Hellraiser: Hellworld

(2005) **1/2

Filmed back-to-back with Hellraiser: Deader, Hellworld has all the things we’ve come to expect from a Hellraiser movie; pretty people, nudity, graphic dismemberments, and, yes, even a brief (very brief) appearance from Pinhead. As I’ve noted previously, the Hellraiser films play like episodes from some unrated anthology TV show that only exists on a cable station that nobody actually gets (e.g., MTV2). In order to truly enjoy these direct-to-video Hellraiser films, you must accept the fact that these films have more to do with irony and fate than cenobites. In Hellworld, a group of pretty people, hooked on an online Hellraiser game, is invited by the Webmaster to attend a secret Hellraiser party, “No guests”. The party, hosted by none other than Lance Henriksen, will remind you of that creepy cult party Tom Cruise stumbles into in Eyes Wide Shut. The guests are all given numbered masks to don and cell phones. You see, when you see someone you want to hook up with, all you have to do is call the number on the mask. Oh yeah, the group is also informed that the house used to belong to the dude who created the Lament Configuration. Apparently the house was also an asylum for the criminally insane. As the film unfolds, the gang inevitably splits up in pursuit of a good time. In typical behavior-only-committed-in-a-horror-film, each character wanders off to explore the creepy mansion. Hellworld follows the standard Hellraiser formula; characters die in horrible ways, with one death being particularly memorable and quite nifty in its originality, and we, the viewer, keep trying to guess what’s real and what’s not. There’s a nice twist near the end of the film that I didn’t predict and the last 10-minutes are particularly fun. Oh, and Pinhead? Pinhead’s in the film for about 2-minutes, but it doesn’t really matter. For those who like the Hellraiser franchise, Hellworld is another fun installment.