TYTD Reviews

Hot on the heels of ‘Halloween’ and following a brief stint making TV Movies, John Carpenters return to the big screen with ‘The Fog’ is simultaineously the primary blueprint for his career in film for the next decade or so, and a development on what had come before.

The plot centers around the coastal town of ‘Antonio Bay’, a picturesque location on the cusp of celebrating the centenary of its founding. Across most of the first act we’re introduced to the locals; Local DJ Stevie Wayne who manages the 6pm – 1am slot on K.A.B Radio (Jazz and easy listening if you must know) theres the town mayor Kathy, whos overly anxious to ensure the festivities around the centenary go without a hitch, local priest Father Patrick Malone, and town local and avid fisherman Nick Castle, who’s just picked up a hitchiker Elizabeth Solley

At midnight on the 21st of April (the day of the centenary), for an hour; Bizarre happenings occur around Antonio bay, windows smash, car alarms sound off, tremors and earthquakes occur and paranormal activity seems to take place. At the church a brick from the chapel appears to fall from the wall, revealing to Father patrick a diary…a diary from his grandfather…one that contains a terrible secret.

The next day K.A.B Report on a missing fishing boat, which is recognised by Nick as belonging to one of his good friends, him adn Elizabeth head down to the harbour to investigate, while Stevie is woken up by her child who appears to have found an interesting piece of driftwood, with half the name of a ship carved into it. and Kathy and her PA begin the rollout of the festivities.

But on heading up to the chapel to liase with Father Patrick, they’re taken into a back room, and the terrible details from his grandfathers diary are brought to light. It transpires that 100 years ago, Patricks Grandfather (also a priest) along with 5 other members of the fledgling town betrayed a nearby lepar coloney looking to relocate to within a mile of Antonio bay for easier trading and better quality of life. They were led by a once wealthy business man who wanted to use his wealth to ensure good tidings with the community by helping establish a foundation.

However; on the night where clear passage was supposed to take place, Patricks Grandfather betrayed the coloney, sending their ship crashing into the rocks, while he pocketed the gold and used it to found the church and establish the community that ultimately grew into Antonio bay, the final sight, was a mysterious fog rolling into the bay covering the corpses of the coloney and an heir swearing vengence.

Well; at this point I dont have to say anything more, you can very likely guess what happens on the night of the Centenary festivities.

This was my first time catching ‘The Fog’, and im kind of sad I sat on this one for as long as I did. In many ways it feels like a much more developed, slower burn take on the suspense cinema developed for ‘Halloween’ while at the same time it also has proto elements of Carpenters signature direction and producership, that would seep into his later works such as ‘Halloween 2 and 3’ and ‘The Thing’. Its a film trading solely on characters and atmosphere, and gave me quite strong ‘Jaws’ vibes at times. The horror comes from just how closely they tie the audience to the characters, they spend at least half the film building up the core casts complex characters, attempting to invest the audience in these characters and this world, before pulling the rug from under them in the 3rd act, taking the sleepy and scenic coastal town and turning into a living nightmare.

Im not a huge ‘slowburn’ fan, but the sheer prettiness of this picture, combined with the total likability of the characters absolutely kept me watching from start to finish uninterrupted. its such a naturalistic feeling production, that the supernatural elements feel like the perfect contrast. the pacing is slow, but not glacial, edging in just the right balance of character moments and plot development so that you never feel the films running dry. at 90 minutes on the nose, I feel it keeps a consistent pace with a rock solid act structure gently inching up the tension and atmosphere until we hit that final 30 minutes of all out horror action.

Tonally; the films kind of playful, theres some very light comedy, a bit of slice of life, but the horror elements bring with them some incredibly dark moments and heavy suspense. its a lovely contrast thats satisfying to sit through, and they never linger too heavily on one aspect or another, they seem to know JUST the right time to throw a little light in to offset the dark.

Direction wise, this is a gorgeous production, creative and vibrant world building, Carpenter having had a few more productions under his belt by this point delivers frankly a masterclass in character pieces and location work from a directoral standpoint. While there are moments here and there that do look a little cheap when watched in 2025 in UHD, I can overlook that for the gorgeous coastal location work, the lush greenery and the deep rich blues of the town at night. Carpenter here, is pretty much at the start of a HELL of a consistent run that will include ‘Halloween 2’, ‘Escape from New York’, ‘The Thing’ and ‘Christine’ to name a few. and here, he’s already more or less firmed up his style and vision to the point that you can more or less instantly identify it as a Carpenter production. I was honestly blown away.

Same goes for the cine really, extremely well composed shots stand out as distinct, the use of varying shades of dark blue to white act almost as a form of chiascuro lighting in and of itself. Shots are rich, deep, varied and very much open to experimentation. Sequences are masterfully crafted, allowing the tension to breath easy, the films not in a rush to get to the scares and that slow and mindful editing results in a pressure cooker of a movie thats a total trip from start to finish.

Performance wise? Get OUTTA here. Jamie Lee Curtis, Hal Holbrook, Tom Atkins, Charles Cypher, Janet Leigh, and the ever delightful Adrienne Barbau. and not a stinker in the pack. This is an incredible cast list, everyones pretty much perfect in their roles. I honestly have no notes. They play it exactly how I’d wanna see it played. and barring the fact Atkins is ‘Stache’ less for this film (a serious crime I fear) Im willing to overlook that for just how quality it really is.

