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yendiHellraiser: Deader. 2005. Directed by Rick Bota. Written by Neil Marshall Stevens and Tim Day. Released by Dimension.
Kari Wuhrer Week concludes (because I've got something else planned for tomorrow) with one of the odder Hellraiser movies.
See, Hellraiser: Deader was not originally written to be a movie about Pinhead and his crew. It was written as a standalone horror movie, and the Cenobites had to be jammed into it, in much the same way that Macy Gray was placed into Spider-Man (although the Cenobites are neither as scary nor as annoying). But unlike Spider-Man, Deader was a perfectly mediocre script even before having an inappropriate scary creature thrown into it. Then again, this is the seventh film in the series, and while that's not always a bad thing (the seventh Friday the 13th film is still the best, and the seventh Nightmare on Elm Street film reinvigorated both the franchise and Wes Craven's career), the Hellraiser series had been creatively bankrupt for years by the time this direct-to-video stinker landed. Jamming the Hellraiser mythos into another movie was probably the best idea floating around.
Kari Wuhrer plays a reporter. For a London newspaper. Fortunately, she doesn't try to affect a British accent, and is content to simply be an American writing for a British paper due the the huge lack of journalists in the UK (and the fact that she was reassigned from the New York Post. Seriously). Her editor shows her a videotape that he came across, and seven days later, a strange little girl kills her. . . Wait. Wrong movie. Sorry. It's actually a videotape featuring a strange cult of folks in Romania. They're the "Deaders," because the Romanian government, to save money, has banned all nouns and is making their adjectives serve double duty.
Anyway, the Deaders are making snuff tapes, only the woman who gets killed on them comes back to life. Naturally, instead of assuming that the tape is just another student film being passed off as a hoax, she believes that there's a story here, and heads off to Romania. She finds a dead woman and a puzzle box. And after that, nothing fucking happens.
Seriously.
The entire movie, from this point forward, is scene after scene of dream sequences, false scares, and vague creepiness. None of them relate to the Cenobites in any way that matters or makes sense. And Kari's character wakes up from so many frights that the movie eventually becomes the cinematic equivalent of The Boy Who Cried Wolf, with no scare having any actual meaning. In a movie like Altered States or An American Werewolf in London, the dream sequences are surreal enough to stand out, and they enhance the horror. But here, they're just ways to extend a movie that otherwise would barely run thirty minutes.
There is, to be fair, one particularly stylish sequence in which Wuhrer wakes up to find a knife in her back, and runs around trying to get it out. There's lots of fun blood, and Wuhrer sells it nicely.
But that's it. Seriously. The rest of the movie is just a gigantic load of crap.
For those of you wondering about Pinhead, he walks on, says a few words (including the incredibly original bon mot, "be careful what you wish for; it just might come true"), kills the main villain/cult leader because the villain wasn't doing justice to the Holy Cenobite Mission*, and then vanishes in a puff of illogic. We also get an appearance by the puzzlebox. Remember how, in the first four movies, the puzzlebox was this incredibly complicated device that even those to whom it called had to work to open? Well now, it's just a box. It'll open if anyone so much as looks at it. If the box had always been this easy to open, the Cenobites would be bitching about the overcrowding in hell by now.
We finish off back at the newspaper office in London, where the editor is about to assign his new reporter to this story and her doom. Yes, it's all a conspiracy! A conspiracy of suck, that is.
Kari Wuhrer gives this movie a much better performance than it deserves, showing some good, realistic reactions to the assorted terrors she encounters. Alas, she's not nearly enough to save the movie. Neither is Doug Bradley, who looks disinterested at best. Marc Warren -- normally a damned good actor on Hustle -- also fails to put in any more effort than it takes to get his paycheck.
Like the Hellraiser movies preceding and following it (Hellseeker and Hellworld), Hellraiser: Deader is directed by Rick Bota, a cinematographer who has hopefully learned to stick to his day job. He does manage to turn the dark alleys of Bucharest into a foreboding environment, but he doesn't bring anything to the table in terms of originality. Nor do screenwriters Neil Marshall Stevens (whose only other credit of note is the Thirteen Ghosts remake) and Tim Day (an electrician who somehow conned his way to writing this and Hellseeker). The writing is third-rate at best, and even taking the forced addition of Pinhead and the Box** into account, there's not much here but a half-assed attempt at ripping off every "evil cult" movie this side of Angel Heart.
As many of you noted back when I reviewed Hellraiser 3 (which is practically Evil Dead compared to this dreck), there's a lot of good stuff in the Hellraiser mythology, from the original story to the first movie to the comics. Alas, by the time Hellraiser: Deader hit the streets, the franchise had long since given up the ghost. Don't waste your time on this one unless you're just desperate for a few scenes of female nudity and some mediocre (but gritty) violence.
*The Holy Cenobite Mission, incidentally, is located in New York City, on 36th Street, between Madison and Fifth Avenues. They do not run a soup kitchen.
**"Pinhead and the box" can be sung to the tune of "Benny and the Jets." ***
***Or to the theme song of Chico and the Man****.
****Pinhead, don't be discouraged,
The Box it ain't so hard to understand.
Pinhead, if you try now,
I know that you can hook a helping hand.
Because there's evil in everyone
And a new film has begun
You can see their tortured souls if you try.
And I know, things will be better
Oh yes they will for Pinhead and the box
Yes they will for Pinhead and the box.
Kari Wuhrer Week concludes (because I've got something else planned for tomorrow) with one of the odder Hellraiser movies.
