Director Anthony Hickox tried to put us
to sleep for an hour, and then pushed the OVERDRIVE button as
everything got more awesome than the Lego Movie. We had
Cenobites shooting rockets out of their eyes, killer CDs out of their
chests, and one of the best club scenes I've ever seen. Storywise,
Pinhead got banished to Hell but that's never exactly stopped him
before, has it?
Based off the last movie, I was already
pumped for this one. But then my personal overdrive button got
pressed when I saw it's an Alan Smithee movie! For those who don't
know, Smithee isn't a real person but instead is a pseudonym used by
a director when he or she does NOT want their name attached to a
movie. This is usually because of a dispute with the studio or some
such reason, bottom line is the director is ASHAMED to be associated
with the film.
So what happened with Hellraiser:
Bloodline? The film was directed by Kevin Yagher, who is one
of the most famous special effects wizards alive. He created Freddy
Krueger, Chucky, and the Crypt Keeper, as well as doing the effects
for movies as varied as Bill And Ted's Excellent Adventure to
Face/Off to Adaption. Despite his pedigree of knowing
his shit, the studio clashed with him constantly over the direction
of the movie and what should happen in it. He finally had enough and
walked off the set before it was even done, Dimension Films bringing
in Joe Chappelle to salvage the whole thing. Chappelle was one year
removed from helming the DISASTEROUS Halloween 6: The Curse Of
Michael Myers, but that's a story and a review for another day.
Not only do we get an Alan Smithee
scenario here, but this is also the infamous “Hellraiser In
Space” movie. Oh yes, you read that right. Hellraiser
was shoehorning outer space into a horror franchise a full six years
before “I can't believe a
major studio released this into theaters Jason X”
made it cool. Also this was written by Peter Atkins (although it
has several ghost rewrites credited to it), so you know the insanity
is going to be of the “over the top” quality. Enough set up,
let's jump face first into this thing because I'm dying to watch it!
We open with the usual credits, the
notable credit here being Daniel Licht is doing music duties this
time. A friend of Hellraiser music veteran Christopher Young,
he would go on to become something of a superstar thanks to his
sublime work on the hit TV show Dexter. I also give him a
huge shout out for scoring the video game Silent Hill Downpour,
which is one of my all time favourite soundtracks, and certainly
couldn't have been easy considering he had huge shoes to fill by
replacing the previous composer of the series, Akira Yamaoka.
The film fades in on the Space Station
Minos in the year 2127... wow, I REALLY just had to type that.
Freaking HELLRAISER begins on a space station in the year
2127. I don't even... A camera gives us a tour of the place,
finally landing on a sealed room with a skeletal looking robot
holding the famous puzzle box. Please God let this movie be about
the robot and its battle against the Cenobites! A man sits at a
console, watching the robot via a giant monitor. He has a pair of
oversized gloves hooked up to the console, using them to control the
robot's hands. Damn, looks like this robot doesn't have artificial
intelligence of its own. Gyp!
A ship lands at the station, a platoon
of armed soldiers getting out and running throughout the station.
The man behind the console scrambles to open the box before they can
find him, succeeding and causing the robot to blow up in the process.
Aww, sad. Pinhead appears and is all “Why the FUCK am I in outer
space?!”, glaring angrily at the man through the monitor. The
soldiers, weapons drawn, find the man and inform him he's relieved of
duty.
The movie skips ahead a bit, where the
soldiers discuss what's going on. Minos is the biggest station in
the fleet, and has been hijacked by the man who also built it. He's
rerouted almost all the power to his personal quarters, shutting down
pretty much the rest of the ship. The soldier in charge asks one of
the other soldiers for her opinion, which serves as our introduction
to Rimmer. Played by Christine Harnos of ER fame, she never
gets a first name in the movie but that's alright because the
significance of her last name is awesome enough. It's a reference to
Arnold Rimmer, a character from the HILARIOUS BBC TV show Red
Dwarf that featured the trials and tribulations of a man stranded
in space. I give the show the highest recommendation possible if
you've never seen it, as it's British humour at its finest.
Rimmer goes into the brig to
interrogate the man, Dr. Paul Merchant. He's played by Canadian
actor Bruce Ramsay and this is arguably his biggest role to date
although one could make the case for 1993's brutally underrated
Killing Zoe, which I hope to get to someday. He is
very insistent that everyone leave NOW because he has some very big
irons in the fire but Rimmer isn't hearing that. Merchant reveals he
built the station to be a trap for Hell itself, which leads into a
flashback. Oh, we're doing this are we? You might want to get
comfortable, I have the feeling this movie's going to feel WAY longer
than its 85 minute run time.
We go back to the 1700s as we're
introduced to Merchant's ancestor, Philip Lemarchand (also played by
Ramsay), being commissioned by a black arts obsessed French
aristocrat named Duc de L'Isle to build the very first puzzle box.