And thats not even to MENTION the absolutely amazing soundtrack, composed by Carpenter, while it may not be as iconic as ‘Halloween’ its beautiful synth compositions that fit the moody tone of the film perfectly and were frankly beautiful to hear. I was a big fan.

‘The Fog’ may not be an ‘everyday’ watch, and the slow pacing may be offputting to some, but for me? I really loved it. Its a totally atmospheric immersion of a film that gently pulls you in, and then hangs you over a cliff face till the credits. Rich, detailed, its an incredible work. An absolute ‘must see’ at least once, and I highly recommend you do.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/the-fog/

Tonights Halloween viewing courtesy once again from Tubi see’s me and the missus checking out, what can only be described really as a YA haunted house movie that felt aimed at the kind of audience that think ‘The Conjuring’ is too much, but that they’re too big grown up for ‘Goosebumps’.

‘The House of the Witch’ has a similar plotting to ‘Night of the Demons’ in some regards. A group of slightly horned up college teens decide to spend a night near Halloween, having a party at a local haunt spot where allegedly a woman was drowned after being accused of being a Witch. The house, which is borded up, is rumoured to hold the angry spirit of the witch and anyone who enters, never leaves.

Most folks just egg the place, but our teens head up there, begin to party down and make smoochy face, when all of a sudden; things start getting spooky and all the doors lock tight, with no means of escape. It quickly becomes apparent that the folk lore IS true, and with that our teens enter a ‘kill or be killed’ game of survival against a terrifying force with amazing powers.

I’ll be honest, this was kind of middle of the road for me personally, but I could see a younger ‘pre-teen’ audience getting a bit of a buzz from this. Its essentially a bit of an amalgum of haunted house and supernatural horror films from 1985 up to the present day (of 2017) but the key thing here is everythings been softened. Theres genuine horror moments, but they’ve been sanded down a bit to make them less horrifying, blood guts and gore is present, but only in quick cuts and small amounts dotted across the runtime to protect the kids, swearing is reduced to a couple harder swears, but otherwise its ‘Damns’ and ‘Hells’ for most of the runtime.

Basically; this is the movie you put on for kids aged 8-13 or puritanical religious folk who wanna see ‘The HARDCORE stuff’ when you know you cant really show them ‘The HARDCORE stuff’ without causing problems… It gives the illusion of being a harder horror movie, while actually just kind of being quite gentle and a bit more family friendly.

The plot itself is kind of generic, the pacings a little on the slow side, the characters are all horror archtypes from decades passed, the tone is pretty straight cut, but again, aiming more for a teen and pre teen audience so its not THAT straight cut as a horror. The dialogues kind of weak and a bit cheesy in places, it doesnt flow particularly naturalistically. I’d say its a sturdy, but wholley unoriginal work. a good example of the genre, but not the best example of the genre.

The directions pretty by the numbers, I will give Alex Merkin some credit, there are some creative moments here, especially in the more horror driven moments, that I felt were pretty well handled. But ultimately this is just a fairly safe production that isnt here to rock the boat of court controversy. Its here to deliver some ‘mild peril’ and then retreat to the sitting room for cookies and a bible reading.

The cine is actually pretty solid, it has a feint whiff of TV movie vibes to it, compositions and sequence building is pretty solid, again, the more creative moments of this film were fun to catch and on the whole I think it tells the story visually quite well, though there are a few plot gaps that would have been nice to have seen visualised.

The edits pretty tight, but the scores kind of unremarkable. and…Im not going to pick on any one member of the cast here as it looks like a lot of the players are first timers here…But broadly speaking, I didnt care for any of the main characters performances here. theres a range of reasons, some cast members were playing things a bit too theatrical, some seemingly couldnt quite nail the tone needed to play in horror, some got a bit TOO into it which would work if everyone else was doing that, but they wernt…So they just look a bit odd. and there were a couple of performances here that were really just…pretty dire honestly. The performances are probably the weakest element of this film and kind of dragged things down a bit for me honestly.

Ultimately; I couldnt hate this one, its doing a public duty of making accessable horror for people who are either too young or too spooked to watch ‘proper’ horror films and need that halfway house of ‘Spooky enough, but not TOO spooky’ to help give them a foot in the door. Its a nice thing to see, and a bit of a dying art honestly. While its absolutely a flawed production, and I cant really say it does anything TOO out there or distinct to make it stand out. I think it works fine enough for what its trying to do, and I think I could recommend it to parents who have horror kids (though, i’d maybe watch it first just to be on the safe side) who want them to have a ‘grown up’ halloween experience, without having to worry about little Timmy or Timantha recreating scenes from ‘Terrifyer’ or ‘Cannibal Holocaust’ during recess…

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/house-of-the-witch/

So, probably a quick bit of context. I watched ‘Dragonball Z’ back in the 90s and early 2000s on TV, and caught pretty much the entire series that way. I watched most of ‘Dragonball GT’ in the mid 2000s as well, but I missed quite a few episodes and eventually gave up on it. Due to the cost of the season sets in the UK up until recently, the last time I had any dealings with anything ‘Dragonball’ related was probably 2005/2006. Then due to some VERY lucky breaks, I somehow managed to secure the entirity of ‘Dragonball’ (DVD), ‘Dragonball Z Kai’ (Blu), ‘Dragonball GT’ (DVD) and all the ‘Dragonball Z Movies and TV Specials’ (Blu) for approximately £190 ($250)…I was a very happy boy.

