Hellraiser: Deader
My Hellraiser adventure continues, and I finally got to the V/H/S movies where they ran out of ideas. Luckily, I have only a few more movies to slog through, but it's surprising how much Hellraiser steals from movies like The Jacket and Jacob's Ladder.
Unfortunately, this goes the way of Hellseeker and not Inferno. While both of those movies treat death like some other word, this movie decided death is just another state of being and changed the rules of Hellraiser for... What is this... the sixth time? Sigh... I guess that's just what's to be expected, but I would at least hope the movies would be fun.
Nope, this was a slog to get through. The only thing that I could give the barest passing grade is the acting. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing good about it, but it's the best part of the movie, and half of it is because no one was as bad as Dean Winters from Hellseeker in this. Also, British accents make movies a bit more interesting. Sorry, I don't make the rules.
Besides that, I would normally give credit to the gore and prosthetics, but half of the blood literally looks like lazy red paint, and none of the gore has that grittiness any of the other films have had. So yeah, the only bone this movie throws me is that at least the acting was not a complete failure. Everything else is just as awful as I implied.
It's boring and has some of the most awful writing I have ever had the displeasure of witnessing. The idea of dead people not dying has been done so many other times and in so many other variations, but what's on display here is just abominable. None of it makes any sense by itself and, again, has nothing to do with our understanding of death in Hellraiser. Also, calling them "deaders" brings to mind Planescape: Torment, which explores similar ideas about death but actually does something interesting with them. Maybe this Deader "movie" should have taken some notes.
Well, that's pretty much all my thoughts on this. It's awful and is going to last place on my current ranked list for Hellraiser. It's my understanding that it won't stay there forever...
Unfortunately, this goes the way of Hellseeker and not Inferno. While both of those movies treat death like some other word, this movie decided death is just another state of being and changed the rules of Hellraiser for... What is this... the sixth time? Sigh... I guess that's just what's to be expected, but I would at least hope the movies would be fun.
Nope, this was a slog to get through. The only thing that I could give the barest passing grade is the acting. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing good about it, but it's the best part of the movie, and half of it is because no one was as bad as Dean Winters from Hellseeker in this. Also, British accents make movies a bit more interesting. Sorry, I don't make the rules.
Besides that, I would normally give credit to the gore and prosthetics, but half of the blood literally looks like lazy red paint, and none of the gore has that grittiness any of the other films have had. So yeah, the only bone this movie throws me is that at least the acting was not a complete failure. Everything else is just as awful as I implied.
It's boring and has some of the most awful writing I have ever had the displeasure of witnessing. The idea of dead people not dying has been done so many other times and in so many other variations, but what's on display here is just abominable. None of it makes any sense by itself and, again, has nothing to do with our understanding of death in Hellraiser. Also, calling them "deaders" brings to mind Planescape: Torment, which explores similar ideas about death but actually does something interesting with them. Maybe this Deader "movie" should have taken some notes.
Well, that's pretty much all my thoughts on this. It's awful and is going to last place on my current ranked list for Hellraiser. It's my understanding that it won't stay there forever...
Mini Review: My Hellraiser marathon continues and the series has run out of ideas. Deader steals from The Jacket and Jacob's Ladder, then changes Hellraiser's rules about death for what feels like the sixth time. Unlike Inferno, this is a slog. The acting gets a pass, mostly because nobody is as bad as Dean Winters in Hellseeker. British accents help. The gore looks like red paint, the writing is awful, and the "deaders" remind me that Planescape: Torment did more with death. Last place, for now.