring a somewhat rickety ‘final shot’ which was a bit dissapointing, and a bit of a reliance on stock footage for locations. I was quite impressed, the film is open to some creative experimentation, isnt relying on CGI chronically and most importantly IS trying to show the story through the visuals, rather than just telling the audience. Somewhat dissapointingly; the director has said he’d have been happy for this film to have a sequel of spin off. And a TV show that continued this story and opened up ‘the holy war’ was in development. But I assume isnt happening. and thats a real shame as I think they could have built something even more out there and interesting in framework this film sets up.

The cine is pretty solid as well, shots are largely well composed, and while the colour grade is once again back to washed out, dingey ‘desaturation-vision’ they at least bother to make contrasts between the different levels that the Cenobites inhabit, which itself adds to the existing lore. If there are any criticisms here, its with the edit, I dont feel like the editor handled the more horror driven scenes well, the more ‘day to day’ detective scenes were handled fine to good for the most part. But when it came to horror, the editing rule seems to have been just ‘cut as quickly as possible between 2-3 different gory/unpleasent images for 5 second blasts’…It felt messy, and I know its to create a sense of loss of control or chaos…But even so. its overused here and made it feel cheap.

Performance wise? Probably a controversial take, but i’m gonna say it. Paul T. Taylor is a rock solid Pinhead in this movie, I really enjoyed his turn here, its a real shame that they’re unlikely to get him back, and (the controversial bit) Doug Bradley is 71 years old at the time of writing, In my opinion, his last few appearences as Pinhead were just kind of unremarkable, and given his age, the necessity to find a suitable ‘handover’ actor for the role made sense at the time, and continues to make sense now. Taylor looks the part, gives a great vocal performance, a fantastic physical turn. I’d have loved to have seen him done more honestly.

Damon Carney plays the lead detective on the case, and hes a rock solid lead too, bringing a lot of energy and a great physical range to the film. he has some nice twists and turns to deal with and I think he moves through those fairly effortlessly with a decent turn.

Gary J. Tunnicliffe plays ‘The Auditor’ alongside directing duties, and again, I think he offers probably the most interesting additions to the ‘Hellraiser’ series since ‘Bloodline’ and adds just a nice subtle contrast of humour to a series thats been BEGGING to have SOMETHING contrast its darker nature without just going full goofy for the better part of 18 years at this point. and I think he really nails it honestly.

‘Hellraiser: Judgement’ is probably the only entry post ‘Bloodline’ that I could actually see myself solidly revisiting in future, its imperfect. But it knows what it wants to be, and largely succeeds in doing it. Probably not the best film to introduce someone to the series with. I think if you were to watch this film straight after ‘Hellbound’ you’d have the makings of a pretty solid trilogy on your hands. Put it this way, with only the 2022 ‘Hellraiser’ remake left on my list to check out. This is the only ‘Hellraiser’ film past ‘Bloodline’ that I would happily recommend checking out.

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