De L'Isle has his assistant Jacques fetch him a peasant woman with no
family and- holy shit Jacques is Adam Scott! Scott has made quite
the name for himself thanks to playing Ben Wyatt on NBC's hit show
Parks And Recreation, but back in 1996 this was his first big
break in Hollywood.
At de L'Isle's bequest, Jacques
strangles Angelique to death in preparation for their ceremony. They
skin her body and prepare it, de L'Isle casting a spell that turns
the simple puzzle box into the gateway to Hell that we all recognize
it as today. Angelique's body is brought back to life as a Cenobite
named Angelique, although she looks exactly like she did as a human.
De L'Isle has full control of her thanks to his spell, which means
life is about to get pretty miserable in dear old France.
Philip, who was secretly spying on the
men the entire time, tries to tell his doctor friend Auguste de
L'Moure about what he witnessed but is dismissed. Fans of Babylon
5 will easily recognize Auguste as actor Louise Turenne, who
played the elderly version of Draal in the first season. Auguste
finally says that if he believes his work has summoned demons to this
world, then create something else that will destroy them.
This sounds good to Philip, who gets to
work drafting a new device. To complete it he needs to steal the
original box, which goes about as well as you'd guess. Jacques, who
has turned on his master and killed him, catches the toymaker and
orders Angelique to give him the same treatment de L'Isle got. The
flashback doesn't end here though, as Philip's pregnant wife
Genevieve comes to de L'Isle's home looking for her missing husband.
Genevieve is played by Charlotte Chatton, an actress and screenwriter
that is most famous for portraying Madeleine Astor, a survivor of the
doomed ocean liner Titanic, in a little known indie film by James
Cameron whose name escapes me right now. You've probably never heard
of it.
Genevieve finds her husband, who dies
in her arms because this is a movie and that's required by law. Back
in the present, er... future, Merchant tells Rimmer all of Philip's
descendants dreamt of puzzle boxes thanks to a curse Angelique placed
on his... wait for it... BLOODLINE. This transitions to 1996 as we
meet John and Bobbi Merchant, John played by Ramsay again who is
working his ass off in this thing! Bobbi is played by early Scream
Queen Kim Myers, who earned Hall of Fame status as Lisa Webber from A
Nightmare On Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge.
John has been having the nightmares his
entire life, only they're really starting to get bad. He's
a world famous architect, his appearance on a magazine cover catching
the attention of Angelique over in Paris. She asks Jacques, who
wasn't aged a day since we last saw him, for permission to visit
America. He denies her so she savagely kills him, thanks to a
loophole in the power he has over her. Rather, HAD over her. Thanks
for stopping by Scott, I'm really looking forward to seeing you in
Step Brothers
in twelve years!
Later
in New York City John is giving a speech at a banquet in a VERY
familiar looking skyscraper when he notices Angelique watching him
from the crowd, recognizing her from his nightmares where she has a
habit of ripping his heart out. Angelique is played by Valentina
Vargas who has mostly starred in French films, but damn if she
doesn't look EXACTLY like Noomi Rapace. I seriously keep expecting
her to start battling a giant squid baby or get a crazy ass C-section
every time she steps into the frame. Her appearance startles him, so
he ends his speech and makes a hasty exit.
Watching
him leave, Angelique lures some poor schlub into the basement and
makes him close his eyes. She walks over to a stone column and
punches a hole through it, removing the puzzle box that Joey hid in
the construction site from the last movie. NICE. I love they
actually followed through something a previous movie set up for once!
She hands the box to him and makes him solve it, which brings on the
hooks we all know and love. Pinhead appears and picks up the box,
recognizing Angelique who is standing in the corner of the room
watching him. He addresses her as “princess” and they exchange
pleasantries, beginning to plot some good ol' fashioned chaos.
The
next day at work John gets a visit from Angelique, who takes great
interest of a picture John has framed on his wall. The picture is
the design Philip was working on before he was killed, John
explaining he's trying to turn it into a device involving light and
mirrors but is missing a key component he can't figure out.
Angelique touches him, which gives him all the memories of his
ancestors in a flash. This is very Assassin's
Creed
right here, let's just hope this doesn't end with aliens and solar
flares and whatever the fuck else is going on in that series.
The
demon leaves, saying she'll be in touch. That night John dreams of
having sex with Angelique until he's awoken by a phone call from her,
the two making plans to meet up the next day. He tries to pass this
off as a call from a Japanese client to Bobbi, but you can tell she's
not buying ANY of that. I really wish she was the star of this
thing, we could all do with more Kim Myers kicking supernatural ass
in our lives.
