Franchises: Hellraiser. Hellraiser: Hellworld (2005)

You may think me crazy but, after reading about it in The Hellraiser Films and Their Legacy, I was looking forward to seeing Hellworld. Not only did I find the concept of a Hellraiser-based internet game intriguing, and was quite pleased when I read that Lance Henriksen was the main villain, but at the end of the book's section on the film, Paul Kane shared some surprisingly good reviews, like from Arrow in the Head, which decreed, "Overall, this flick was a F*cking-A good time! It knew what it was and wasn't ashamed of it!" I was also excited by a photograph that showed Pinhead with two other Cenobites, one of whom was Chatterer (at the time, I didn't know that various versions of Chatterer had appeared in the series since Inferno). So, when I first dipped my toe into the initial direct-to-video era of this franchise, I very eagerly scooped up Hellworld, along with Hellseeker, when they were the DVDs I found at McKay's in early winter of 2011. Like with Hellseeker, I do remember enjoying it the first time I watched it but, unlike with that movie, my opinion hasn't wavered much through re-watches. That's not to say Hellworld is an unappreciated classic within the franchise, as it's definitely not. Like the previous two movies, this is another cheaply-made, rather generic, mid-2000's horror flick that, like Hellraiser III years before, and it goes more for a traditional slasher aesthetic, while still attempting the psychological type of horror the franchise had adopted since going direct-to-video. It's also the Hellraiser equivalent of a Scream movie, as it's rather glossy and has a very meta sensibility about it, both in its story and characters, which I know doesn't sit well with a lot of diehards. However, I, by contrast, kind of like that approach. It's not as well done as in the Scream movies, mind you, and is even just plain dumb at times, but I also think it makes for something of a breath of fresh air after the last three movies. Speaking of which, even though there is a twist at the end that's similar to Inferno and Hellseeker, the movie, thankfully, doesn't rehash the same basic story we've been seeing for a fourth time, and the ultimate revelation is, for me, much easier to grasp, despite having numerous holes. In short, this is very much a guilty pleasure.

Adam, one of a group of young people addicted to a Hellraiser-themed computer game called Hellworld, becomes so obsessed with it that he commits suicide. Two years after his funeral, his friends, Jake, Chelsea, Derrick, Mike, and Allison, get invites to a private party for players of the game. While the latter three are still very much into it, Chelsea has fallen out since Adam's death and only accompanies the others to keep them out of trouble, while Jake, who has hated the others for not intervening in Adam's obsession, goes to meet up with a female player he met online. The party takes place at Leviathan House, an old mansion, and is hosted by a mysterious man who, after offering the group drinks, shows them around, claiming the place was built by Phillip Lemarchand himself. While they're down in the basement, Chelsea seems to hallucinate him grabbing her by the arm, stabbing her with a pin, and then being replaced by Pinhead. Following that, the host allows them to join the party, giving them cellphones to talk and hook up with the other guests, who are wearing masks with numbers written on the foreheads. As the party goes on, Chelsea finds herself locked in a room by herself, while Jake runs into the host, who shows him a replica of the Lament Configuration that he says was made by Adam. While fiddling with it, Jake's finger is pierced by a spike that deploys from the box, and suddenly finds himself alone in the room, but looks outside and sees the host digging a grave in the yard. He's then seemingly ignored by everyone else at the party, and even briefly sees a vision of a room full of corpses hanging from the ceiling. Meanwhile, Allison, Derrick, and Mike each become trapped in separate parts of the house and are brutally murdered by the host, Pinhead, and other Cenobites. Soon, only Chelsea and Jake are left, alone on the property with the host, whose role in what's happening coincides with his own, shocking tie to Adam.

