Hellraiser: Hellworld

2005 ***1/2

Well, this was a nice surprise. I had two loose ends from last year: my Lovecraft roundup meant to end with Dreams in the Witch House (puke), and my completion of the Hellraiser series was incomplete by a maddening single movie, no less than the eighth one. So, eager to close this chapter and not expecting much, I threw this in late Friday night intending to push through a half-hour of it, maybe. And I watched the whole thing.

To underscore my point, observe the following chart.

Hellraiser movies ranked by quality

Best one: Hellraiser (#1)
Second best one: Hellbound, Hellraiser II
Third best one: Hellraiser: Hellworld (#8)

That's something, isn't it? And honestly, for a second there I thought it might have the #2 spot. Here's the rest of the list:

Fourth best one: Hellraiser: Bloodline (#4)
Not as good as that last one, but all kind of the same: (#5, #6, #7)
Worst one: Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth

Hellworld does itself a favor by bumping up a meta-level. In this movie, the characters wear Pinhead T-shirts, collect all the Hellraiser collectables and play Hellworld, the online multi-player game. The movie starts with the funeral of one such gamer, who went a little nutzo and lit himself on fire. His five gamer friends feel guilty for not seeing his obsession before it was too late.

Then two years later they all go to a Hellworld party, hosted by his eternal creepiness Lance Henriksen. They hear about the bizarre history of the old house, observe Lance's amazing collection, drink, dance, and eventually wander off one by one and get themselves kilt.

"But wait!" says one of the gremlins who run my brain, "this isn't how a Hellraiser movie goes!" It's true. The last couple of these involved somebody opening a box and then several iterations of horrible visions that end when the character wakes up, again. This movie is, instead, a slasher. There are brief flashes of Pinhead and lots of Hellraiser-y decor, but it's not the characters souls that are in jeopardy here, it's their blood.

Since this is a group of hep teens and this is a horror movie, there's dialogue to groan your way through and a lot of the boilerplate relationship dynamics we've seen before. But as a slasher with a great setting, a tasteful dash of mysterious supernatural elements, and a killer twist -- this really satisfies. Enough so I'm going to issue a spoiler warning to those who haven't seen it -- it won't ruin your life to have this revealed, but... you know. Just don't read past the picture of the old school Cenobite below. (Using the old Cenobite designs instead of stupid new ones was a good idea, too.)

Anyway, if you wanna dip into some latter-day Hellraiser but you're not sure which, this one's your baby.

Are they gone? Good.

There are actually two twists to this movie, both of which I like. The first is that after an early point in the flick, very little of what we see is actually happening. Lance is the dad of the kid who burned, and to get revenge on his kid's stupid friends he gets them all to the party and finds ways to drug them. Then he buries them alive with air tubes and cell phones, and basically dictates their experiences to them, which become real in their minds thanks to the heavy psychoactives. And some of the kids actually die there in their coffins.

Twist #2 happens when Lance, screwing around with the puzzlebox that he only acquired as part of his revenge scheme, opens the damn thing and summons Pinhead. Which means that after hitting us with a twist that said "bang, none of the supernatural elements happened," the movie pulls the opposite twist: Hell is real and coming to get you, Lance Henriksen.