Franchises: Hellraiser. Hellraiser: Judgment (2018)

Throughout these reviews, I've constantly referred back to Gary J. Tunnicliffe's extensive interview with Midnight's Edge about his history with Hellraiser, not only because it's a great source of behind-the-scenes information on a number of these movies, but also because it's where I truly learned of Tunnicliffe's significant role in the series' history. While I already had an inkling of who he was, since he and his studio have done the effects for so many movies, and I'd also read about him in The Hellraiser Films and Their Legacy, that interview firmly cemented it to me, especially since I read that book so long that a lot of the info on Tunnicliffe had fallen out of my head. It was also where I learned that another Hellraiser had been made since Revelations, which I'd had no inkling of whatsoever. At the very start of the interview, Andre Einherjar announced that Judgment had not only been recently released but that, like Revelations, it didn't feature Doug Bradley as Pinhead, and was made solely so Dimension could hold onto the rights. He also said it had proven to be fairly controversial as a result, with Bradley himself being very critical of both the movie and Dimension. During the interview's back end, when they got around to talking about the movie itself, I heard Tunnicliffe's version of events as to why Bradley wasn't involved, as well as learned that, for various reasons, he himself had become a fairly disliked figure among the fanbase, and had gotten flack for not only writing and directing but also for casting himself as the new character of the Auditor. In any case, from what I gleaned from the interview, while Judgment was hardly universally loved by fans, it was better received than Revelations (which I hadn't seen yet at that point), and I could tell that Tunnicliffe himself was a big fan. I could also tell from the screenshots they showed that this film looked both surreal and absolutely disgusting... and this was after Tunnicliffe said he'd toned it down per the studio's directions! Thus, unlike Revelations, I was interested in seeing Judgment, and would do so at the end of the year.

If nothing else, I can definitely say that Tunnicliffe accomplished his goal of creating imagery that had not yet been seen in a Hellraiser movie, as well as going back to the taboo nature of the material that some of the previous movies had skirted around. This is one of the grossest movies I have ever seen produced by a mainstream studio, direct-to-video or otherwise. While there's fucked up stuff throughout it, the two "audit" scenes are the definition of stomach-churning, as well as absolutely bizarre, and are nigh impossible for me to watch. Even though I knew and could tell it was very low budget, I enjoyed the movie's visual style, I thought Paul T. Taylor did really good as Pinhead, and Tunnicliffe's Auditor character was one of the most memorable and ghoulishly enjoyable characters this series had seen in a long time. But I've never cared about the detective story or the protagonists at the heart of it, and as effectively nauseating as many scenes are, it feels like they were put in there for no other reason than so Tunnicliffe could say he'd made the most disgusting and out-there entry in the series. Again, he definitely accomplished it, and I do think this is better than probably all of the other direct-to-video Hellraisers, but I don't go to horror films purely for gross-out; in fact, I try to avoid those with that sole intention as often as I can, save for certain exceptions. In the end, I can respect what Tunnicliffe was going for, but this isn't quite my cup of tea.

In hell, Pinhead and a being called the Auditor discuss how they can continue harvesting souls in an age where technology has allowed people to satiate their desires. Upon the Auditor's suggestion, Pinhead decides they should seek out those souls who are seeking even darker pleasures. They begin with Karl Watkins, a pedophile and child murderer, who's lure to an abandoned house on Ludovico Street. Once inside, the Auditor puts him through a hideous procedure involving his sordid past history being typed out, an assessor "processing" the information, a jury "deliberating" and coming to a verdict, and his being taken to be "cleaned" and meeting with a surgeon. Meanwhile, in the real world, a woman named Crystal Lanning falls victim to the Preceptor, a serial killer who's been terrorizing the city with a series of gruesome and depraved murders based on the Ten Commandments. Brothers Sean and David Carter, detectives assigned to the case, investigate the crime scene, where they're joined by another detective, Christine Egerton, assigned to assist them. Begrudgingly, Sean allows her to join him and David in tracking down the Preceptor, who has now murdered fourteen people and tends to send letters explaining his actions to the police. At the site of his next crime, a playground, they find a set of severed hands from missing teenagers, encircling jars filled with their blood, and each clenching an eyeball and some teeth. Identifying the victims, they find a connection between them and Crystal Lanning: Karl Watkins, as he'd been an unwelcome visitor at their former school. They go to his apartment, and learn from the landlady that she hasn't seen him for the past two days. Investigating the room, they find a possible link between him and the Preceptor. Later, Sean goes back to the apartment by himself and searches Watkins' laptop. He finds the address on Ludovico Street and goes there, only to be strapped down and put through the auditing process. However, the Assessor has a painful time processing his answers, and Sean manages to escape during the cleaning process. In the middle of the procedure, the angel Jophiel appears to the Auditor and demands that Sean be set free. Though this could mean he was innocent, Pinhead, after examining one of the pages, is confident that, one way or another, he will return to them.

