(2002)

review by:

2-10-04

Written by: Carl V. Dupré Directed by: Rick Bota Starring: Dean Winters, Ashley Laurence, Doug Bradley

Trevor Gooden and his wife Kirsty (yeah, that Kirsty) drive off a bridge into a lake. Trevor's the only survivor, and wakes up to a very strange reality. But when some suspicious detectives come around accusing Trevor of murder, he needs to piece things together as his very reality seems to fall apart. Sounds interesting, doesn't it? Yeah, it did to me, too. In Hellraiser: Inferno. Hellseeker, otherwise known as Hellraiser 6, basically "borrows" the exact same story structure from 5. Where Inferno was an interesting deviation from the typical horror movie format, Hellseeker comes off as a pretty flat attempt to recapture the non-glory of it's straight-to-video predecessor. I mean, I understand trying to recapture the tone and feeling of a previous successful movie, but why steal the plot from a moderately noticed video release? Unless of course the writers made two photocopies of the Inferno script and the moronic sequel monkeys mistook them for two entirely different stories. It happens... "But Kirsty's back! This movie has to be good!" You know what...no it doesn't. Kirsty, who we all know and love from the first three movies (not that I actually acknowledge the existence of 3, or the last quarter of 2), is not herself in this installment. She's on the screen for maybe five minutes, and when she is there she's not the hero she once was. (Caution: Spoiler) Sure she's always looked after her own ass, but this time she goes ahead and decides to murder five innocent people to save herself from Pinhead. Okay...why in the holy flaming hell did she open the box this time anyway? Because Trevor bought one for her as a gift. I guess. The plot, constantly cutting between realities, keeps the viewer confused as to what's really happening. Is there a plot to kill Kirsty? Is Trevor really insane? Well, if you saw Inferno you know within two minutes what's really happening, but all you really get form this film is that the once beloved heroine is now a murderess bitch. Her former cunning is now just desperate cowardice to appease the progressively gullible Pinhead one more time. Speaking of major horror movie icons, what's our favorite acupuncturist buddy up to this time? Not much. Again. Not that he should be seen, ahem, running around the streets (as in the crap-o-riffic Hellraiser 3), but now he seems to serve absolutely no purpose. In Hellraiser and Hellbound he and the other Cenobites were the monsters summoned by fatal curiosity and lust, making brief but important appearances. After that, no one really used him right again. Now they try limiting him to only so much screen time, trying to recapture the dignity of his first two performances, and failing. The scary thing about the Cenobites is that they're "demons" summoned to earth, but Pinhead lurking around one guy's death fantasy holds no real stakes for us, there's nothing for the living human watching the movie to be afraid of. Of course, there's always Doug Bradley, but he rarely carries sharpened meat hooks around with him. Or so I hear. Basically, this movie has no reason to exist. Winters' performance is good, and the production values are pretty high, but movies are for telling new and interesting stories, not just looking pretty. And we've heard this one before.

Rating