See, Hellraiser: Deader was not originally written to be a movie about Pinhead and his crew. It was written as a standalone horror movie, and the Cenobites had to be jammed into it, in much the same way that Macy Gray was placed into Spider-Man (although the Cenobites are neither as scary nor as annoying). But unlike Spider-Man, Deader was a perfectly mediocre script even before having an inappropriate scary creature thrown into it. Then again, this is the seventh film in the series, and while that's not always a bad thing (the seventh Friday the 13th film is still the best, and the seventh Nightmare on Elm Street film reinvigorated both the franchise and Wes Craven's career), the Hellraiser series had been creatively bankrupt for years by the time this direct-to-video stinker landed. Jamming the Hellraiser mythos into another movie was probably the best idea floating around.
Kari Wuhrer plays a reporter. For a London newspaper. Fortunately, she doesn't try to affect a British accent, and is content to simply be an American writing for a British paper due the the huge lack of journalists in the UK (and the fact that she was reassigned from the New York Post. Seriously). Her editor shows her a videotape that he came across, and seven days later, a strange little girl kills her. . . Wait. Wrong movie. Sorry. It's actually a videotape featuring a strange cult of folks in Romania. They're the "Deaders," because the Romanian government, to save money, has banned all nouns and is making their adjectives serve double duty.
Anyway, the Deaders are making snuff tapes, only the woman who gets killed on them comes back to life. Naturally, instead of assuming that the tape is just another student film being passed off as a hoax, she believes that there's a story here, and heads off to Romania. She finds a dead woman and a puzzle box. And after that, nothing fucking happens.
Seriously.
The entire movie, from this point forward, is scene after scene of dream sequences, false scares, and vague creepiness. None of them relate to the Cenobites in any way that matters or makes sense. And Kari's character wakes up from so many frights that the movie eventually becomes the cinematic equivalent of The Boy Who Cried Wolf, with no scare having any actual meaning. In a movie like Altered States or An American Werewolf in London, the dream sequences are surreal enough to stand out, and they enhance the horror. But here, they're just ways to extend a movie that otherwise would barely run thirty minutes.
There is, to be fair, one particularly stylish sequence in which Wuhrer wakes up to find a knife in her back, and runs around trying to get it out. There's lots of fun blood, and Wuhrer sells it nicely.
But that's it. Seriously. The rest of the movie is just a gigantic load of crap.
For those of you wondering about Pinhead, he walks on, says a few words (including the incredibly original bon mot, "be careful what you wish for; it just might come true"), kills the main villain/cult leader because the villain wasn't doing justice to the Holy Cenobite Mission*, and then vanishes in a puff of illogic. We also get an appearance by the puzzlebox. Remember how, in the first four movies, the puzzlebox was this incredibly complicated device that even those to whom it called had to work to open? Well now, it's just a box. It'll open if anyone so much as looks at it. If the box had always been this easy to open, the Cenobites would be bitching about the overcrowding in hell by now.
We finish off back at the newspaper office in London, where the editor is about to assign his new reporter to this story and her doom. Yes, it's all a conspiracy! A conspiracy of suck, that is.
Kari Wuhrer gives this movie a much better performance than it deserves, showing some good, realistic reactions to the assorted terrors she encounters. Alas, she's not nearly enough to save the movie. Neither is Doug Bradley, who looks disinterested at best. Marc Warren -- normally a damned good actor on Hustle -- also fails to put in any more effort than it takes to get his paycheck.
Like the Hellraiser movies preceding and following it (Hellseeker and Hellworld), Hellraiser: Deader is directed by Rick Bota, a cinematographer who has hopefully learned to stick to his day job. He does manage to turn the dark alleys of Bucharest into a foreboding environment, but he doesn't bring anything to the table in terms of originality. Nor do screenwriters Neil Marshall Stevens (whose only other credit of note is the Thirteen Ghosts remake) and Tim Day (an electrician who somehow conned his way to writing this and Hellseeker). The writing is third-rate at best, and even taking the forced addition of Pinhead and the Box** into account, there's not much here but a half-assed attempt at ripping off every "evil cult" movie this side of Angel Heart.
As many of you noted back when I reviewed Hellraiser 3 (which is practically Evil Dead compared to this dreck), there's a lot of good stuff in the Hellraiser mythology, from the original story to the first movie to the comics. Alas, by the time Hellraiser: Deader hit the streets, the franchise had long since given up the ghost. Don't waste your time on this one unless you're just desperate for a few scenes of female nudity and some mediocre (but gritty) violence.
*The Holy Cenobite Mission, incidentally, is located in New York City, on 36th Street, between Madison and Fifth Avenues. They do not run a soup kitchen.
**"Pinhead and the box" can be sung to the tune of "Benny and the Jets." ***
***Or to the theme song of Chico and the Man****.
****Pinhead, don't be discouraged,
The Box it ain't so hard to understand.
Pinhead, if you try now,
I know that you can hook a helping hand.
Because there's evil in everyone
And a new film has begun
You can see their tortured souls if you try.
And I know, things will be better
Oh yes they will for Pinhead and the box
Yes they will for Pinhead and the box.
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(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-30 01:30 am (UTC)5 I felt was brutally awesome, if it weren;t for the fact they seem to rip off the concept again for 6 (Haven't watched it yet, will eventually)
(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-30 01:31 am (UTC)You fiend.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-30 01:36 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-30 02:21 am (UTC)"That's how I died -- it was Pinhead and the box." VROOM VROOM
(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-30 03:42 am (UTC)I'd be interested to see the actual dark alleys of Bucharest to see if this is his achievement, or that of the alleys themselves.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-30 04:22 am (UTC)It's Pinhead and the Box
Pinhead and the Box
One is psychotic, the other's, uh, a box
They'll kill people with ease
On lots of DVDs
They're nasty, they're Pinhead and the Box Box Box Box Box!
(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-30 08:50 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-30 12:14 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-30 12:16 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-30 12:17 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-30 12:23 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-30 01:23 pm (UTC)