Hellraiser: Revelations may have been a total dumpster fire but, as a rights retainer, it did what it was supposed to do. Ostensibly, Dimension was now free to resume developing the long-rumored large-budgeted Hellraiser remake... and, again, nothing came of that. Inevitably, the rights issue came up again, forcing them to make another movie if they wanted to hold onto them. Despite not getting a chance to direct Revelations, and getting skewered for how badly it turned out since he wrote the screenplay, when Gary Tunnicliffe was, again, approached by Joel Soisson about writing and directing another one, he, being a fan, said yes. Even though it was still a really low budget, $350,000, it was more than they had for Revelations, and it didn't need to be done within just a few weeks, either. What's more, he'd written Hellraiser: Judgment right after Revelations, but couldn't get any interest in it from Dimension at the time. Thus, he decided to remove the Hellraiser elements and make it as a standalone movie simply called Judgment, but couldn't find any backers; he also attempted a Kickstarter campaign for it but that proved unsuccessful as well. So, when he got the call from Soisson, he had to turn Judgment back into a Hellraiser film. But then, Dimension didn't like the story at all, and after rewriting it several times, only to be turned down again, Tunnicliffe came up with another possible film, Hellraiser: Enter Darkness, which was more palatable to the execs. But he insisted on making Judgment instead, saying he only wrote the other script to show he was a team-player. They then gave him what was basically an ultimatum: if they didn't like his final screenplay for Judgment, he would have to make Enter Darkness for free. Fortunately for him, they went for it this time, albeit still requesting a number of notes and rewrites.

Though this was his long sought after shot at directing a Hellraiser movie, Tunnicliffe wasn't a newbie when it came to directing. He'd made a 1996 sci-fi/horror television film called Within the Rock (I've known of that ever since I was a kid but have never seen it), as well as some family movies based on popular fairy tales: 2002's Hansel & Gretel, with Lynn Redgrave, and 2009's Jack and the Beanstalk, which featured Chloe Grace Moretz, Christopher Lloyd, Daniel Roebuck, Katey Sagal, Wallace Shawn, Gilbert Gottfried, and James Karen. Most significantly, when he returned from Romania following the back-to-back productions of Deader and Hellworld, he made a little Hellraiser short called No More Souls, which ended up as an Easter egg on Deader's DVD release. It got a lot of praise from just about everyone who saw it or helped him on it, and Tunnicliffe claims that, when Rick Bota saw it, he said he felt there was more of a Hellraiser vibe in those six minutes than in his three feature-length films. Paul Kane even gave it its own section in The Hellraiser Films and Their Legacy. Tunnicliffe himself also played Pinhead in the short, which, unfortunately, would cause friction between him and Doug Bradley, which worsened over time and completely boiled over when it came to Judgment, as we'll get into.

If you couldn't grasp from the numerous times I referred back to Tunnicliffe's Midnight's Edge interview, I genuinely like the guy. He is very outspoken and opinionated, sometimes to a fault, but I like his energy and enthusiasm for the franchise, and I commend him for sticking with it over the years, despite all the crap he's been put through as a result. But, that said, he is sometimes a tad overly defensive, especially when it comes to this movie and the criticism he got over it, for various reasons. Case in

point, the identity of the Preceptor killer in this film, with Tunnicliffe saying that those who claimed they knew who it was early on are liars. I don't remember if I caught on to it the first time but, regardless, that's where I'm like, "Okay, Tunnicliffe, don't get your panties in a knot." Plus, aside from how severely unsettling and perverse these murders are, this is the side of the story I find the least interesting, as I've seen this kind of plot done three times before in this franchise. Yeah, the protagonists in Hellseeker and

Deader may not have been detectives, but it was still that same sort of story that we first saw in Inferno, and now, we're doing it again. The only difference is that this time, instead of a Jacob's Ladder vibe, it feels like Se7en mixed in with Hellraiser, but that doesn't make it feel any less repetitive or unoriginal (in fact, that in and of itself is a big issue I have with the movie). And I couldn't care less about our three leads, either.

Even if Tunnicliffe doesn't think anyone should be able to tell who the Preceptor is the first time, he doesn't give us many suspects, especially since we know this isn't the Cenobites' MO, and doesn't feel like what the Auditor would be doing, either. What's more, it turns out to be the most obvious person it could be: Detective Sean Carter (Damon Carney), the one coming off as the most driven to stop the killings, and who doesn't care for Detective Egerton being added to their team. Moreover, he's a very well-read, intelligent guy, recognizing the Preceptor's cryptic clues as alluding to passages from the Bible, as well as the significance behind the killer's name. He's also something of a psychological wreck. Not only is his marriage clearly not going well, but when he gets audited, we learn he was abusive to his family dog when he was just four, saw a man and his two kids die horribly during his wartime experience, and so many other things that lead to the Auditor's report on him turning out quite stacked. On top of that, his brother, David, tells Egerton that Sean had a drinking problem when he returned from the war, and we do see that he's starting to drink again. There's also the notion that the Auditor's notes choked the Assessor and froze the jury. While Pinhead initially suggests it may be because Sean is actually innocent, given that we already know the type of people the Auditor targets, that doesn't seem likely, and Pinhead's reaction after tasting a piece of one of the pages himself all but confirms it. Finally, Sean quotes a verse from the Bible about God judging both the righteous and the wicked to both the Auditor and David, which sounds very suspicious, given the basis for the Preceptor's crimes, and David finds two lines highlighted in his copy of A Tale of Two Cities that were mentioned in the killer's first letter to the police.

Speaking of the scene where Sean is audited, I don't quite understand what drew him to the house if he's the Preceptor himself. At that point, they believe that it may be Karl Watkins, and there's a lot of evidence which makes them think that, especially when they find an envelope with print from a typewriter on it, which is how the Preceptor's letters to the police were written. Yet, Sean goes back to Watkins' apartment, checks his computer, finds that he googled the house on Ludovico Street's exact location, and goes there.

