Absolutely the worst in the "Hellraiser" series and one of the dumbest horror films in years. The face of Pinhead (played by Doug Bradley) is featured prominently on the video box, but he`s barely in the movie. That, however, is the least of this film's problems.
Released direct-to-video shortly after the Scott Derrickson-penned film "Urban Legends Final Cut" slithered its way into theaters, this shallow heap of a movie is touted as a "must see" for Hellraiser fans. Actually people who don`t like Hellraiser movies--or maybe haven`t seen any of them--might enjoy its first half, which basically plays as a cop drama/murder mystery.
A married homicide detective (Sheffer, of Clive Barker`s pretty weak film "Nightbreed") who likes to snort coke and sleep with whores (hey, who doesn`t?) discovers the Lament Configuration (that nutty puzzle box) at a murder scene where the victim happens to be an old high school acquaintance. He solves it one night and slowly his life starts turning upside down. More murders happen and at each scene the finger of a child is discovered. Our homicide detective anti-hero starts searching for an evil dude named "The Engineer" who has become something of a legend in police circles (sort of like Keyser Soze in "The Usual Suspects"). When the cop starts seeing a cenobite with no eyes and a long tongue committing some of the murders-even getting a videotape with one of the murders taking place-he really starts to flip. Trouble is no one else can see the cenobite but him.
Derrickson obviously wasn`t given the budget to make a real "Hellraiser" film. There are hardly any decent Cenobites in the film: Only Pinhead (who appears oh-so briefly and doesn`t even look good), the Chatterer (who now doesn`t have legs) and a pair of dumb-looking, female twin cenobites show up. Normally, "Hellraiser" films are known for their outrageous killings and gore effects. Not this one.
Worst yet, Barker didn`t have anything to do with the making of this movie, so we don`t see his touch anywhere. "Inferno" does play as a halfway decent mystery during its first half. But by the end it devolves into a piece of total garbage, with Pinhead appearing almost as a ghost in a Charles Dickens novel, only there to tell our protagonist he`s made the wrong choices with his life.
Where`s the Pinhead who says things like "We have such sights to show you" and "I will rip your soul apart"? He ain`t in this movie. I suspect that the designs of this film may have originally been intended for another flick. Then the story was wrapped around some of the "Hellraiser" motifs, Doug Bradley was paid to make a cameo and-voila!-Dimension Films had a low-budget "Hellraiser" knock off to send video stores.
remember when pinhead had a presence? when he walked in the room you knew he was the shit and something bad was gonna happen to whomever messed with the box? well, thats over, hes been reduced as a pretentious cheap scare device.
Rank this film on a '666 scale' of one to six (left to right). Based on 1975 votes.