Joel Soisson

As I mentioned in the previous review, Gary Tunnicliffe, who, like with Deader, shot second unit here in addition to providing the makeup effects, said in his Midnight's Edge interview that, while Deader's script was a lock going in, Hellworld was made up almost on the spot, adding that he was actually pulled into story meetings. While I disagree with his and the Midnight's Edge guys' opinions on Hellworld (Andre Einherjar said that, for him, it's the absolute worst film in the series), looking up its production history, it does seem like its pre-production was both very short and quite slapdash. Though the filmmakers knew when they left for Romania that they were going to be shooting two Hellraisers back to back, the only script they had going in was the one for Deader. While it was being shot, they were trying to come up with an idea for the following film and, yet again, ultimately rejiggered something unrelated into a Hellraiser story. In this case, it was a treatment by Joel Soisson, a producer on a number of Dimension's horror titles, both theatrical and direct-to-video, including some of the Children of the Corns, Mimic 2, the first three Prophecy movies, all three of the Dracula 2000s, and some of these Hellraisers. His treatment, Dark Can't Breathe, was turned into Hellworld by Carl Dupre, who'd co-written Hellseeker with Tim Day. However, Dupre left some scenes, particularly the deaths, vague enough so that the filmmakers could have their input during filming, which Tunnicliffe said was like, "Trying to do surgery in the field."

Tunnicliffe added that, for his third and final Hellraiser, director Rick Bota, who only had a week or so's preparation in between films, had the attitude of, "Let's shoot the days, and we'll get through it, and, uh, you know, we'll, uh... hopefully, it'll all work out in the wash." Indeed, probably because of the way it was put together virtually on the fly, Bota's direction isn't as inspired as it was on Deader, and it rivals Hellseeker in how it has little in the way of true impact or nastiness. I also have a feeling that, after going from one movie straight into another, he was probably tired of the whole thing, not helped by the breakneck schedule of around 24 days, freezing cold temperatures for the exterior nighttime scenes, and, again, having to deal with a number of actors and crew members who couldn't speak English. Like he did on the previous movies, he had Clive Barker look at the rough cut to offer some notes, which Bota implemented. And like Deader, though it was shot in late 2002, Hellworld wasn't released until 2005. (When asked on Midnight's Edge why, Tunnicliffe said it simply came down to the movies being part of a large stock that Dimension decided to put out whenever they felt like it.) Since leaving the Hellraiser series, Bota has continued to work as both a director and a cinematographer, although he's done little of note, aside from directing some episodes of The Vampire Diaries and Supernatural.

As I said, Hellworld has a lot of typical slasher movie qualities about it, and that, unfortunately, carries over to the characters, who are quite shallow, for the most part; that especially sucks, since there are a handful of people among the cast who would become quite famous afterward. Case in point, Katheryn Winnick, who became big on television, on shows like Vikings, Big Sky, and Bones, plays the film's final girl, Chelsea. Winnick's performance isn't bad, but Chelsea is hardly one of the series' most memorable protagonists (she does have a couple of truly awesome moments, though, where she both fights off some guy trying to hit on her and later delivers a roundhouse kick to the Host). Along with Jake, Chelsea is one of the main group who was very affected by Adam's obsession with the game of Hellworld and suicide. The movie begins with her having a nightmare about his funeral two years earlier, and she's initially reluctant to join her friends at the Leviathan House, having long since moved on from the game. But she does ultimately come with them, claiming it's so she can keep an eye on them, but it could actually be because she either doesn't want to be alone or feel left out. At the party, Chelsea, besides not being that impressed with what they're shown or the Host's claims about the house's history, as she says that nothing about Hellworld is real, also tries to make nice with Jake, but gets rebuffed, just like everyone else. She's also the first one to get the sense that something's wrong, when the Host seemingly sticks a pin in her arm, she becomes delirious as a result, and sees Pinhead, as well as a coffin lid slamming down on her, before suddenly finding herself back with her friends. Despite being creeped out by this and now leery of the Host, Chelsea, after rebuffing an insensitive advance by Mike, finds herself locked in a room after going searching for Allison, whose screams she hears above the sound of the party. She uses the cellphone the Host gave her to call the cops, but when they arrive, not only does the Host intervene, but she finds they can't see her even when they look right up at the window where she's standing. The Host can see her, however, and it becomes clear to Chelsea that he is behind what's going on. Eventually, she and Jake are the only ones left at the house, and she learns why the Host is doing this to them, leading to the revelation of what's actually happening.