Why? To find Watkins himself? Again, what for? Since Watkins has become a suspect, that would be the perfect alibi he would need to continue killing without drawing suspicion. And what's the point of asking the Auditor about the Preceptor? Moreover, the reason why Sean is unmasked as the killer is because, when he killed Crystal Lanning, he jammed her cellphone down her throat, and when the coroner finds it, its GPS leads them to where he murdered her, as well as where he keeps some incriminating

photographs. That was really dumb of Sean not to check that cellphone and see if it had anything that could lead back to him, before jamming it into her corpse. Finally, his motivation is the usual spiel where he feels that the modern world is corrupt and he's acting like the hand of God, punishing everyone for not abiding by the Ten Commandments. He also targets David and his wife, Alison, for having an affair behind his back, revealing that Alison cheated on him not long after he shipped out to war and he

murdered that man too. Having taken one of the Lament Configurations from the house where he was audited, he forces the two of them to open it, knowing that someone from hell will come. However, when he tries to offer their souls in exchange for his own, Pinhead tells him that an entirely different faction is interested in him. Before he can be dealt with, however, the angel Jophiel appears, as she did before, and demands that he be set free, saying he's part of a divine plan to instill fear into sinners. Pinhead does release him but, in the process, arranges for Sean to be killed in a different manner altogether.

According to Tunnicliffe, many first-time viewers thought the killer was going to be David Carter (Randy Wayne), but I don't know why anyone would get that idea. Other than his being concerned for his brother, which increases as Sean's behavior becomes more erratic, he does little more than help him and Detective Egerton with the case. Though more welcoming to Egerton than Sean, David is reluctant to admit to her that his brother may be becoming severely troubled by the case, and even advises Sean himself to straighten up, alluding to Egerton's "other motivations" for joining them. He's also initially unwilling to search their office while she and Sean are at the coroner's office, and though he doesn't find anything there, when he looks up the Bible quote that Sean said to him, he finds a connection to the term "Preceptor." That's when he realizes Sean is the killer, and when he doesn't hear back from Egerton, whom he's been texting with, he learns where she and Sean went after they met with the coroner. But Sean gets the drop on him and disarms him, then reveals that he called Alison over and holds her hostage as well. Earlier, there were hints that David may have been closer with Alison than Sean was comfortable with, as he told Egerton that he talks to her fairly regularly, and she called him after Sean ran out of their house in a panic, which led to David finding his brother passed out. It turns out that David and Alison had an affair at one point, and Sean prepares to kill them both by making them solve the Lament Configuration. Though Pinhead tells Sean that he's unable to comply with his intended trade for their souls, both David and Alison are dealt with in the usual Cenobite manner.

Detective Christine Egerton (Alexandra Harris) introduces herself to the Carters at the Crystal Lanning crime scene, surprising them and prompting them to pull their guns on her. She then tells them that she was assigned to aid them in finding the Preceptor, and though Sean doesn't like the idea of her being there, when she assures him that she's simply there to help them solve the case as quickly as possible, he opts to cooperate with her. Though she proves to be quite savvy and snarky, as well as unwilling to answer any questions she doesn't want to (when Sean asks exactly why she's on the case, she says he can ask anything, but doesn't answer), because she's new to the case and the city where it's happening, she mostly comes off as along for the ride with the brothers. It turns out there is another reason why she's there: to evaluate Sean, as there are concerns about his mental state and what the case is doing to it. Though David is, at first, unwilling to suggest that his brother may have some truly serious problems, he does start going to Egerton when he learns more things that concern him. After David shows her the first Preceptor letter and how it features lines that Sean highlighted in his copy of A Tale of Two Cities, and that Sean has been drinking again recently, Egerton has David search the office for anything suspicious. By the time David learns that Sean is the Preceptor, Egerton has already found out the hard way. She and Sean go to the last location recorded on Crystal's cellphone GPS and find the Preceptor's hideout in a storage building, where she sees a picture that David and Alison took during their affair. Just as she's processing this, Sean knocks her to the floor and seemingly beats her to death. However, at the end of the movie, after Jophiel has ordered Pinhead to let Sean go, he sends him back to his hideout, where Egerton has regained consciousness and promptly guns him down.

Though she's fourth-billed in the credits, and her appearance here got some publicity, Heather Langenkamp has less than a minute of screentime as Karl Watkins' landlady. Still, she does make an impression, calling Watkins a cocksucker, adding that he owes her for two months' rent and she hasn't seem for the past couple of days. When asked if Watkins could be hiding out inside his apartment, she chuckles, "If he is, he's freezin' his ass off in the dark. I cut his power yesterday." Before they go in, Sean notes that the room has no windows and the landlady says, "Honey, with what those boys are doin' in there, no windows ain't a bad thing." You don't see her again after that, but when Sean goes back there, David says, "Give our regards to that sweet-mouthed landlady for me," and he remarks, "I'll give her your number."