Me and my partner recently finished watching ‘Kai’, her for the first time, and me revisiting it in its new ‘condensed’ format. and as of last weekend, we both caught ‘Dragonball’ for the first time and really enjoyed it as well. and; with us moving onto the Movies and TV specials next. I figured it was probably as good a place as any to start slightly out of order, by watching ‘Bardock – The Father of Goku’ as, being fresh off the back of ‘Dragonball’ I figured it would play as a nice bookend, acting as both a prologue to the ‘Z’ movies, and an epilogue to ‘Dragonball’, filling in the gaps that were never really explained in the series while introducing the main players for the first couple of arcs in ‘Z’.

Clocking in at around 40-50 minutes, its a fine enough little special in which we’re given much more information about the Saiyans as a race, a better look at how Freiza operated prior to the events on Namek, some nice cameos from ‘Z’ characters shortly to be better introduced. and a plot revolving around Bardock and his gang, working for Freiza, and Bardock himself gaining psychic powers that reveal terrifying glimpses into his future, and the future of his planet.

I’ll be honest? I thought this one was fine enough, but I dont think i’d go out of my way to catch it. Its a fine enough little short story with some really nice moments dotted throughout. But I cant say I absolutely fell in love with it, it feels a tad rushed at times, and I was hoping for a bit more time on Planet Vegeta to really help give the audience just…a bit more of an idea of who or what the Saiyans were culturally…instead a good chunk of the special is just Bardock figuring out whats happening to him, and then an equally big chunk is him trying to warn people of imminent danger. Like; its fine…but I just wish there was a bit more to it, even if there was just a bit more character development for Bardock, his gang and Gokus mum…it all just feels a bit surface level, with just the occasional spark of genuinely moving moments.

The visuals are delightful throughout, with some incredible art design and the animation for the fight Choreography is solid too! The dialogues pretty solid, Freiza and Vegeta probably steal the show though with several foreshadowing moments and some definite character highlights.

I think the only other thing that spoiled this one was, on the Bluray version theres an option to listen to the Japanese audio with the original Japanese scoring…or the English dub with THE most horrendous early 2000s ‘Sum 41’esq pop punk…stuff. i’ve heard in a LONG time…a third option of the English dub with the Japanese soundtrack would have really been the best of both worlds and probably would have made me score this higher, because the English soundtrack is WAY too overbearing for this.

All in all? this is just a nice little extra in my opinion, not essential, but if you’ve watched all of ‘Dragonball’ and ‘Dragonball Z’ you’ll probably get a kick out of seeing stuff that was alluded to in both the main series acutally get a bit more fleshed out and ‘realised’. Probably worth catching once if your working your way through the various series…but definitely not ‘must see’. Your milage may vary…But I had a fun enough time!

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/dragon-ball-z-bardock-the-father-of-goku/

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/

Another day, another random supernatural horror film found in the back end of Tubi. And…on the one hand, I wasnt particularly OFFENDED by the presence of this movie…But as the credits rolled, I was just kind of left with the kind of hollow feeling that you can only really TRUELY get from a film that comes to the table with nothing, says nothing and leaves with nothing.

In essence, this is a supernatural/paranormal haunted house movie. Its non linear and opens with a cop exploring an abandoned home where, in 1988 a suspected ‘cult’ ritual killing happend in which only one woman managed to survive, while 4 people died. Now, a group of ‘paranormal documentarians’ are taking a man named John who’s partner Michelle is part of this group back to the house, as Johns been having visions of the house and is reluctantly hopeful in finding some answers.

From here, the film jumps back and forth between John being interviewed by a criminal psychologist, the police trying to piece together the case on the ground, and flashbacks to our group setting up for a seance, while spooky shenanigans occur. And, if you do intend to watch this movie, I wont spoil much here…Other than to issue a PSA to all upcoming writers and script editors…Please. I beg you, if your going to do an ‘unreliable narrator’ storyline, make it clear that the unreliable narrator is unreliable up front. I do NOT want to get 70 minutes into an 88 minute movie to ONLY THEN find out that the vast majority of what ive seen or been told so far may or may not be true, and that everything from that point to the credits may be false also.

This film isnt great, but I was rooting for it for the most part because, while it wasnt the best made film i’ve ever seen, it had fun ish moments and there were some half decent twists and turns. But the ‘unreliable narrator’ trope being dropped on this film around the start of the 3rd act with no warm up whatsoever felt like the scriptwriters and directors were trying to be clever…and instead poured cold water on the whole production because, you’ve just essentially told me the car I bought was made of construction paper…and your expecting me to clap. No.

Across the board this films just average. The scripts plot, for a haunted house movie? hits most of the tropes common with late 2000’s and early 2010s paranormal horror. You’d think the found footage element would pep the film up a bit, but it doesnt, because they dont really try anything new here, literally everything in this film is cliche tropes from Haunted house/paranormal movies of the last 25 years combined with plot tropes you quite literally can set your watch to. Throughout this whole film, I kept being reminded of ‘Deadstream’ not in a fond way…in a ‘Id rather be watching ‘Deadstream’ kind of way.

I think the biggest problem is how the film chooses to spend its time really, clocking in at 82 minutes, the film feels bizarrely rushed, especially in the back end, when a lot of the plotting is reliant on audiences just…not really questioning anything. I feel like a lot of detail around the muders, the history of the house and the tension building are just…not present here at all, and the result is a film that instead focusses WAY too much on the lead in to the house exploration, and the gang setting up tech…and nowhere NEAR enough time making me actually give a damn about the circumstances.

