Hellraiser: Judgment

Hellraiser: Judgment

Cast:
Damon Carney, Randy Wayne, Alexandra Harris

Director/Writer:
Gary J. Tunnicliffe

Dimension Films/Lionsgate Films

2018

Detectives Sean and David Carter are on the case to find a gruesome serial killer terrorizing the city. Joining forces with Detective Christine Egerton, they dig deeper into a spiraling maze of horror that may not be of this world.

I honestly don’t know where to begin with this review. I could probably tell you in about three words what I think of this film but I don’t want to be a bitch about it either. I grew up watching horror films and Hellraiser was always one of my favorites. The first and second are the obvious classics, and part three is sort of just there, but it’s what happens after three that really just grinds my gears.

Seriously, what happened? From 1996 to 2018 Hellraiser became a joke of a horror movie series. It may have well had been a comedy series. I get that Clive Barker probably moved on to other projects, he’s an artist after all, so I’m thinking Hellraiser was just a phase of his art genius, he made some movies, some money and moved on to other things.

I discovered Clive Barker in my high school years when I came upon the movie Rawhead Rex. Rawhead Rex has always been a horror classic in my eyes. Yeah it’s guy in what looks like a tattered rubber suit portraying a demon who rampages and causes death and destruction across the Ireland, but that’s what you get when you release a pissed off demon from his underground prison.

I guess you could say I was more than infatuated with the works of Clive Barker after I watched Rawhead Rex, so as soon as I heard about Hellraiser through Fangoria Magazine, to in which I had a mail order subscription. I was hooked on the characters, I thought the Cenobites we’re just the coolest looking characters I had ever seen, and Pinhead was just looking boss. I suppose that’s why he lead the Cenobites.

Doug Bradley played the perfect Pinhead, nobody ever needed to replace him. All the Cenobites were so very different than any horror characters that I had ever seen so I knew that Hellraiser was already going to be an uber cool film.

What happened though?

Is it that Cliver Barker moved to new things, lost interest and gave up on the franchise, sold it off? As a fan I should probably know the actual story, but really I’m more in it for the movies and the characters and am not so much about following the creators and actors and such.

My thought is that Clive Barker had an idea that went from paper to film, made some money, and moved on. So whoever most likely picked up the franchise ruined it by passing it off to anyone who had an interest in it and was involved in the film industry.

Between Bloodline and Judgment I am just lost. These movies just got worse and worse and Dimension just let it happen. Oh my God then I watched Judgment. It popped up on Netflix or one of the other streaming services I use. Deep in my heart I hoped it would be good, but it was so bad.

I get it, the franchise is handed off from one person to another and everyone has his or her own idea of what Hellraiser and the Cenobites should look like and represent, and Hellraiser has so much lore from novels to comic books and more. So yeah a Cenobite can look like anything within the universe of what you’d think a Clive Barker Cenobite would look like, but the thing is this, Pinhead died in Hellraiser 2.

We already know that within the world of horror films and comic books the main character never stays dead for long, Hollywood and comic book publishers will always come up with a way to bring back the antagonist, but as far as I’m concerned Leviathan gave Dr. Channard the power to kill off all the Cenobites from the first Hellraiser movie in Hellraiser 2. I mean what more do we need to know? They died, didn’t they?

Dr. Channard reverted them back to who they were in previous lives and strung them up with hooks and chains and essentially tore them apart as like the rest who would be caught up in a Cenobite released territory. To me part three was just filler and a way to tell us that Pinhead presumably can’t die, and yes he could come back with other new Cenobites, and/or just make new ones out of whoever he deems worthy.

So I watched Hellraiser: Judgment and from the get go it was just another ill try at a Hellraiser film. It made me feel like I was watching a bad Indie film (which is really what I feel most of these after Hellraiser 2 movies are). I wish it could have been a good movie but it was just terrible. The more I watched the deeper I sunk in to a pit of awful.

The Cenobite characters were creative, but that was really about all the good in the movie, and that wasn’t even that good. The acting was stiff, almost soap opera like. The dialogue and story I felt could have been so much better than a detective sort of goes to Hell story. Besides Heather Langenkamp I don’t know who any of the actors are, not that this is a bad thing but is nobody from the horror movie industry interested in being a part of a Hellraiser film?

I think I can truly say that if you are bored and have nothing else going on, and nothing better to watch then take the chance and watch Hellraiser: Judgment, but this world has so many better horror movies to see, especially with how many streaming services are out there lately.

To the Hellraiser fans I say go for it, but if Hellraiser is not a priority stay far, far away from this one.

Jenna Zombie

Florida gamer girl into anything horror. I am always up for horror movie and novel suggestions. Tell me a scary story..