The saddest thing about Judgment's production and release is that it marked the end of Tunnicliffe's long friendship with Doug Bradley. According to Tunnicliffe, there had already been cracks as far as back when he made No More Souls. When that got some attention, he suddenly got an angry phone call from Bradley, who accused him of trying to usurp him from the role of Pinhead by not putting him in the short. Tunnicliffe explained to Bradley that he did it only because of time and budget, as Bradley still lived in England at the time, and if you watch No More Souls (which I encourage any fan to do, as it's quite good), he says as much in a blurb at the end of it. Then, years later, when Judgment came about, he wanted to bring Bradley back as Pinhead, but Bradley wasn't at all enthused about doing yet another low budget, direct-to-video Hellraiser film, especially another made just to retain the rights. Things only got worse when Tunnicliffe sent Bradley an NDA before the script, which he did because he was afraid that if Bradley read the script and decided not to do it, he would badmouth the movie in interviews and at conventions. Bradley became incensed and indignant about having to sign an NDA and refused to do it, forcing Tunnicliffe to find a new Pinhead. You can hear all of the fine details to the situation, including the final straw that led to Bradley permanently cutting ties with Tunnicliffe, from Tunnicliffe's own mouth in that Midnight's Edge interview, but the whole thing sounds like a horrible mess. Personally, though, I think they both came off bad. While Bradley definitely acted like a douche, and does appear to have a fairly big ego when it comes to Pinhead (rightfully so, mind you, since it is a character he made iconic), Tunnicliffe seemed to expect Bradley to agree to read the script and do the movie because they were friends, whereas Bradley was probably tired of appearing in so many low-rent sequels to a movie that he's justifiably proud of. Also, from what Andre Einherjar said in that interview, the NDA they sent was three pages long, forbade him from speaking about the movie in any place or situation where someone could overhear it, as well as made references to him "speaking out of turn" at conventions, and promised "heavy financial repercussions" if it was deemed to have been violated in any way. Granted, Tunnicliffe said that he's had to sign far worse NDAs, including some that were 35 pages long, but still, I can't entirely blame Bradley for not being thrilled about having to sign something like that.

After supposedly considering playing Pinhead himself, like in No More Souls, for like a nanosecond, and then realizing he would be really asking for trouble if he did, Tunnicliffe ultimately cast a man named Paul T. Taylor as Pinhead. While it would've been nice if Bradley had returned to the role, Taylor proves to be quite good, and certainly makes up for what we got in Revelations. Significantly, for the first time in a while, we see Pinhead taking some initiative, rather than simply waiting to be summoned. The movie begins with him and the Auditor discussing how they can do what they do in a time where people don't need the Lament Configuration to satiate their extreme desires, and he allows him to seek out and process those with truly dark desires. After that, he doesn't take an active part in the story until things go haywire when Sean Carter is being audited and Jophiel appears, demanding that he be released. Initially thinking this means Sean is innocent, when Pinhead takes a piece of the Auditor's notes and tastes it, he decides, instead of going after him like the Auditor suggests, to wait for him to return, which he's confident he will. This comes to pass near the end, when Sean forces David and Alison to summon the Cenobites. When he appears to confront him, Pinhead breaks it to Sean that, because it's the Auditor and the Stygian Inquisition who are interested in him, there is no bargain that can be made. And this is where we get into a major personality trait of Taylor's Pinhead. Even though he's, for the most part, much more stoic than Bradley typically was, he also has a real air of arrogance and superiority about him. He chains and hoists Sean up after he repeatedly tries to send them away using the Lament Configuration, and when David demands to know what's going on, Pinhead, who's far more interested in Sean, growls, "Silence! Your pitiful adultery is beneath me. Bow your head to the catalog of filth your brother has created." He then has them both taken away and comments, "Amateurs," before adding, "But still, we will afford them an experience beyond the limits in your name."

Pinhead then shows that he's not only arrogant but also foolish when Jophiel reappears and, again, demands that Sean be released. Snidely referring to her as "Eden's doorman," he then deduces that God wants Sean free to continue murdering, saying, "He wants his flock afraid of the wolf so that they look toward the light." After listening to Jophiel's explanation about the grand plan, which he calls, "Sin ordained by heaven," Pinhead initially refuses to send Sean back to Earth, even challenging Jophiel about

the consequences if he doesn't. He's not at all intimidated when she warns him that, "There will be hell to pay," but does acquiesce, only to return Sean to his hideout, where he's immediately killed by Egerton, something he knew would happen. Jophiel threatens retaliation, adding that he will suffer, a word that, as we've seen before, is not one you should throw at Pinhead. He tells her, "Suffer? Me? How dare you use such a word? You know nothing of suffering. I welcome its warm embrace. I exist only to

share its meaning. Sin and suffering are my dominion. Perhaps it's time you learned a little of the matters you seek to manage." He then deploys his hooked chains and trusses her up. She asks if he realizes who he's doing this to and he answers, "I care not. Irony," before removing a number of the pins from his head and sticking them into her forehead. He mockingly asks, "Are you the way?", and she, again, tries to make him realize the mistake he's made, but he just says, "Look at me. I'm more than you know. Forged in agony and pain. I welcome an eternity of anguish."

He proceeds to rip her apart, something the Auditor tells him probably wasn't a good idea. Pinhead remains confident that there's nothing God can do to him that he won't relish in, but it turns out that there is: next thing he knows, he's on the street, returned to a normal, mortal man. Deliriously, he looks around, murmuring, "The sweet suffering," before screaming, "No!", at the top of his lungs.