All the characters are generic horror stock cliches, again the script isnt trying anything new, the ‘revelations’ that turn up are kind of unremarkable in the year of our lord 2015. again, they arnt BAD perse…they’re just totally middle of the road and didnt really do much for me.

Same goes with the direction and cine. Non of its particularly bad, but it feels trapped somewhere between a studio films polish, and an indie films ‘rough and ready’ vibes. Theres decent CGI across the runtime, but theres almost no risks taken here. The creative vision for this piece is seemingly ‘My horror DVD Stack 2006-2014’ and thats about it. Theres nothing attempted here that hasnt been done a hundred times over in better and bolder productions.

The cines washed out, murky and sludgey. shots are well composed, but again, theres nothing here to put me on the edge of my seat, nothing to make me take notice and nothing to really create a sense of suspense. Its just…by the numbers in a very unremarkable way, even the sequence buildings overly safe and remeniscent of films 10 years its senior…its kind of wild really.

The performances are all pretty mixed to passable, noone goofs, but the absolute best performances here, are just kind of half decent. they dont really work a good emotional range, they dont come across as naturalistic, the dialogue seems ill fitting to them and the physical acting isa mixed bag of ‘good’ to ‘static’…and thats kind of a problem.

Throw in an ultra generic score and large swathes of the film where the dialogue track is mixed too low, meaning subtitles had to be used. And the end result is a film that aimed low, landed in mediocre and lost a HUGE chunk of goodwill from me with a plot twist that landed like a Squit in the paddling pool. One I could see being an easier riffer with beer and good company, ABSOLUTELY NOT one to seek out, and certainly not worth going out of your way for…

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/demonic/

Oh…oh no…oh dear. What fresh hell is this? After a 6 year absence from screens large or small, the Hellraiser franchise returned with a 9th entry, and so the story goes, *Allegedly* this was a bit of a rush release. Miramax and Dimension had planned to do a *Proper* big budget remake of the original ‘Hellraiser’ and preproduction was long underway, when they realised that their license to the IP was set to imminently expire. So the story goes that for $100,000, and 2-3 weeks filming allowance, they hashed out a rough and ready ‘Hellraiser’ movie in order to keep within their licensing agreements for the IP, to buy them time to make the movie they ACTUALLY wanted to make in a couple years time.

The results? A movie so bizarre in its execution it makes ‘The Room’ seem functional, and so poorly produced, the app I was watching this on bricked 6 minutes off the end as an act of digital Seppuku…I had to finish the movie via my fucking telephone.

The plot? is a non linear mix of found footage and ‘in the moment’ storytelling. As we follow two teens ‘Steven’ and ‘Nico’ as they sneak off from their respective families for a hedonistic bender weekend in Mexico. Unfortunately; things go a bit squiffy when Steven somehow gets hold of the Lament configuration, and summons demons from hell who tear his soul apart…

We then flash forward to the families of Steven and Nico who have arranged a special dinner together to try and raise their spirits as its been several weeks since their sons were last seen…However; it isnt working. Largely because Nicos mother is obsessed with watching the video footage captured by her son of their Mexican escape constantly, in the hopes of closure, or as a compulsion…or maybe both.

The only items recovered from the scene of the boys dissapearence was a camcorder, and the puzzle box. and for most of the first act, we flash back and forward between the, at times tense family dinner, as its revealed that Stevens sister Emma has sneakily viewed the camcorder footage against her parents wishes and has found the puzzle box and become…weirdly obsessed with it. and the camcorder footage itself. Revealing that Steven and Nico had a chance encounter with a girl at a bar, and while absolutely wrecked on tequila, an unknown event happened that led to the womans death…and shortly after ANOTHER encounter with a strange hobo, leads them to come into possession of the puzzlebox.

Things come to a head when Nico suddenly reappears at the start of the 2nd act, severely dehydrated and covered in blood. But somethings off, Nico is having terrible visions and isnt quite acting himself. and as Emma comes closer and closer to solving the puzzlebox…all the while getting…WEIRDLY horny about the whole thing…revelations will hit the families that will tear WAY more than just their souls apart.

And up front, I need to be clear, this is a cheap, CHEAP movie. There isnt a single facet of this production where the low budget nature of the whole thing is glaringly apparent, from scripts to costumes, direction to grading to effects. There isnt a single thing here that looks like it had the backing of a studio behind it..and given this is a studio produced picture of a much beloved and deeply malnourished franchise…I find that quite wild, but not unsurprising.

The script is probably this films strongest element, I liked that they introduced a found footage element to the franchise, and while its incredibly hit and miss and pretty much entirely abandoned by the end of the first act, at least they tried? I guess??? Being honest, the script reads and feels as if the writer, up until the final deadline was given to him, had never even HEARD of ‘Hellraiser’ and to correct that, he watched the first one and went ‘Ah right. okay’ and just…lifted half a dozen references from the first movie and transplanted them into this one. and that runs across the visual notes of this film as well as the plot lines.

A lot of the story is geared more towards the ‘hornier’ elements present in ‘Hellraiser’ 1 and 2. but its all without context, all without the grounding needed to make it make sense. The original two films understood that pain and pleasure are narrow margins and the cenobites arnt intrinsically a ‘pain only’ crowd. This film by contrast feels like a skinimax horror movie at times, something you’d be embarrissed to have your parents catch you watching, whether sex was on screen or not.

