Ever since the third movie, the
Hellraiser movies have had a pattern of the odd numbered ones being
decent(ish) and the even numbered being atrocious. Hellraiser 7:
Deader was no exception, as the movie started off GREAT and even
though it fell apart like all these movies do, it still didn't make
me all that mad like Hellseeker did. Going off that criteria,
that makes it one of the best Hellraiser movies ever!
Like I said in the last review, Deader
and Hellworld were filmed back to back in Romania. Since all
of these straight-to-video sequels are just repurposed scripts,
instead of trying to create some kind of interesting two part story
(like the Romanian-filmed Prophecy movies did) the filmmakers
just went with another totally unrelated script. This was wasn't
even a script, but simply a treatment called “Dark Can't
Breathe” that was written by Joel Soisson and turned into a
screenplay by our old friend Carl V. Dupré. Soisson's name should
ring a few bells, as he directed both those aforementioned Prophecy movies.
I've always maintained this is a huge
lost opportunity, because with basically the same guys working on
both series, how the hell did this not result in a
Prophecy/Hellraiser crossover? It's things like this that
just go to show Hollywood doesn't get “it” and is afraid of
taking any chances, especially when we're talking the realm of
straight-to-video. For crying out loud, Dimension Films owns the
right to both franchises!
But that's neither here nor there
because it didn't happen and now we have Hellworld to take a
look at. This is a rather infamous movie, as this is the INTERNET
based one because Hellraiser wasn't content to already have
completely abandoned its premise by going into outer space, it had to
go ALL out in a blaze of batshit insanity.
Internet and horror have almost always
gone together as well as water and oil. It was a natural progression
for the genre, because in the early 1990s the internet was a
“dangerous and scary place”, so that made it ripe for
exploration. Some of the earliest examples are the 1992's the
Lawnmower Man and the following year's Ghost in the Machine,
but I consider the TRUE grandfather of the genre to be 1998's the
Last Broadcast. This was a little seen horror film that dealt
with the actual internet, and coincidentally doubles as the
grandfather of the found footage genre, beating the Blair Witch
Project to the punch by a year.
2001's Japanese horror film Kairo
(a/k/a Pulse) kicked things up a notch by featuring ghosts
doing their killing directly through the internet, but being foreign
it didn't hit American shores until many years later. The same year
there was .Com For Murder starring... Roger Daltrey and Huey
Lewis?! The fuck? THAT'S definitely going in my “movies to track
down” list! No one saw this one either, despite it's AMAZING
tagline of “In cyberspace no one can hear you scream!”.
2002 got things into full swing with
Feardotcom, which I've already discussed in my last review.
That also went largely ignored by film goers, so that left Halloween:
Resurrection to FINALLY bring internet horror front and center in
the eyes of the public. This was, of course, a total disaster that
killed the franchise dead for years until Rob Zombie rebooted it, but
that's a story for another day. Despite being GODAWFUL, it made a
fair amount of money and the game was on. Internet horror movies
began flooding the marketplace and continue to this day, as evidenced
by countless found footage films and the recently released Cam2Cam
which was directed by... Joel Soisson?! Goddamn man, GIVE IT UP!
Internet horror will never be a “thing” that works!
Can Hellworld break the streak
of endless terrible movies and deliver a good one? Hahah, no. It
can't. But let's have fun watching it try because it's now time for
A Ghoul Versus Hellraiser: Hellworld, which I am finally
getting too after promising to do it six months ago in my Prophecy:
Uprising review. See? I may be slow, but I always keep my word.
We open with a funeral for a young man
named Adam. Among those in attendance are five of his friends: Mike,
Derrick, Allison, Chelsea, and Jake. Mike should be instantly
familiar to you, as he's played by Henry Cavill, who would go on to
play n bland and boring alien from another world who murdered
HUNDREDS of innocent civilians while pointlessly punching fellow
aliens in Man of Steel.
But hey, at least he rocked some KILLER
abs in that movie!
Derrick is played by Khary Payton, who
is pretty famous for his voice over work in cartoons such as Teen
Titans, Young Justice, and Ben 10, as well as video games
like Metal Gear Solid 4 and the just released Call of Duty:
Advanced Warfare. Allison is portrayed by Anna Tolputt, who
really hasn't done much besides this movie. Chelsea's actress is
Katheryn Winnick, who is currently starring on the History Channel's
hit show Vikings. She also starred in the FINALLY released
after four years in the making sci-fi film Radio Free Albemuth,
which I REALLY want to see so expect a review soon. Finally we have
Christopher Jacot as Jake, Hellworld being his biggest role to
date. Sad!