When Paul Taylor was cast in the role, Tunnicliffe decided to give his Pinhead his own distinct makeup design and wardrobe. Sure enough, while Stephen Smith Collins basically looked like a poor man's version of Doug Bradley, Taylor's Pinhead does have a look all his own, with how the makeup adheres to the shape of his longer head, how the cuts that form the grid pattern look much deeper than before, and how they added a square of the pattern on the back of his head. Also, maybe it's me, but I don't think

Pinhead's eyes have been as utterly black as they are here. As was done for Bradley in many past movies, they always make sure to film Pinhead really well, and he looks best in the cold, blue lighting of the room where we see him sitting, and the ugly, gray torture room where he contends with Sean and then Jophiel. And as for his wardrobe, he now has a long, black robe over a gray vest, with a diamond-shaped opening in the center that exposes his rib-cage (Tunnicliffe says the shape is meant to evoke Leviathan from Hellbound), and a gray skirt.

Tunnicliffe himself plays the Auditor, both my favorite character in the film and one of my favorites in the entire franchise. I just love this guy, from the way he looks to the Germanic accent he speaks in and his interesting presence. The head of the Stygian Inquisition, a faction in hell separate from the Cenobites, he lures people of "interest" to an innocuous-looking house and puts them through the horrific and disgusting process of being audited. His part of the process is to interview the person, type down their sins using an old-fashioned typewriter, and after the Assessor has processed them and the jury have reached their verdict, he either lets them go if they're innocent (presumably, anyway, as we never see anybody receive that ruling) or sends them to be "cleaned" and meet the Surgeon. He's a very business-minded character, one who has little use for people who freak out and demand to know who he is and what's going on when they first see him. Yet, at the same time, he always remains calm, even with the most hysterical subjects. At the beginning of the movie, when Karl Watkins is freaking out upon awakening to find himself strapped to a chair, the Auditor calmly says, "Mr. Watkins, please. Please assess your situation. Look at your environment. For now, you are merely captive. Sitting, tied to a chair. If we wanted you killed, then you would be. We have simply invited you hear to talk. To hear your thoughts and desires." When Watkins utters, "Oh, Jesus Christ!", at the sight of him, the Auditor remarks, "Heavens, no. Same city, completely different zip code." And when Watkins is hesitant to answer what the Auditor asks, he tells him, "Let's save ourselves the time and you the considerable pain by answering the questions honestly. Clearly, this is a place where the rules of your world do not apply. And obviously, I'm a man for whom pain is nothing more than a common currency." Watkins still hesitates, when the Auditor pulls out a straight razor and calmly says, "I will spend some on you... if you like." Because of that, he enjoys speaking with Sean Carter to an extent, as Sean manages to stay calm when he finds himself strapped to the chair and correctly deduces what's probably going on. He even tells him what the Lament Configuration boxes are as a reward for not wasting their time with, "The usual drudgery of, 'Who are you?', and, 'Save me,' etc."

However, Sean's answers cause a major malfunction within the auditing system, and the Auditor, stunned by this, immediately orders him to be taken for a cleaning, only to then receive an unexpected visit from Jophiel. Perplexed when she demands that Sean be let go, the Auditor, not knowing what to do, comes to Pinhead for advice. He brings Pinhead to see Sean, only to learn that he escaped and has taken one of the boxes with him. Though the Auditor is adamant that they need to find him quickly, Pinhead is confident

that Sean will return to them, which he's right about. When Sean summons the Cenobites, the Auditor appears along with Pinhead, and tells Sean that he can't bargain his way out of his fate, nor can the Lament Configuration expel them. He prepares to take him and have him cleaned again, only for Jophiel to, once again, intervene, revealing why God wants Sean to be set free. Unlike Pinhead, the Auditor is smart enough to know that it's not a good idea to defy God's orders and kill Jophiel. When that happens, he has an obvious, "Oh, crap," expression on his face,

and tells Pinhead that he shouldn't have done that. When Pinhead is confident that he has nothing to fear, the Auditor reminds him that Jophiel banished Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, and adds, "Perhaps there is a torture we cannot endure: banishment." And that's when Pinhead is return to Earth as a mortal man, while the Auditor goes about his duties.

The look of the Auditor is an example of something that's quite simple but manages to be striking, regardless: the dirty, bloody white shirt and black, two-piece suit, the black gloves, the religious symbols, taken from his victims, that he wears on his right wrist, the completely dark glasses that make it seem as though he has no eyes (which he may not), and all of the cuts on his head and face. He also walks in a shuffling manner, and it is heavily implied that, like the Cenobites, he was once human. He's a character that I would like to see more of and learn more about, but given that the franchise was rebooted following this, it's doubtful that may happen, at least in move form.