A lot of my goodwill to the script largely goes to the fact that for only the 2nd time in 11 years, we have a Hellraiser film that isnt just an investigator trying to piece together what the cenobites are. The final act in which all the dirty details from both sides of the family and whats ACTUALLY happened while the boys are missing is fun in a goofy way, but much like ‘Hellworld’ I was just left by the end of this wondering how we fell so far, so fast and so hard. Its depressing.

The pacings all over the place, the film is non linear for about a third of the runtime, which means we end up jumping all over the place, with some moments being purposfully slowburn, but at the wrong times, and other moments being WAY too quick making us miss valuble information as to whats going on. The act structuring is VERY heavy handed, they might as well have act cards for how blatently they tell the audience that ‘thats enough of that!’

The characters are all SUPER underwritten, ‘generic american in theatrical production’ is about as advanced as we get, and critically non of their development is earned or built up. This is a film where stuff just kind of happens, and the audience is just expected to go along with it.

And the dialogue…oh god, its only JUST better than ‘The Room’ but its SO dry and stiff, it makes some Asylum pictures look studio grade. its truely awful.

Most importantly of all, the film fails to capture any real sense of menace, terror or fear. Its a wallpaper movie. something that just ticks over in the background, that you forget is even running until the unbalanced end credits blow your speakers out 72 minutes after hitting play. The horror element is non existent, there is no ‘ethereal’ vibe to this production, and once again the cenobites as characters have been totally nuked from ‘Pseudo demi gods from another dimension built off of pain and pleasure who feed on the eternal suffering of those damned enough to find their box’ to ‘scary man who lives in a box who wants to hurt you.’ AND once again we get no real diversity in cenobites, with Pinhead once again remaining the constant, and the other cenobites being ANOTHER variation of ‘Chatterer’ and another eyeless, smooth cenobite.

The direction looks worse than DTV, its shot like a home shopping channel infomercial. its too bright, too well lit, too colourful and too naturalistic. The cenobites realm looks designer…and that REALLY shouldnt be the case.

The cine too is just…painfully out of synch with what the film needed, very flat profile, very little variation, no experimentation, complimented by horrible overuse of CGI, bad makeup and costumes, and a terrible colour grade that makes everything feel cheap and tacky. It looks like an Asylum knock off for about 90% of the movie. and the edits just as bad, Im pretty sure they couldnt figure out a good running order for how the found footage interacted with the ‘present day’ footage, so they just appear to have…rammed it all together as best a fit as they could and called it a day. Because why reshoot or bother with B-roll and cutaways when we know up front this is an IP retention exercise?!

The performances are frankly dire, most of the cast would rival the Sterling entertainment stable in terms of their acting ability, overly dry, totally unbelievable line deliveries of creaky dialogue, poor physicality. The cenobites look like they’ve had too much baking powder added to them while they were in the oven. they dont move with menace, they over emote, and scenes that are supposed to have a ‘seductive’ and ‘malevolent’ take to them left me crying with laughter for how badly handled they were. I can say hand on heart that every performer in this failed to sell me on their acting ability, or their characters.

And the soundtracks bad too, it sounds almost entirely composed of library tracks, badly cut in, badly timed and mixed higher than the dialogue for the most part making it difficult to hear whats being said. BUT! as a counter to that, they also didnt properly audio balance on set. Meaning screams and other loud noises clearly peak MULTIPLE times leading to a horrendous ‘hot’ sound on the mic…which…again, this is a STUDIO picture…HOW?!

Surprisingly; ‘Hellraiser: Revelations’ NARROWLY avoids being the worst ‘Hellraiser’ movie ever made, I think that honour still goes to ‘Deader’ because, while this film has a poorly constructed script, bad direction and cine, poor performances and a bad score and poor audio recording and mixing. Its plot has at least vaguely funny moments from a cringe or ‘So bad its good’ perspective. it at least has points where I sat there with my jaw on the floor at just how BAD it really truely was…Deader was just boring…or rather, I came away from this film kind of bemused at what i’d just seen and wondering how ANYONE even BEGAN to think this was a good idea…I came away from ‘Deader’ wishing i’d not wasted my time.

All this to say, Hellraiser: Revelations isnt very good, in fact, its pretty awful. but if you have a taste for bad movies. I think you may…DEEP…DEEP within the guts of this thing, find at least a couple crumbs to cling to…but why youd watch it based on that advertisement…I have no idea.

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

This review may contain spoilers.

The final film in the ‘original’ run of the ‘Hellraiser’ films is something of a bittersweet affair. We are FAR from the dizzying highs that were the first 2-4 entries in the series. But after essentially remaking the same movie with slight variences for 3 entries. ‘Hellworld’ decides to try and strike out with something very different. And if you ever wondered ‘What if ‘Hellraiser’ but ACTUALLY ‘Halloween Ressurection’ by way of ‘Thir13en Ghosts’ and just a dash of ‘Saw’? then you’ve found the right place.

This film was shot back to back with ‘Deader’ in Romania, and is the last (to date) on screen appearence of Doug Bradley as Pinhead. And its clear when they were filming this that the divorce of assets was kind of brutal. Deader got the higher end physical effects, TONS of ‘on location’ filming and better lighting. Hellworld got the better script, significantly more Pinhead screentime and the lions share of the digital effects budget.

The plot? is weird…theres, theres no other way to say it really. So the film is based outside of the previous continuities, in this world ‘Hellraiser: Hellworld’ is some kind of augmented world MMORPG in which players explore the worlds of Hellraiser together to unlock real rewards in the real world.