Speaking of Jake (Christopher Jacot), he especially could've benefited from a lot more development, as he comes off as just whiny and petulant for most of the movie. It's established that he was especially close to Adam and the two of them got the others into Hellworld; he's also angry at the others, as well as himself, for not stepping in when Adam became dangerously obsessed with Hellworld. Both at Adam's funeral and Leviathan House, Jake makes his disdain for the others very clear, but he's also mad about other things that they apparently did to him which we get no elaboration on. At one point, he says, "I never was one of you guys, and I never will be," and later, "The only way you guys enjoy yourselves is by hurting somebody." When Allison counters to the latter that they didn't earn all this hatred, he retorts, "You guys don't earn anything. You just take it." Between that and, when the Host gives them their cellphones for some "anonymous debauchery," as Mike says, Jake comments, "Ah, another day in the life with you guys. Does nothing every change?", you're about ready to tell him to quit crying like a bitch. In fact, despite what's actually happening in the end, I like to think that scene where Jake goes into one room and nobody pays any attention to him is something he deserves for being so bratty. Like Chelsea, Jake was reluctant to come to Leviathan House, and only did to meet up with a female friend he met on a Hellworld message board. While he doesn't ever meet up with said woman, he does manage to get laid... by a ghostly nun, and right before everything turns truly nightmarish for him. Also like Chelsea, he has a strange moment with the Host early on where, after revealing that he knew Adam, he shows Jake a replica of the Lament Configuration that Adam supposedly made. The Host asks him to open it and he fiddles around with it, only for some sharp spikes to deploy from its side and pierce his thumb. After yelling in pain, he drops the box, then sees Pinhead standing in front of him, saying something cryptic and menacing. Jake screams in terror and flails around, only to suddenly find himself alone in the room, leading into his own bizarre experiences.

What especially rings hollow for me is how, during the third act when they're the last ones at the house, along with the Host, Jake and Chelsea suddenly become very chummy. I get that, regardless of what animosity is between two people, they'd likely drop it when they realize each other is in danger, but suddenly, they act like they weren't glaring daggers at each other earlier, with Jake being downright horrified when he imagines accidentally stabbing Chelsea when he thought he 

saw Chatterer behind him. Again, I get that reaction to an extent, but then, when Chelsea calls him on the cellphone, the two of them have a heart-to-heart, with Chelsea suggesting that they may actually be in hell and what they're going through is punishment for not saving Adam. And what's Jake's reaction to that? "Chelsea, none of us ever thought he would take it that far... That was nobody's fault. If this is hell, none of us belong in it." So, after blaming them at Adam's funeral, not talking to them for two years, and laying on the

guilt at the party, now suddenly you don't think it's anyone's fault? I understand this kind of experience puts things into perspective, but that change of heart comes out of nowhere. To top it off, they have a schmaltzy exchange where, after Chelsea says they're probably not going to live to see the sunrise, Jake says, "Chels, when we get out of here, I promise you the most beautiful sunrise ever." And at the end, when they've escaped and are driving off together, seemingly now a couple, and talking about where they should go, Jake notes the sun on the horizon and says he delivered on his promise.

