shit shit shit shit shit
If you like the early Hellraiser movies stay away from this one.
Doug Bradley is my Pinhead.
Time to piss a lot of people off.
This is very easily the best Hellraiser since #5, which itself was the best since #2. Judgment takes the time to build the series mythology, build a halfway compelling mystery with a couple of red herrings, examine the motivations of the characters both human and supernatural, and deliver on its various threads.
The gore is creative and at times genuinely shocking, while never becoming torture porn or anything of that ilk.
And yes, Doug Bradley was brilliant in prior entries as Pinhead, but the new guy did an admirable job.
Essentially a remake of Hellraiser Inferno with a twist.
It's better than a late entry in the Hellraiser series has any right to be. There's loads of gruesome, odd, Barker inspired imagery as you'd want from Pinhead and his crew. However all of that is sandwiched between a cop procedural story which you'd be drunk if you had a shot every time they cover one of usual tropes. Donut eating cops, shot, detective that drinks too much to deal with the case, shot, his wife has had enough of being absent and working the case, shot, investigating every crime scene with torches, shot, only two to three cops working a massive serial killer case which in real life would have an entire task force assigned, shot. Not to mention dozen other things that are rather silly like two brothers working on the force alongside one another conflicts of interest be damned. They say they are cops but you really don't get any indication that any one else works in this police station. It's also odd how they make a deal in prior films that opening the puzzle box is well... A puzzle whereas it's opened here in mere seconds by two people that don't know what it is.
On the plus side its brisk, short film and is at least better than bottom of barrel entries like Hellworld. It may not have Bradley but its certainly better than the latter entries he was happy to appear in and at least they try and do something with the mythology as Barker did in his Scarlet Gospels novel.
Well, it's better than "Revelations," I will grant that. Taking a note from "Hellraiser: Inferno," we once again are following a cop and his partner(s) as they track a sadistic killer whose killing follow the Ten Commandments (name the film this brings to mind in ten, nine, eight, ...), all while the Cenobites seem to be doing...something in the background (seriously, I'm not sure what they're really up to; it starts at the beginning of the film with a discussion about how antiquated the Lament Configuration is and how outdated they seem to be with increasingly debauched pleasures and pains readily available; I don't know, it never seems to really go anywhere). Or we would be following them if we weren't already pretty much near the end of an investigation that had been going on for a while.
The really bizarre thing is that, for the tenth movie in the series, you can actually see the potential for a decent and interesting film here. But they drop the ball hard, and it's a potential that they fail to realize on an epic scale.
The main problem here, and I can't believe I'm about to say this, is that the film needed to be longer. More hints at the ultimate solution to the mystery needed to be dropped, enough so that when looking back, the audience could say, "Yeah, how did I miss that?" rather than "Did I miss something?" It also results in a real lack of characterization, although I have to admit that it's not entire for want of trying.
I like that there are hints at a bigger picture, even if they do fly in the face of established Hellraiser lore. For the first time, we see an actual angelic counterpart to the demonic Cenobites, although the problem here is that the Cenobites were never really established as demons, per se. It's also got a twist ending that's bizarre even by Hellraiser standards, and might have worked if Pinhead in particular were given more of a character in this film. Instead, the ending is entirely dependent on knowledge of him from previous films, but let's be honest here, no one who isn't familiar with the previous films will see this one.
Again, it's not phoned in like the previous Hellraiser film (I can't believe I also have to give credit for the film actually looking like it was filmed with a professional camera and not an iPhone like "Revelations"), but it's still so sloppy that it falls over itself trying to tell a bigger tale than I think they were ready for, and instead comes off as derivative and vastly disappointing.
I feel like they trying to make a film close to what inferno was but they way of its mark I'm a big Hellraiser fan and this is not even close to being called Hellraiser this is a typical 2018 horror movies I feel like most movie today are shit I want to go back to the 80/90s where they at least put time into making movies and didn't put shit like this out.
Certainly not the worst of the franchise, but by no means the best
We are once again back to a cop film that seems to have Hell and it's minions shoehorned in as an afterthought
I enjoyed the addition of The Auditor and other denizens of the dark, but unfortunately it all got a bit rushed at the end
It's not as terrible as one might think. It's got some interesting ideas but the low budget and the fact that it's sitting on the shoulders of someone else's idea keeps it from being a good movie. I don't know how anyone could look at this series and think that a reboot sounds like a good idea.
Not the worst Hellraiser movie but I could live a million years and never watch it again.
A serial killer thriller with the Hellraiser brand tagged on. It’s guilty of mediocrity.
Another Hellraiser movie where Pinhead is basically reprising his roll as the “Crypt Keeper” instead of being a character relevant to the story. It starts off promising, I haven’t seen so much typewriter fetishism since Cronenberg’s “Naked Lunch”. I thought this might be a Hellraiser film through a Cronenberg inspired director’s lens. The auditor is one of the most interesting characters to be introduced in the Hellraiser lore in 10 straight to video releases. If this this film was just about the auditor and the process of passing judgement it could have been a masterpiece. Instead the rest of film focuses on a serial killer police drama. One question I have is did they lose the Butterball costume from the original movies. The assessor should have been Butterball, instead of some middle aged fat bloke with a weak stomach. Seriously how does one get to be in Hell’s crew without scars and S/M gear.
For the record, I'm fine with another actor playing Pinhead. I would rather that they just introduce a new antagonist entirely, but the new actor isn't a problem for me. The problem is that the writers of this film don't seem to understand Barker's original vision of what the Cenobites are. Instead of the amoral, hedonistic, inter-dimensional beings from the novella and the first film, we just get demons from the Christian Hell. Combined with the try-hard edgy body horror, this movie is less of a catastrophe and more of an embarrassing wipe-out. Frustratingly, as long as Dimension has the rights to the film, this is the quality that we can expect. Thanks, capitalism.
This film is SO BADLY edited. The story itself is bad enough, but the editing makes everything even worse.
I thought this was one of the best Hellraiser movies in the franchise. Also I watched this on Netflix but trakt only shows this available on amazon.
Rather exceptional entry into the Hellraiser franchise. It's unfortunate to have lost Doug Bradley in the Pinhead role, as this would've gone down as one of the better movies in the series. As it stands, it's grotesque, is a morality tale and works well. Some of the budget constraints are apparent at times, but not enough to be distracting.
This movie proves that the worst torture of all is becoming human.
Avoidable.
Shout by Ninja PoonBlockedParent2018-02-19T06:40:19Z
The assholes at Dimension films only make these turds so they can hang onto the rights... Let the franchise free!!! So someone can make a real Hellraiser film that the fans deserve