The game is half based in fiction, but also kind of…half weirdly based in fact? Like…the toy maker and all of his history are real world canon in this movie, they claim his descendents went on to build real world Cathedrals and there are portraits and books on the families history mentioned throughout the film. But the Cenobites seem are discussed much more as folk lore figures? Like; the way they discuss the Cenobites makes it sound like they’re a weird blip in the toymakers history that are liklely just metaphorical or representational of a traumatic period…But then at the same time the game itself features the Lament configuration, which is exactly how its appeared in previous films, they reference Leviathan…but in this film its the name of a manor rather than the name of the god from ‘Hellbound’

Its…odd. it’s like someone half binge watched all the Hellraiser movies up to ‘Hellseeker’ only really skimming key words and then remixed them into some attempt at significant meaning without their initial context…

Anyway; in this universe, Hellworld is in the middle of a major competition, the prize of which is tickets to a secret ‘Hellworld’ shindig in a recluse manor called ‘Leviathan’. and we’re introduced to some of the most painfully early 2000s early 20 year olds you’ll see this side of ‘I know what you did last summer’. They’re all playing the games with varying levels of enthusiasm, and they all manage to secure secret tickets to the event.

The gang are thrilled, as it comes off the back of a recent tragedy as one of their friends died in mysterious circumstances, and this has caused a bit of a rift in the friendship circle.

The gang all arrive at the manor and are greeted by a ‘Host’, who gives them a history of the manor, something to drink, lets them explore an archive of ‘hellraiser’ related materials, before letting them get back to the party.

But somethings…off, theres an unnerving elements to the party, and when the gang stumble on a secret experimental lab in the basement filled with Feotuses, torture devices and pickled limbs. it sets in motion a series of events that will see our ‘teens’ fighting to stay alive from a serial killer with intention, and a meeting with Pinhead and the Cenobites himself.

This was another instance of the folks at Miramax/Dimension films rooting through there rejected script drawer, pulling one of the less stinky offerings out and gussying it up with the Hellraiser name and Cenobites. and that leads to an interesting quandry for me really. Is this a good ‘Hellraiser’ movie? NO. its a TERRIBLE Hellraiser movie, the Cenobites do almost nothing and are largely present for aesthetic purposes only…But is this a good slasher/horror film? well…kind of yeah!

The script itself is a fine enough slasher/haunted house movie romp. the Thir13en Ghosts and Halloween ressurection vibes are really strong here with overly charismatic and sarcastic leading cast members meeting dark and grizzly fates and heavy HEAVY reference to that whole new fangled ‘WWW.’ business. This is a script that really wants to sell its connection to the ‘online’ world, but has clearly been written by someone who had NO idea, at that point in time, what the internet even really was. So they keep things kind of low key in the film itself, and let the marketing do the heavy lifting.

Theres also a weird emphasis on the Nokia 3310 in this film, Im assuming the rampant product placement was what helped pay for the movie, that and mobile phones were ‘NEW WAVE MY DUDE!’ but every scene has a Nokia mobile phone crammed into it somewhere, which I thought was pretty funny.

The pacings a little on the slow side, but nowhere near as slow as the films that have come before it, the characters are all typical horror archtypes and the act structuring is that of a generic late 90s slasher film.

To be blunt, if you are tuning into this expecting serious and straight cut horror, then you are going to be bitterly BITTERLY dissapointed. But if your here for the bizarre site of an overtly campy hellraiser movie oozing with early 2000s aesthetic. then I think you’ll really love the scripting on this one.

Me? I think i’d have rated this one higher had it NOT been tied to a hellraiser movie. the plot on its own is a fine enough little romp, and had it had its own identity I could have maybe even seen myself picking this one up sooner than I did and having a real nostalgia for it. Instead, with it being tied to Hellraiser, I overlooked it massively and the Hellraiser elements are fun in their own way, but a bit weird and forced in here.

Direction wise, I think this is probably the sturdiest offering the series has had since ‘Bloodline’ its not taking much in the way of creative risks here, but what IS present is a safe film, which I think after 3 films of creative chaos on behalf of the director and editor not really knowing what to do with the series visually (causing them to just…shove as many filters on the production as possible) was a welcome change of pace. In an ideal world, I’d have liked creative vision AND sturdiness…but at this point, im willing to settle if we dont have to spend another movie in a grey sludge colour palette with ropey effects and bad editing.

Cine wise, again, its very safe. Im glad the colour grades evolved a bit more to feel warmer, with blues contrasting the warm reds and oranges of the manor house and the location footage. composition isnt really anything to write home about, but at least when the cenobites are on camera this time, they actually look kind of interesting. The edits fairly generic as well, which again, at this point, im just grateful.

Performance wise, we have an early turn from Henry Cavill and Khary Payton here and Lance Hendrickson playing ‘The Host’. Hendrickson is fantastic as the malevolent antagonist of the film, he’s clearly not giving it his all, but he’s still probably one of the best reasons to watch the movie. Our teen leads however are less than impressive, not bad…just kind of forgettable. Unremarkable really, just; generic 90s slasher victims at their most stereotypical. Again, given what we’ve come from, this is a step up. But given where we’ve been, its dissapointing.

If Hellraiser: Hellworld is the final entry in the OG Hellraiser timeline, i’d say that it ends better than its been in a LONG time. after 10 years of mediocre to poor entries in the series, Hellworld ends things on, not a good note…but a solid enough one…a film I found amusing more than spooky. I think i’d happily watch this one paired up with ‘Halloween Ressurection’ as a ‘.Com’ double feature. Probably the only DTV Hellraiser film i’d choose to revisit. its not good…but so is Junk food, and I still eat that.