Another up-and-comer here is Khary Payton, who would later be known for The Walking Dead, as well as voicing Cyborg on both Teen Titans and Teen Titans Go!. As Derrick, he also feels bad for what happened to Adam, and even admits that he does feel like they're responsible, but at the same time, like Mike and Allison, he still plays Hellworld. Moreover, when Allison wins an invite to the party at Leviathan House, but then sees they're not allowed to bring guests, Derrick decides to play and win his own invite, which he does. Like the others, he doesn't have much to him overall, except for being comedy relief, but Payton's performance is likable enough. When they get to the house, Derrick is more than ready to party, and especially likes the idea of the cellphones and dialing the number on a mask being worn by a sexy woman he sees. There's one moment where he's talking with two women, telling them what the Host said about the house's history, in a voice that sounds like he's imitating Lance Henriksen, but then drops it and says, "Goddamn, ya'll are fine." Then Allison calls him on his cellphone just to mess with him, and Derrick answers with the line, "I'm not Mr. Right, but I'm Mr. Right Now." And when he ends the call and sees that the women left, he yells, "Dammit, Allison!" Fortunately for him, he spots another good-looking woman and is later dancing with her. This leads to his downfall, however, as he gets a bout of asthma, drops his inhaler down an air vent in the floor, and has to go all the way down to the basement. Though he does get it, when he lays down, trying to compose himself, Pinhead slices his head off.

Without a doubt, the cast member who would go on to have the biggest success is Henry Cavill, and yet, for someone who's now known for his gentleman charm, he plays the most unlikable member of the main group, Mike. Though he does attend Adam's funeral with the others, and is taken aback when Jake snaps at him, it doesn't keep him from continuing to play and enjoy Hellworld, as well as look forward to the party at Leviathan House. When Jake shows up there and brings everyone else down, Mike comes out and says he feels no responsibility for Adam's death, that it was his decision, and they should be having fun. On the way down to the house's basement, Mike first shows how much of a royal jackass he is when he sees Jake looking a picture of a nun, Sister Ursala, on the wall, goes up to him, vocalizes in a religious choir-like manner, and sings, "Holy pussy." He's definitely up for the idea of the masks, numbers, and cellphones, but he also wants to score with Chelsea. The two of them do seem to be in something of a relationship, but haven't gone all the way. And when she rejects his advances while they're sitting at the bar, Mike, knowing it's about Adam, decides to be an insensitive douche and tell her, "You're still holdin' a torch for a guy who you're never gonna have a second chance with. He's dead, Chels. Move on." Understandably pissed off, she tells him to have fun and fuck somebody, but to also be ready with an apology when he sobers up. Mike's response is to pour himself another drink and comment, "Well, that went well." Later, he finds himself a true hottie, and is then seen sitting on a chair, while said woman is giving him head. That's when Chelsea calls him, hoping he'll come let her out of the room she's locked in, but he ignores her, saying she shouldn't have rejected him earlier. After he hangs up, Mike gets a scare of his own when the woman's mask turns into a snarling face and roars at him. Once he gets over the shock, he lets the woman continue pleasuring him, and she later leads him down to the basement, getting rougher with him as they go. Then, she locks him in a room, he finds Trevor's decapitated, gutted body, and a Cenobite impales him on a hook.

And then, there's Allison (Anna Tolputt), who's little more than a British smartass, making jokes and quips about everything, save for at Adam's funeral, where she's genuinely upset, and also tells Mike not to press it with Jake. Speaking of which, even though she notes that Jake's arrival at the party a buzzkill, she puts on a very fake front and acts all happy to see him, as well as follows him around when the tour is over. One of her few, truly serious moments is when she tells Jake that he's not going to guilt-trip her and that they didn't earn his disdain, but right after that is when she calls to mess with Derrick. Upstairs, she finds a door with a "KEEP OUT" sign and, snarking, "Yeah, right. As if," goes inside, finding a room filled with objects covered in white sheets. After finding a nude statue beneath one, asking, "Hey. How's it hangin'," looking down at its penis, and remarking, "Ooh. Don't answer that," she uncovers a chair meant as a means of torture. Naturally, she sits in it (not just because it's the cliche, dumb thing to do in a horror movie, but also because she was earlier shown to have a particular taste for the macabre), only to be strapped in it and die a prolonged, very grisly death. Later, when Chelsea is running around the place, trying to find Jake, she runs into both Allison and Mike as undead ghouls, who chase her around for a bit.