Chelsea goes up to the closed coffin to
look at her friend, slowly opening it as dramatic music begins to
play. Gee, I wonder what's going to happen here? Just kidding, I
know EXACTLY what's going to happen. Adam's corpse leaps out and
grabs her for the World's Most Telegraphed jump scare, and then she
wakes up on her couch screaming. Oh wow, I hate this movie already.
I wonder, have these films EVER had a proper transition between
scenes?
A caption informs us it's two years
later as someone begins knocking on her door. She opens it to see
the Chatterer Cenobite standing there, oh wait my bad, it's just Mike
in a Chatterer mask. She's not scared at all, telling him Cenobites
don't exist and even if they did she never opened the Lament
Configuration so she'd have nothing to fear. Well... that's the
franchise totally exposed and deflated, way to go Rick Bota! It
really creates a lot of tension in your horror film when the
characters already know precisely what's going on from the word “go”.
Mike sits down at her computer and
boots up an e-invite to the Fifth Annual Hellworld gaming party, held
at the Leviathan House. Yes, all of the lore from Hellraiser
has now been turned into an online video game. I sure hope nothing
happens to make it all real and suck everyone playing it inside!
That'd be... a really shitty plot for a movie. Chelsea isn't
interested in attending because she's grown out of it, but Derrick
and Allison are down as hell. Chelsea soon relents, talked into it
by Allison. She drives them all out of this movie and straight into
Every 1990s Teen Road Trip Movie Ever, complete with generic alt-rock
song “It Ends” by Bosshouse, because I guess the Goo Goo
Dolls or Third Eye Blind were too expensive to license.
We get a charming scene of a beautiful
woman walking around topless at the raging party, Derrick commenting
it's a “gratuitous tit shot” but Mike corrects him that it's a
“necessary tit shot”. Whoops, I think the actors got confused
and read the description notes in Dupré's script instead of their
lines. How embarrassing! You think someone would have caught that
in editing... Jake also shows up, which surprises everyone as he's
been avoiding everyone since Adam's funeral. It's said he blames
them for Adam's suicide, as he was too caught up in the Hellworld
game and no one helped him with his addiction which eventually turned
fatal.
No time for clumsy exposition though,
because motherfucking LANCE HENRIKSEN just entered the room! BOOM!
Henriksen is, in my humble opinion, one of of the greatest actors
alive and even if you disagree with that, you can't argue that he's
one of the most INTENSE. An absolute professional, it doesn't matter
how crappy of a C-grade movie he might be in, he's going to give it
his all and elevate the movie to a higher level through sheer force
of will. They truly broke the mold when they made this man.
This is something a homecoming party
for Henriksen, as he was originally asked to play Frank Cotton in the
first Hellraiser, but he declined to star in Kathyrn Bigelow's
insanely underrated vampire movie Near Dark instead. While
this is a loss for Hellraiser as Henriksen would have kicked nine
levels of ass as Uncle Frank, it was a huge gain for everyone else as
Near Dark is fucking amazing. If you've never seen it (or
even heard of it), I definitely recommend hunting it down... or just
wait for the review I have planned in a couple of months.
Henriksen introduces himself as the
host of the party, having no name besides the Host. He gives the
five a tour of the building and all its occult artifacts, taking them
down to the basement which is full of preserved human remains. The
Host notes how unimpressed Chelsea is by all of this, so he grabs her
arm and jams a fucking nail into it! Pinhead pulls out the nail
while she has visions of being buried alive, telling her that Adam
was right. This turns out to all be a hallucination, because of
course it does. I'd point out how this makes no sense since no box
was opened to summon Pinhead, but I'm having too much fun watching
Henriksen so I'll let it go.
Taking them back upstairs, the hosts
shows them a display of white masks with four digit numbers on the
foreheads with a shelf full of Nokia cellphones below them. He says
everyone will have a mask, and if they wish to engage in some
“anonymous debauchery” all they have to do is dial the number of
a person wearing a mask. Mike and Derrick happily grab a phone,
which also makes no sense because they appear to be dating Chelsea
and Allison respectively. Maybe they're both open relationships?
Also, I can't overstate how SURREAL it
is to see Henry Cavill acting with enthusiasm and passion. I'm only
familiar with his work from Man of Steel, where he was in FULL ON
cardboard cutout mode and had as much of a screen presence as one of
the eight million product placement shots that movie featured. Jake,
who is playing the part of Captain Buzzkill, grabs a phone as well.
We learn he's only here to see a girl he met online, but has no idea
what she looks like. I really hope it's Pinhead catfishing him,
because since this movie is as far removed from a Hellraiser
movie as humanly possible they may as well have some fun with it.