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

I’ve lost track of how many times i’ve seen ‘The Brain that Wouldnt Die’ in one format or another, I’ve seen it riffed multiple times, remixed, novelised, theatricized, turned into a musical, remastered, remade and everything inbetween. On my bluray copy of ‘Phantasmatapes’ in the ‘Special Features’ they included a reasonble quality upscaled VHS rip of the full film to compliment their remixed take on it. Its the kind of quality you’d find on most ‘public domain’ box sets from the 90s and 2000s, Just; captured from a good source and upscaled for HD TVs…And, with Halloween just around the corner. I figured revisiting the film in the format im most familiar with (the kind shown on TV late night before anyone thought to ACTUALLY present the film as intended) was a fun enough way to kill an hour and 20 as any.

The plots straightforward enough. A genius surgeon has been working secretly on a syrum that allows surgical grafts to perfectly meld to the host with no complications and far less risky surgery to do so. Its a world first. But its having to be conducted in secret because, at this point in time that kind of surgery is seen as essentially a death warrent for anyone who wants to participate, and if it got out to the wider medical community before it was ready to be presented, it would be considered ‘Quackery’ at BEST…and aa possible long jail sentence at worst.

However! its vacation time! So! our surgeon and his young lady wife head off in their open top to live it up good and proper! However, disaster strikes when their car takes a bend incorrectly and the pair are flung from the vehical. The surgeons fine enough, other than being a bit shaken…But the wifes in a real bad way…She’s been decapitated. Thinking quickly, her husband bundles her head up and takes her to a nearby safehouse, where he’s been performing his experiments. And, working with a colleague who’s in on the work. They manage to perfectly preserve her head in a tray of ‘ressurection’ fluid.

Of course, the womans absolutely distraught and begs for death. But her husband refuses, saying he’s going to go and secure a body for her, and when he finds the right one. He’s going to use his miracle fluid to successfully transplant his wifes head onto the new body, and from there life will carry on. Shortly after announcing this, she also discovers a ‘failed’ experiment that still lives on, imprisoned behind a locked and bolted door. It turns out that, whatevers in the fluid allows her to telepathically communicate with the beast behind the door, and the pair begin to plot a mutual desctruction of the lab and themselves. While our surgeon friend hits the streets looking for the right body to connect to his wife. Leading to a firey finale.

I have a real soft spot for this one, its sci-fi horor with a twinge of fantasy and a heaping dose of camp and while I cant say its one of my all time favourites, I do find myself occasionally revisiting it for that monster movie quality I love.

The script isnt overly complex, in fact its a very linear, very one note production that deals with a complex theme in a way that a lot of movies of this time wouldnt really handle it. Most films around this time would have framed the husband as a hero for wanting to save his wife, and the wife would have been MORE than willing to have a new body to continue living with her husband, glossing over the more morbid aspects of the logistics of that.

This film tackles it head on, and its refreshing to see a female lead in a monster movie have both autonomy and a decisive wish that goes against the male leads expectations. They frame the husband as a monster in this movie, because he is. and as such its satisfying to see the discussions on letting go, death and having an opinion that goes against loved ones wishes explored in a more interesting fashion.

The pacing is a little ‘come and go’ sometimes it runs with a real zip, while othertimes it can get a little pedestrian. But theres usually something going on consistently throughout, and while I definitely think we could have lost 10 minutes and gained a tighter production alltogether, I appreciate just how much they cram into that 82 minute runtime.

Tonally; its working with a nice contrast, the campier monster sequences and violence are offset by some genuine pathos and depressing moments. its faily early body horror, and I think it handles itself really well.

Direction wise, we have a striking vision, while I can say that visually the imagery is distinct, the cinematography is a little bit generic for the time. The visuals here are unique for this movie, but the actual technical ability that produces them isnt really out of place with the cine styles of the time, and this slots in relatively well with the ‘Night of the ghouls’ and ‘Mad Monsters’ of the era. Its fine enough, maybe a little overly basic at times and the set dressing is minimal to the point of being almost non existent, but the plot and performances are so powerfull, that its only afterwards you really realise just how sparse and basic the production really was.

Virginia Leith as Jan (in the pan) is an absolute showstopper here, bringing a wide range of emotions and coming across as bizarrely understandable and naturalistic for a literal talking severed head. If you only catch the movie for one reason, her performance is almost certainly it. Contrasting her we have Jason Evers as her partner Bill. a malevolent and ruthless figure who we see slowly descend into demented determined madness across the runtime, with a powerful energy that clashes with Virginias wonderfully. The pair are superb on screen together and again, really lift what could have been a VERY corny film above its station.

‘The Brain that wouldnt die’ is one of those ‘Iconic’ Bmovies of the 50s and 60s, maybe lesser thought about than the larger studio funded pics, but a textbook example of the genre and a great starting point for people looking to dig into the lesser known/affectioned titles. Definitely worth your time, especially around the spooky season. Its a quick, fun and slightly messy movie thats got a heart of gold!

