☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
(Liked It)
Netflix Synopsis: Hard-nose London journalist Amy Klein travels to Romania to research a mysterious suicide cult that can bring people back to life. Before long, she's pulled into the secret society, and the only way out is to join them for their next event.
The Peeps: Rick Bota (director); Neal Marshall Stevens and Tim Day (writers); Kari Wuhrer, Paul Rhys, Doug Bradley
Quick Run Down: Confusing Story but Good Horror Movie with Gore and Nudity
Worth the Watch?: If You Can Make It Through The First 30 Minutes, Yeah!
Hellraiser: Deader follows Amy Klein (Kari Wuhrer), a hands on investigative journalist that is given an assignment based on a mysterious videotape that she watches. The tape shows a woman killing herself, and then a man resurrecting her. Apparently, this is a common process with a cult group in Bucharest called Deaders. They commit suicide, and their fearless leader, Winter Lemerchand (Paul Rhys), resurrects them. Amy is sent to write a story about it, and off she ventures, well paid and looking cute in pig tails. Amy goes to the return address of the video tape and, of course, stumbles upon the notorious
Hellraiser box, the Lament Configuration. That evening she opens it, and, as 6 previous films have shown us, you don't do that! Quite frankly, from this point on, Amy's life goes to shit as her grip on reality becomes looser and looser, until she can't even tell if she's alive or dead. There's a lot of other stuff going on, too, but it's really not worth going into.
If you can ignore the story of this 7th installment of the
Hellraiser franchise, it turns out to be a pretty kick ass horror movie. There are a few decent, if not good, scares, a lot of gore, including a scene of carnage, and a lot of nudity. In my humble opinion, for a horror movie, if you're not going to go for atmosphere, then you have to take the blood route, and
Hellraiser VII does that. The first 30 to 45 minutes is full of story that is just too confusing to keep up with, but, if you can get past that, around the 45 minute mark, there's a really cool scene in a bathroom that jump starts the film and gets it moving until the close. (A character in a closely following scene tells Amy, "You're trying to hard... Forget about reality, Just sit back and enjoy the ride." I think that's a director's nod to the audience, actually.) There are a few slow points in that last bit, but the way-too-in-depth story takes a back step and you finally get into some madness and murder. Interestingly enough, the screenplay for the film was just a horror spec written by Stevens, but Dimension wanted to use it as another
Hellraiser installment. So, they brought in Tim Day to work in the box and Pinhead and make the movie fit the bill. These elements do sometimes feel tacked on, but they fit in where they need to. Also, considering how little the last two films include Pinhead and the box, the sparsity of their presence on screen in
Deader isn't that unusual. Speaking of previous films, this film doesn't follow the angle of
Hellseeker or
Inferno. It's a film all to itself, despite it being directed by Bota, who did
Hellseeker also.
Deader plays as sort of a middle ground between the original premise of the franchise and the 5th and 6th films' premise.
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| Alternative Poster/DVD Cover |
Okay - bear with me for a paragraph. The reason I say the story of this film should be avoided is because it's WAY too complex. A lot of the things that are sought after in making the story whole look back to all of the films of the series, and it creates a gap in the understanding of what's going on. Since I've been watching the series straight through, though, I think this film is the most thorough explanation of Pinhead's objective and the Lament Configuration's purpose. There are still questions the film leaves - and possibly plot holes, but, again, this is the only film in the franchise to really get into the epistemology (if you will) of the series' elements. Does it really matter, though? Not a bit. I'm more than willing to see more details explained, but I'm about to watch film 8. At this point, just give me arterial spray, dark dialogue, and awesome screams. Alright - thanks for that; back to the important stuff.
I don't think I recognized any new Cenobites this time around, and, like I've mentioned, there's a lot of gore, murder, and nudity in this flick. Most of it occurs in the last 45 minutes of the film, and, if I could make a suggestion, I'd start the movie about there. The first part really isn't important if you're not into the
Hellraiser films. There are a couple of good scares in the beginning, so you may not want to miss that. Still, it's nothing you haven't seen before. They obviously saved the best for last in this one.
So, if you wanna watch a movie that has a confusing as hell story but good gore and lots of nudity, check out
Hellraiser: Deader. The first half hour is tedious, but the gears start grinding once you get into the second half. Check it out - it's on Netflix!
"Fear is the place we go to learn."
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