Like many of the Hellraiser directors before him, Tunnicliffe managed to get quite a bit out of very little money. Although the movie's scope is limited, it also has a distinctive, visual style to it that I really like. As much as I tend to complain about the way movies and TV shows look nowadays, thanks to the advent of digital shooting and color timing, I like what they did with Judgment, particularly the distinctions they make between the two domains of hell we see. The Cenobites' realm, such as the room we see Pinhead sitting in when the Auditor comes to

see him, and the familiar torture room, has a palette ranging from icy blue to an ugly gray, while everything involving the Stygian Inquisition is bathed in this nasty-looking yellow color, which Tunnicliffe described as "piss yellow." Overall, the movie's cinematography is very dark, both at night and during the day, with even the interiors of the Carter brothers' office, which we often see during the day, being very dim. There are many scenes with the detectives searching almost completely dark rooms and crime scenes with their flashlights, and the nighttime

exteriors come off as cold, dreary, and unwelcoming. There's an especially striking, horrific scene where we see the Preceptor sawing what we later learn are people's limbs in his hideout, which is bathed in a deep, blood-red light, along with another that's constantly flashing. This makes it all the more hideous when we then see him pouring blood into one of several large jars and ripping out a tooth from an offscreen corpse. Even the scenes inside Sean's house aren't exactly comfortable, with the color palette

having a murky quality that just feels off. And the scene where Jophiel first appears is done in a manner that would, normally, come off as beautiful, but the bright light that completely fills the screen and the image distortion effects used make it hard to see anything. That's not say there aren't any truly lovely, calming images here, like some overheads of the city at night, a shot of the house at Lodovico Street with the sun rising behind it (though, that's offset by what you know is going on inside), and some fair daytime 

exteriors of the police station, but for the most part, this movie is just as unpleasant visually as it is emotionally. Tunnicliffe also shoots the movie really well, alternating between locked-off shots and handheld ones better than Victor Garcia did in Revelations, and often uses extreme close-ups to effectively keep you disoriented and only gradually reveal what he wants you to see. The only thing I don't care for are the low-grade editing effects used for certain dissolves and to simulate disorientation, as that screams "cheap" to me.

Shot entirely in Oklahoma, the crew made use of various actual locations, as well as a studio in Oklahoma City. Like with the visual style, the locations and sets often range from unpleasant to downright ugly. Though we do get to see the interior of a lovely apartment, and Sean Carter's home is a nice suburban house, they're both juxtaposed with the horrific death of Crystal Lanning and Sean's domestic problems and horrific visions, respectively. That's to say nothing of the children's playground that the Preceptor turns into a grisly crime scene all its own.

After that, we have the Carters' aforementioned dim office at the police station (the exterior of which was actually the Oklahoma Flower Market), filled with crime scene photos and letters from the Preceptor; Karl Watkins' rundown, filthy apartment, littered with cigarette butts, booze bottles, porn magazines, creepy objects like a mannequin's head and a jack-in-the-box, and his laptop, as well as its having no windows, and the walls being made of oppressive bricks; alleyways and streets in the city; and the warehouse that turns out to be the Preceptor's hideout, with photos of his

victims and numerous pages attached to the walls, a desk with a typewriter, shelves of various items, and a red light that makes the whole place feel hellish in and of itself (as if it weren't already when we also learn that he murdered and dismembered people there). But the most striking settings are those of the different factions of hell; in fact, this may be the first movie to show us where the Cenobites wait to be summoned. It's mostly just a nondescript, brick room, with a wooden chair where Pinhead sits, while the

other Cenobites just kind of mill around. The torture room that appears when they're summoned is nothing we haven't seen before, with the hanging chains and rotating flesh pillars, but I like the added touch of it all slowly creeping into the room in which the Lament Configuration is solved. Then, there's the Stygian Inquisition, which operates inside a rundown, filthy house, lit by a bunch of uncovered bulbs hanging from the ceiling. There's one room where the Auditor interviews people as they're strapped to a chair,

putting his findings down on a typewriter, and where the Assessor processes it; a separate one where the jury examine everything and reach a verdict; and one last room with a large, chopping block-like table where the guilty are "cleaned" and visited by the Surgeon. This realm is connected with the Cenobites', as the Auditor simply walks through a door to speak with Pinhead, and it seems like there are houses such as this throughout the world, as a post-credit scene shows some Mormon missionaries in Germany about to get audited.

In my opinion, Judgment's greatest strengths are the interesting expansions of the lore and mythology it brings with it, chief among them the Stygian Inquisition itself. I really love the idea that there's this whole other faction of hell separate from the Cenobites, one that was likely always there in the other movies, operating elsewhere at the same time people were discovering the Lament Configuration and summoning the Cenobites for the ultimate experience. The difference is that the Inquisition lures those with dark souls to them, to the random houses

which serve as doorways to their realm, and exacts both judgment and, if the person is found guilty, disgusting and grisly punishment for their sins. It's also with the Inquisition that Tunnicliffe shows a real penchant for coming up with some of the most bizarre and depraved imagery we've seen in the franchise in a long time. As striking as the Auditor is, the other members of this faction make him look positively normal. The Assessor (John Gulager, son of Clu Gulager and the director of the Feast movies and Piranha 3DD) is this overweight, sweaty man who's

like the embodiment of gluttony, especially in his disgusting manner of "processing" the Auditor's notes, which he revels in. The Jury are three naked women wearing leather g-strings and with hideous facial disfigurements who determine whether or not a person is guilty by "examining" the Assessor's processing of the notes. The Cleaners are also naked women, but they're fairly old, making this hideous part of the process even harder to stomach. Finally, the Surgeon comes in to finish it. First, the

condemned meets the Butcher, an extremely obese figure in a butcher's apron, wearing a wooden, child-like mask, wielding a meat cleaver, and wearing a raggedy cape of sorts. Beneath the cape, presumably strapped to his back, is the Surgeon, a skinny figure clad completely in leather, along with an old-fashioned gas mask and apron all his own. Using two handheld scythe blades, he slices the person's skin to ribbons and removes it completely, with the jury then being bathed in the blood. And as horrific as that is, that's not the grossest part of the process. I'll get to that later.