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/the-brain-that-wouldnt-die/

It still kind of blows my mind that ‘Sinister’ as a franchise never got to fully launch, while movies like ‘Insidious’ and ‘The Conjuring’ were allowed to thrive. The first entry in this series was a bit of a slog in places, but it had a fun and interesting take on the ‘supernatural Horror’ genre, It handled the ‘found footage’ genre in an authentic and interesting way, the characters were well written and aesthetically it looked really solid. It certainly didnt commit any crimes that films of its time wernt doing in droves anyway…I was kind of cautious therefore, that the sequel HAD to be bad…I mean, most reviews slated the film, and a poor box office taking combined with bad test audience reactions all but cemented the fact that a part 3 would never materialise…something that has yet to happen to this day…

And yet, watching ‘Sinister 2’ tonight, I honestly couldnt see where the disinterest and even hate stemmed from. I actually thought it was a pretty solid horror movie that maybe in some respects even surpassed the original.

The film picks up a few months to a couple of years after the events of the first film. and we open by being introduced to Courtney and her two children Dylan and Zach. The trio are fleeing an abusive relationship, thats seeing them ducking and weaving private investigators and keeping ready to run on a moments notice. But at this point in time, a friends agreed to let them stay in an abandoned townhouse that sits on the land they own, in the hope that they can wait it out till the custody trial, in the hopes of averting Dylan and Zachs father taking them back into custody he legally doesnt have.

Problem is, that town house was victim to a terrible family murder, followed by the dissapearence of one of the families children. Yes Bughuul is back baby! and he’s bought a TON of dead kids along for the ride. And this time he has his evil EVIL eyes set on Courtneys kids.

Luckily, The deputy from the last movie (now an ex-deputy) has been picking up the research left by Ellison and his research team, and he’s struck on a winning strategy. If he burns the house down wherea Bughuul related murder has happened BEFORE a family can move in. He cant work he weird magic on the place and it breaks the chain. Unfotunately Bughuul has multiple chains going, so our Ex-deputy has to basically go state by state following media reports, hoping he happens to burn down the right house at the right time.

Well, as you can imagine his investigations lead him to the door of the townhouse Coutney is laying low in. and things basically explode from there, with the children taken by Bughuul trying desperately to coax Dylan into murdering his family for Bughuul, while the kids father returns on the scene with officers to demand Courtney and the kids return back to his home…where the chaos is sure to begin again.

Our ex dep, courtney and the kids must stand up against their abusive spouse, AND fight the forces of evil…and if they’re lucky…maybe discover true love along the way.

And I think all the issues I had with ‘Sinister’ largely get resolved here in the sequel. the lofty glacial moving script is cut down to a well paced 92 minutes, theres plenty going on in the narrative to push things along comfortably at that pace. The act structuring is smooth and consistent with seamless transitions across the 3 acts and a gentle ramp up across the 3 movements. The characters are maybe a bit less naturalistic and feel a bit more ‘horror movie’ oriented, but the trade off is a richer, more complex story that deals with difficult topics both up front in the domestic abuse storyline, and using a nice layer of subtext with Bughuul.

The film feels a bit more comfortable in its skin, relaxing more and dealing with human social interactions, rather than the first films reliance on one characters spiral out and the people he hurt in the process. This, felt like a movie you could more easily sink into and just enjoy as a movie. rather than an out and out ‘vibe’ piece.

The direction also ends up engaging in a bit of a trade off, the first film was very highly strung on Aesthetic, creating a smokey, woozy, dream like vibe for the full runtime, a strong visual aesthetic that the audience is supposed to let carry them across the runtime. This films a bit more grounded in traditional horror iconography and vision. But I feel that works to its favour here, its less aggressively in your face, it still happily gives the audience some of that wonderfully dark imagery. but it also gives the audience a nice visual contrast. A bit of light to work in with the dark…Something I felt the last film was missing.

Cine wise, its pretty solid, maybe not quite as solid as the first film. But compositions are pretty on the level, theres a bit more wobbly CGI here than the previous installment, and the Jumpscare element has more or less been fully stripped away in favour of a more unsettling atmosphere. But I actually kind of prefer that, with some solid sequence arrangements helping keep things pretty boiant for the full runtime.

Performance wise, James Ransone and Shannyn Sosssamon are pretty solid here…I was dubious when I saw that the deputy from the first film was being bumped up to a main cast member for this entry. But James nad Shannyn work really well together, they have great on screen chemestry and when Lea Coco comes onto the scene as Husband ‘Clint’ it really kicks up to the next level and properly cemented that this cast were really clicking with the material given to them. In a way, its kind of unintentionally funny tyhat Lea somehow manages to make a more terrifying villain in this story than the ACTUAL demon child snatcher…

and as for the soundtrack? its solid. It feels very similar to the first film. and I thought it was mixed to good last time…so, Im not going to complain about more of the same!

‘Sinister 2’ actually kind of surprised me, while we lose the distinct aesthetic and intense atmosphere of the first film, we end up with a much leaner, much punchier, much more engaging film. I could see myself watching ‘Sinister’ late at night, in a very particular headspace, when im wanting a specific vibe from a horror movie. Its the kind of movie that scratches a very particular itch.

Sinister 2, I could see myself putting on…Just because I wanna watch a 2010’s horror movie thats nice and digestable. I could easily see this becoming something of a comfort watch for just how smooth a movie it is. While it being that is a bit dissapointing, because it means it isnt a truely ‘great’ movie…the fact i’d gladly watch this again, and the fact I thought it inches ahead of the first entry, means it surely must have SOMETHING going for it.

Honestly? I could recommend either of these films. I’d say you’d probably need to watch the first film to truely appreciate this one. But as long as you’ve seen the first one at least once, this one is a lot more fun and has a much higher chance of going into your regular rotation.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/sinister-2/

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/