Hellraiser: Judgment

Hellraiser: Judgment is a stuffy police procedural masquerading as a torturous Pinhead franchise entry.

The imagery is creepy and the pacing is brisk, but the story is a faded carbon copy of other, better serial killer thrillers, and the new additions to the Hellraiser mythology rob the Cenobites of their deviant allure and otherworldly menace.

Where the first few Hellraisers had an interesting if somewhat icky erotic tang to them – alluding to S&M/fetish culture as much as horror, and featuring female protagonists – Judgment is less about desire than just straight-up misogyny and gory, gross-out money shots.

One for Hellraiser completists only. Assuming there are any left.

Hope. That’s what Hellraiser: Judgment represents to me after watching one of if not my favourite film progressively get worse and worse over the course of too many sequels, it’s nice to know somebody still cares about the Hellraiser legacy. Judgment is by no means a perfect film, hindered by an insultingly low budget and sub standard acting, some portions can feel near unwatchable, but the intent is still there. It has the Hellraiser feel, while still adding something incredibly new and creative to the mythos, the biggest addition to the story since the second film eight movies ago. The actor who plays Pinhead (while still not British) captures the essence of Doug Bradley without coming off as a shoddy imitation, and I think that sentiment carries over the entire film. And if more Hellraiser sequels can be like this, then I’m on the edge of my seat awaiting Hellraiser 11.

This is an interesting and engaging opening, it really caught my attention, very different to the previous films but not hugely out of character or too different. I liked the new character The Auditor, sadly the rest is the characters are fairly dull and forgettable. Most of the acting is good enough, Helena Grace Donald is bad, the rest are probably just below average. I hated the shaky camera, it was so out of place, especially in one scene. Also it looked too bright and clean giving it an unreal gloss. Some shots were sped up and that looked bad. After the interesting ideas of the opening it became a Se7en (1995) clone. It's a mess of incoherent and underdeveloped and unoriginal ideas in the middle. The pace isn't bad, I didn't get bored much. The finale is pretty goofy filled with too much exposition. Some of the visual effects and some of the practical effects are good, some look awful like the gunshots. It's worth watching if you've seen the first five but it suffers from some poor decisions and not enough resources.

Better Than The Last Few It’s still a bad movie but at least it’s an improvement.

LMFAO! This was delightfully terrible. One of those budget movies where they cover up the Ford badge on the cars and they’re drinking out of water bottles with no labels!

Weird little spin on Hellraiser, added a heaven angle to it. Was not effective.