Hellraiser: Judgement (2018)

Hellraiser: Judgement (2018) Feb 13, 2018 3:12:38 GMT

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Post by Reynard on Feb 13, 2018 3:12:38 GMT

Feb 12, 2018 17:44:41 GMT masterofallgoons said:

Feb 12, 2018 10:52:19 GMT lostinlimbo said:

I do see "Inferno" get thrown around a lot as the best of the DTV bunch, which is strange being that the story originally had nothing to do with the hellraiser universe. I'll probably check 'em out sooner than later.

Yeah it's weird. You can tell that it could have been an unrelated script, because the characters have no relationship to anything in previous movies, but it just happens to be the best of the later, unrelated sequels. It's a decent story and it's well directed and has an appropriate mind fuck kind of trippy quality to it. It works overall and even though you can tell that it was a separate story adapted to fit in to the Hellraiser series, it actually makes sense in its own context.

This new one looks shitty, and really cheap. It looks like a relatively decent fan film as opposed to an official, studio produced, major release made entirely by professionals.

Naturally, that still means it looks about a million times better than the last one, but I do fear that this one is also a quickie just to keep the rights. A buddy of mine met the new Pinhead, and he nothing but good things to say about the guy, and he looks decent enough here. I think if the movie is bad it will likely not be his fault. He's taking a good attitude toward it if you ever hear what he has to say about it.

I hope it's good, but despite some fairly nice looking shots, the whole thing seems really small in scale and looks cheaply made. It has a very digital, camcorder-ish look to the cinematography, and all of these torture set piece shots we see in the trailer seem to be shot in one poorly lit room. I think this was likely a very amateurish production, and I'm really not expecting much.

Hellraiser: Inferno doesn't really feel like part of the series, but then again I could say that about all sequels after Hellraiser: Bloodline, which in my opinion was the end of "proper" Hellraiser series. The rest is more like fanfiction.

While everyone probably know this already, Inferno was the debut feature of Scott Derrickson, who has since directed The Exorcism of Emily Rose, Sinister and Deliver Us From Evil. I rented Inferno when it was released on video and though that it was very well put together and with very good cinematography. Certainly the last in the franchise so far to look like a real movie. It's nice that he was able to work his way up from that cheapie sequel hell, since Derrickson so obviously has talent.

Inferno was also to last to have some style and a proper script with themes, even though they were not themes that one would expect to find written into a Hellraiser movie. Hellseeker and Deader felt like something written by edgy teenage nihilists, and I'm too old to watch shit like that now. Hellworld was some kind of weird mobile phone / teen horror with Pinhead shoehorned in at the last moment. I dare say that it's actually slightly more watchable than the previous two, but that's not really much.

Judgement looks like a return to Hellseeker / Deader style and sadly hairbox's comment only adds to that bad feeling. And yeah, I don't love this modern cheap digital cinematography either.