It should probably go without saying, but one of the best things that Hellworld has going for it is Lance Henriksen. For me, he's one of those actors who, even when he's in absolute crap, he makes it just a little bit better, and never seems to be half-assing it. Even with this movie, which Gary Tunnicliffe said Henriksen probably wouldn't even remember doing, as he was appearing in so many movies around that time (I've also heard that, when asked about it at a convention, Henriksen didn't even think it was a Hellraiser movie), he's just cool. As the Host, he introduces himself to the main group when they first arrive at the party, coming off as a cool older guy but also one with an undeniable air of menace about him. Claiming to be the ultimate Hellworld aficionado, he shows them an impressive collection of memorabilia in a study, then gives them a tour of Leviathan House, which he refers to as Philip Lemarchand's greatest accomplishment aside from the Lament Configuration. Leading them down to the basement, he tells them of the house's history, how Lemarchand built it as a convent, but it was later made into a mental asylum and is said to be haunted. In a surgical amphitheater, wherein he says a group of people dismembered themselves, he shows them a collection of unsettling specimens in jars, and also tells them that, for tonight, the house is theirs. Mostly coming off as charming and charismatic, there is a moment where, noting how Chelsea seems underwhelmed, the Host suddenly grabs her arm and sticks a pin into it, after which she sees Pinhead. This appears to have been just a weird illusion, but Chelsea is freaked out enough to tell the Host to stay away from her, to which he replies, "I'll try to contain myself." After that, he shows them the masks with the numbers on the foreheads and the cellphones, telling them to contact whomever they like by dialing the numbers. He then goes to talk with his other guests, but later, he kills Allison when she straps herself in the chair that she finds, and also tricks Jake into spiking his finger on a Lament Configuration replica that he says was Adam's work.

Not to keep gushing about Henriksen, but he really is so entertaining to watch. He looks good, for one thing, with how he's dressed entirely in black, with a dark coat for when he's outside, and also delivers his lines in such an awesome, matter-of-fact manner. Upon seeing the tension between Jake and the others, he comments, "Much as I love watchin' old wounds bein' opened, I do have other guests," adding, "If you need anything... scream." When he first finds Allison in the chair, he tells her that it's

quite becoming of her, then tells her it's a very fast way to completely bleed someone without decapitating them. As she panics, he tells her, "Relax. Relax. It's perfectly safe, unless the cutting blades are engaged." Then he activates them and comments, "The cutting blades are engaged," before putting the small pin that did so into her hand and watches her gruesome death. Later, when Chelsea calls the police, the Host walks outside to speak with them, calmly lights a cigarette, and explains that he's simply entertaining some guests.

And when one of the officers asks him what he's doing with such a big house, he simply answers, "I love to party." Even when he delivers some rather cringe lines, like when he pops up in the back of a vehicle that Chelsea can't start and comments, "Like a bad horror movie, isn't it?", Henriksen is still great. I especially like how, at the end, when Chelsea and Jake are trying to escape, the Host starts screwing with them. He calls Chelsea, pretending to be Jake in trouble, and sends her running back to the house, then later calls her when

she's stuck in the attic, cryptically telling her that everything is real. She decides to just call him Pinhead and he comments, "If that's what you want to believe." He later shows up in front of both of them when they're trying to get out and Chelsea, having had enough, roundhouse kicks him over the railing and he falls to the foyer below, seemingly killing him. But,when they run down there, he pops back up, and when they run out the door, he appears there and yells, "Boo!", at them, clearly enjoying freaking them out.