Tone wise, this feels exactly like a Final Destination or
Urban Legends movie: a bunch of horny teens party and crack
wise until the inevitable murders begin to happen.
I guess they aren't dating, as we see
Mike trying to make time with Chelsea but she's still hung up on
Adam. He blows it and she storms off, leaving him alone to muse that
maybe if he packed on maybe fifty pounds of muscle she wouldn't have
said no. Hmm... Elsewhere Allison goes exploring in the house,
finding a room with an ominous looking wooden chair in the middle of
it. Foolishly ignoring the horror sting music that begins to play,
she sits down and it springs to life with manacles clamping around
her arms and legs. That was a rookie mistake!
A bar lowers in front of her neck with
two buzzsaws on it, the Host appearing and telling her she has
nothing to fear as long as the blades aren't turned on. Which is the
next thing he does, because that's how he rolls. One down, four to
go. Pinhead also makes an appearance to taunt her about Adam as
she's sliced open, and now I think I get what's going on. The game
they played two years ago was real and actually DID open a puzzle
box, even if it was a virtual one. This is how Pinhead is able to
engage in his wacky, bloody hijinx.
Chelsea hears Allison
screaming and goes looking for her, but gets distracted when she sees
Adam across the room. The movie does the “character turns away and
the other character follows” bit you've seen 4.1 million times
already, Chelsea following him into a room that locks her in. The
Host leaves to find Jake, telling him he's a smarter player than the
others. He gives him a puzzle box that Adam made, Jake immediately
proving him wrong by trying to open it. These people freaking
people, I tell you! Nails shoot out and pierce his thumb, Pinhead
doing his thing and telling him it isn't just a game.
Jake backs into the wall and
finds himself alone in the room, looking out the window to see the
Host digging a grave outside. Spooked, he goes back to the party
where he finds no one can see or hear him anymore. Next up is
Derrick, who is dancing with a fine young thang on the dance floor
until he gets an asthma attack. He drops his inhaler and it falls
down a vent to the basement, so he takes off after it. I'm sure that
won't turn into some kind of horrific trap or anything. We cut to
Mike, who is getting a blowjob from a masked woman he met when
Chelsea calls him to let her out of the room. He admonishes her for
blowing him off and then cracks a smile, realizing the irony of his
comment given his current situation. Hot damn Cavill is hilarious!
Is it too late to cast him as the Green Lantern?
Derrick finds his inhaler behind a
grate in another hilarious scene as he can't pull the grate of the
wall even though we can CLEARLY see it's not attached and he has to
push it BACK in. Given the numerous mistakes in his trilogy of
movies, I think it's safe to say Bota fucking HATES multiple takes.
Derrick tries going to the other side of the grate, finding himself
back in the human remains room. This turns out to be a poor
decision, because Pinhead grabs a meat cleaver and CUTS HIS FUCKING
HEAD OFF. Yes, because when I think of Pinhead I think of Generic
Movie Slasher #5,614,202. Pinhead would NEVER lower himself to such
a level, and I have eight movies to back me up on this. To my UTTER
SHOCK however, Pinhead doesn't crack some kind of witty one liner
after the murder. GYP! We see the Host digging another grave.
Invisible Jake notices a nun looking at
him from the next floor up, so he takes the stairs after her. The
nun is Sister Ursula, whom was in a painting the Host pointed out
during his tour. She's played by an actress named Catalina
Alexandru, who must have followed the production crew around Romania
because she was in the last movie as well as the Prophecy:
Uprising but I don't remember her having any kind of speaking
part in either. For what it's worth she also had a bit part in the
fourth Pumpkinhead movie, which also starred Henriksen and was
also filmed back to back in Romania with the third Pumpkinhead
movie. The more you know!
Ursula, who is now completely naked,
begins to kiss him. I've seen enough horror movies to know this is
NEVER a good thing, but Jake likes to play with fire because he goes
on to have sex with her. DAYMN, he's practically begging to be
killed as graphically as possible at this point! After they're done
Jake begins to have a vision of Adam digging a hole in a room
somewhere, which we also briefly saw at the very beginning of the
movie. A puzzle box near Adam springs to life and opens, Pinhead
emerging to watch him dig. Okay?
Chelsea gets a call from... Allison (?)
who is screaming for help and then gets a text saying “Adam was
right!”. Oh my God, Pinhead is fucking TEXTING now? Is that
really how the Lord of Hell is going to go out? What next, he's
going to start sending out mean tweets? Via an intercom in the room
the Host's voice broadcasts some vague threats, so she uses the phone
to call 911! HOLY SHIT, competence in a horror movie?! What fresh
madness be this? I doubt it'll work, but mega points for at least
thinking to try.
Click here for Part 2!
No comments:
Post a Comment