We
next get a scene of twin security guards in the skyscraper discussing
having sex with a transsexual... for some reason until they hear a
strange noise and go to investigate. Hey, how does Dr. Merchant know
about all of this? How is ANY of this relevant to his story
whatsoever? The idiots run afoul of the Cenobites, Pinhead torturing
them and turning them into a conjoined creature that looks a LOT like
when Pinhead and Spencer merged in the last film. Pinhead rants
about suffering, telling Angelique he's going to go after John's
young son Jack to teach the toymaker a lesson.
Cut
to the next scene, where Bobbi hears her son screaming for help. She
runs into the room to see Pinhead holding him by the arm, and once
again Pinhead in a brightly lit environment does him NO favours
whatsoever. Why is it so hard for directors to understand this? He
takes the two back to the skyscraper, leaving them alone in a room
guarded by a Cenobite dog. John shows up looking for them, finding
the hallways of the building have now been graciously redecorated by
Pinhead.
He
finds his family quite easily, but any chance for a happy reunion is
squashed as Pinhead walks out of the darkness. The next few scenes
are borderline incomprehensible and definitely feel like ones that
Yagher never finished, so I'll just summarize the long and short of
it is Pinhead wants him to create a new device that'll turn the
basement of the building into a permanently open portal to Hell.
However, Angelique has gotten quite accustomed to life on Earth and
wants no part of this, so she makes John finish the anti-Hell device
Philip invented.
Pinhead
kills John just as he completes it, beams of light bouncing
everywhere in the room that... do absolutely nothing. Then Bobbi
shows up and opens the box, which explodes but not before sending
both Cenobites back to Hell. I really can't put into words how
confusing and badly edited all of this was, this movie is A HOT MESS.
Dr.
Merchant concludes his movie padding tale, trying to get Rimmer to
believe he has summoned the Cenobites and has to be set free to take
care of them. We jump to the room the robot was sealed in, where a
soldier hears children crying inside it to be let free. Oh snap, he
is black. In a horror movie. A SCI-FI horror movie. This is NOT
going to end well. He blasts the door open to save them, but instead
becomes another entry in the “Black Guy Dies First” trope list.
Pinhead leaves the room, flanked by the Conjoined Twins Cenobite and
Angelique, who has also turned into a twisted version of her past
self.
Since
Hellraiser has been ripping off other movies for awhile now, the rest
of the movie turns into Aliens
as we get crew members
getting picked off on a dark and creepy ship one by one. Yawn, seen
it. This is enough to fully convince Rimmer, who lets Merchant go to
complete his plan. More horribly cobbled together scenes follow,
Merchant ultimately using a hologram of himself to distract Pinhead
while he and Rimmer escape the station via shuttle craft. Merchant
activates his anti-Hell device, which transforms the entire station
into a gigantic puzzle box that explodes, “killing” Pinhead. Uh
huh. I totally believe he's gone forever, movie. The final shot is
of Merchant and Rimmer flying towards Earth as the film abruptly
starts rolling the credits.
That'll show me to be excited for a movie. Here's
another textbook example of how NOT to do a sequel, especially a
sequel to a horror movie. This would be the last Hellraiser
movie to be released theatrically (until the upcoming reboot, that
is), as everyone jumped ship after this and relegated the series to
straight-to-video hell. Oddly enough this was the highest grossing
film of the series (again, until the upcoming reboot because that'll
have the power of BRANDING behind it), but I can almost guarantee
that was due to the “What the fuck? Hellraiser
in space?!” factor brought in a lot of dollars.
This
was also the film with the highest budget of the series, which is
ironic because it looked like complete shit. Nothing looked good,
and there wasn't even a single scene that was even remotely
interesting or compelling. Hell, this was barely even a horror movie
but instead played more like a low end thriller. The cast was also
bland as hell, with the exception of Ramsay who showed great range in
playing three completely different characters. It's just a shame all
of them were woefully underutilized, as the film abandoned any
attempt to make its outlandish premise work in lieu of... well,
nothing really. Even the usually good Doug Bradley was on full
auto-pilot here.
I
think the biggest missed opportunity here was not making Myers the
star of this thing. Seriously, it's like the film makers were handed
this huge gift and completely squandered it. One of the most ass
kicking Scream Queens of the 80s facing off against Pinhead damn near
writes itself, but she was in this thing for all of five minutes and
barely did anything. That's really Hellraiser: Bloodline in a
nutshell I suppose: half-assing everything.
I
guess it was nice to finally get some answers about the puzzle box
that have been lingering since the first movie, but by this point it
really didn't matter. Things are way too established for any kind or
origin story for them to be meaningful anymore. This was a terribly
underwhelming movie that is by far the worst one... so far. I get a
funny feeling with FIVE movies remaining in this review retrospective
that I'm going to be pining for the days of Noomi Rapace's clone
killing people very soon.
MUCH sooner than I'm happy with...
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