The Preceptor's crimes are also very disturbing stuff, like how he kills Crystal Lanning and sews her little dog, Baby, up into her stomach, which the detectives later find moving around inside her, and the grisly sight he leaves at the playground involving the severed hands and jars full of blood. But the most utterly nightmarish part is when we get just a glimpse of him preparing what they find at the latter scene, with close-ups of his bloody hand sawing through a victim, pouring their blood into one of those jars, all in that warehouse that's bathed in red, and ripping out

their teeth with pliers, all as loud music is blaring to drown out his victims' screams (the stock scream sounds they use are the only thing that hurt it a little bit). Just as unsettling as those visuals are what we only hear about or what's implied, like how we learn that those severed hands belonged to young women whose images are on missing persons fliers, and how one of the Preceptor's previous crimes involved him targeting a couple of married lawyers, cutting out their tongues with an electric knife, grinding them up

in a blender, and force-feeding them to their son, along with some bleach. And then, there are Karl Watkins' crimes against children, which involve not only him sexually harassing some girls at a school but, as he confesses to the Auditor, murdering at least one child, saying, "I've never seen so much blood from a little creature." Not to mention that, when Sean searches his laptop at his apartment, he finds that the last site he went to was a porn site called, "UNDERAGE TEEN EXTREME."

There is still a smidgen of that surreal, Jacob's Ladder-style aesthetic that we had in some of the previous films, specifically in what happens after Sean Carter manages to escape the Inquisition. After joining his wife in bed, he has a nightmare where the Stitch Twin Cenobites plant a metal mask on his face, and Chatterer comes in and pours some boiling hot liquid on his torso. After he awakens, Alison comforts him and the two of them begin having sex, only for him to inexplicably see the Twins again. Horrified by this, he runs out of the bedroom and leaves the house.

He's next seen wandering some alleyways, carrying a liquor bottle in his hand, when he turns around and sees a figure watching from afar. The figure disappears when he walks farther down and looks again, but when he turns back around, he's confronted by what initially seems like a homeless man, only for him to suddenly become someone with no skin on his face. Sean falls to the ground, then looks to his right and sees the carcass of a goat, from which one of the Jury removes the Lament Configuration. The skinless man smacks Sean across the face, and he looks up to see him and all three jurors looming over him, smiling evilly.

Going back to the series' mythology, Tunnicliffe also does something that had not yet been done with this series: bring in the idea of God, heaven, and angels. From what I've heard, this is akin to what Clive Barker did in his book, The Scarlet Gospels, but Tunnicliffe takes it a step further and goes in a very controversial direction, stating that hell and all of its factions are under heaven's rule. For the most part, they just let the Cenobites, the Stygian Inquisition, and what other factions may exist do their thing, but now and then, they intervene, as they do when it

comes to Sean Carter. Despite the horrific crimes he's committed, which were so hideous that they choked the Assessor during his processing of the Auditor's notes, God wants Sean free on Earth in order to instill fear in sinners and have them look to the light for deliverance. Jophiel (who looks more like a businesswoman than a divine being like an angel) writes off the people he's killed as "acceptable losses" in the grand plan, adding, "Good cannot exist without evil. And we discovered long ago that in order to 

control the evil, we had to be the ones implementing it." By the same token, however, she tells Sean that, when he dies, he will be punished for his crimes, even though they work in heaven's favor. Pinhead, who's all about the process and order of how he and his faction operate, is, unsurprisingly, not thrilled with this decision or ultimate plan, and also seems just downright appalled by it in his own way. Thus, he rebels against God's will and pays a steep price for playing his hand too hard.

Unfortunately, likely because of the low budget and short schedule, the movie doesn't introduce any new Cenobites. In fact, the only new thing it does is turn the previously singular Stitch into a pair of twins (Jilly Blundell and Lindi Simpson) and even then, they do very little except apparently make out in the corner when the Auditor comes to seek advice from Pinhead, and torment Sean in hideous visions after he manages to escape back to his home, showing off some acrobatic moves in the process. The same goes for Chatterer (Mike Regan), who acts like something

of a guard dog for Pinhead, as he threatens the Auditor when he comes to see him and has to be called off, and also appears in Sean's dream, pouring some hot, steaming liquid on him. Sadly, they take no part in the climax, as only Pinhead and the Auditor appear there. If nothing else, their makeup and costumes look on point, as Tunnicliffe said his fees for writing and directing the film went into the makeup effects.

Speaking of which, this film is just as spectacularly gory as it is gross. The first major gore effect, when the Surgeon slices Karl Watkins' flesh to ribbons, then peels it off and drops it to the side, makes for a gruesome climax to a sequence that was already hard to watch. And just to top it off, the jurors are then bathed in blood that spews out from the block where he was just killed. When the Preceptor attacks Crystal Lanning at her apartment, all we see him do is smash her in the face hard enough to spray blood all over the wall. But when the detectives arrive on the scene and

examine her corpse, they discover that her stomach has been slit open and stitched up because the killer placed her still-living dog in her stomach! The dog begins struggling inside and manages to push his way out, as we get a gruesome close-up of him doing so. Just as gruesome is what we see not too long afterward: that close-up of the Preceptor's blood-soaked hand gripping a hacksaw's handle as he saws through a victim, followed by another close-up of him filling up a large jar with blood, and extracting a 

tooth. This leads into the next crime scene, with severed hands encircling four jars filled with blood, all holding flowers, while in their palms are eyeballs and some teeth. We also get the Assessor choking and coughing up blood when he tries to process Sean's notes, David and Alison getting skewered and dragged away by Pinhead's chains, and Jophiel's face getting hooked and stretched, with blood splashing all over the walls when she's torn apart. Like the previous movie, the only instance of visual effects we have here are some electrical arcs for when the Lament Configuration is activated.

Besides my not being interested in the detective story at the center of the movie, and the three protagonists, there are two other major problems I have with Judgment. One is an extension of the detective story: the crimes of the Preceptor. As much as I can appreciate the truly disturbing and horrific imagery in that side of things, I don't care for how, in the end, it's just above a poor man's version of Se7en, a movie that I love. I wouldn't mind if it just took some inspiration from it, but instead, it often feels like a full-on copy: detectives searching a city for a killer

who leaves behind disturbing crime scenes, scenes of them searching around in the dark with their flashlights being the only source of illumination, the killer's crimes having an inspiration tied to religion, specifically Christianity, and the detectives having to research into it in order to find him, and his final murders being directly tied to the protagonists. Even the music score is kind of based on what was done for that movie. In fact, so much time is spent on it that, even though this was meant to be a Hellraiser film from the beginning, I can see how Gary Tunnicliffe

could've made it into its own thing if he absolutely had to. Even then, though, he likely would've still been criticized for copying so much of a much better movie, and one made by a filmmaker who's infinitely better than he could ever hope to be. (I'm not trying to dump on Tunnicliffe but, come on., we're talking about David Fincher here. In fact, I think Tunnicliffe may agree to some extent.) And when you combine that with how we've already had this plot in three prior movies, it really makes me not car for anything that doesn't involve the Cenobites or the Stygian Inquisition.

And speaking of the Stygian Inquisition, specifically the auditing process, my other major issue is how damn disgusting this movie gets at points. Yes, this is Hellraiser, a franchise that began by going into areas you don't want to think about and has always been just that tiny bit more successful when it stuck to that, but there was also something underneath it all beforehand, especially in the original. Now, I know Tunnicliffe isn't a shallow person at all, as he did put a lot of thought into the concepts he introduced here, and incorporated real Bible verses, Biblical figures,

and bits of text from classic books, but the really gross sequences here feel like their only purpose is to make your stomach churn. You have the Auditor typing up a history of someone's sins, in their own blood via tubes pierced into their strapped wrists and running to his typewriter, and once the interview is done, he leaves the pages (which are supposed to be made of human flesh but that detail was removed from the final film) for the Assessor to process. The Assessor does this by putting the pages on a plate, dousing them in a liquid that he says are the "tears of

children," and, using a knife and fork, actually eats them, drooling everywhere in the process (Tunnicliffe makes sure we that in excruciating detail). Once he's done, he gets sick from this, vomits into a bucket connected to a funnel that leads to a trough in the room where the Jury is, and they determine whether or not the person is guilty by sticking their hands into the vomit. And just when you think it couldn't get any more disgusting, the "cleaning" process that follows a guilty verdict has the subject strapped down onto that

chopping block-like table in another room, some older women come in, rip their shirt off, lick them down, then spit repeatedly into a cup, force the subject's mouth open, and pour it down their throat. While it's only implied when Karl Watkins is put through it, you see it in hideous detail when they do it to Sean, complete with him gargling the saliva, and plenty of bubbles and frothing (I've gagged at that every single time)... and that's before the subject's flesh is then ripped to shreds by the Surgeon.

Amazingly, Tunnicliffe's original script was even more disgusting, but this in and of itself is more than enough to make you go, "Jesus Christ, Gary!" As much as I can respect him for not wanting to hold back like some of the previous movies did, and I understand that he feels you really need to go for it when doing horrific and bizarre stuff, this is the main reason why this isn't a Hellraiser I revisit often.

Once again, the music score, this time composed by Deron Johnson (who has very few feature films and television shows to his credit; most of his filmography consists of either shorts or podcast series), doesn't leave much of an impression. I kind of like the main title theme, which has a bit of a Nine-Inch Nails flavor to it, as do some other parts of the score, and I also like how the presence of both Jophiel and God Himself is indicated by a tolling bell that the characters themselves hear, but on the whole, it's very "bleh."

As you can see, as much as I appreciate Gary Tunnicliffe's devotion to the franchise and his giving his shot at directing one of these movies everything he could, I'm very conflicted about Hellraiser: Judgment. In terms of the visuals, the dark tone, the very nasty subject matter and hideous imagery, grisly gore, and the additions to the lore, as well as the portrayal of the Pinhead, it excels beyond doubt. But, at the same time, you have yet another detective story in one of these movies, and one that takes far too

much from Se7en; a group of protagonists you can't really get into because of how little there is to them; a killer whose identity is a bit too obvious; a music score that's almost completely forgettable; and really disgusting scenes that come off as gratuitous and with no other motivation behind them. Overall, it is an improvement over Hellraiser: Revelations, as well as superior to basically all of the previous direct-to-video films, and is another fairly short one, clocking in at 81 minutes, but whether or not you enjoy it depends on just how much old territory and grossness you're willing to put up with; for me, I'd much rather watch the original theatrical ones (except for maybe Bloodline) over this.