Once you get to the scene where Jake learns that the Host has some connection to Adam, the ultimate reveal isn't too shocking: he's Adam's father, whose whereabouts were unknown at the funeral, and is doing this for revenge over their not helping his son. He went to extreme lengths to lure out Jake in particular, posing as a female friend and possible lover in the Hellworld chatrooms, and also learned everything there is to know about the mythology from him. He even credits Jake for it 

during their final confrontation. Even though Jake tells him that he has no right to be doing this, considering he was never there for his son and that they were Adam's only real family, the Host is not only unmoved but also drops another bombshell: shortly after they and the others arrived at the party, they were all drugged and buried alive. Though Mike, Derrick, and Allison were relatively easy to inoculate, he had to forcefully drug Chelsea and Jake by piercing their skin in some manner.

Said drug was a powerful psychedelic that left them open to hypnotic suggestion, which he induced through cellphones he left in each coffin, while their own minds cooked up everything else, including visions of Adam from the guilt they felt, which the Host calls a "pleasant surprise." While Mike, Derrick, and Allison's deaths were unintentional (Allison accidentally gouged her own throat open, Derrick had a fatal asthma attack, and Mike died of fear), and he intended to leave them all there to slowly die within the coffins, the Host

still contends that he's had his revenge, telling Chelsea, "I beat you guys at your own game," and even got to enjoy the party himself. As she says that they loved Adam and don't deserve this, he sneers, "Tell him that when you see him," before ending with, "You dream's over, Chelsea. Your nightmare is just about to begin. See you in hell!"

But even though the Host has fled by the time Chelsea and Jake are rescued, he doesn't get away scot-free at all. Elsewhere, while going through Adam's belongings in a hotel room, he finds what turns out to be the real Lament Configuration. Fiddling with it, he unintentionally summons the Cenobites. However, he refuses to believe it's actually happening, saying there is no real Hellworld, and tries to "wake" himself up. Thus, he's easily sliced in half by them. However, in one final shock that makes little sense, he suddenly appears in the back of Chelsea and Jake's van after calling them, almost causes them to crash, and then disappears.

Even though he's dead by the beginning of the movie, and the only times we see him are in flashbacks to when he killed himself or in the characters' hallucinations, Adam (Stelian Urian) is still a significant character. Besides being the impetus for the entire story, it's revealed at the end of the movie that his suicide was down to much more than his simply becoming obsessed with Hellworld. He'd found the real Lament Configuration and summoned the Cenobites, which Pinhead commends him on when confronting his father. It's also all but stated outright that Adam was behind Chelsea and Jake being rescued, as a police officer tells the former that they got an anonymous phone call about their situation and traced it to her cellphone, which they found at the house. As she's being told this, Chelsea looks up at the house and sees what appears to be Adam watching from a second story window.

Hellworld marks another end of an era for the franchise in several ways, with the saddest being that it marked the last time Doug Bradley played Pinhead, as he would beg off the next one due to an insultingly low amount of money and it would go from there. And as much as I wish I could say he went out with a bang, I'd be lying. Besides the now expected small amount of screentime (this no joke, could be the shortest ever), Pinhead's role here is possibly his most unusual in the whole series. He appears sporadically throughout the main body of the film, sometimes suddenly taking the Host's place and, other times, simply enacting or witnessing a character's death. He often spouts at least one line of dialogue each time, like when he appears to Chelsea after the Host sticks her in the arm and says, "Adam was right," or when he appears in front of Jake when his thumb is spiked, asking, "Is it just a game now, Jake?" And he also does something that feels very out of character and inappropriate for him: he directly and physically kills some people like a typical slasher villain. Rather than using his chains and hooks, he takes a cleaver and slices off Derrick's head, or puts a spike through the back of a police officer's head and out his mouth in front of Chelsea. Given the ultimate revelation, it kind of makes sense, but it doesn't feel right watching Pinhead take people out in a manner more becoming of Michael Myers or Jason Voorhees. Speaking of which, following that latter kill, after which he tells Chelsea, "You still don't understand, do you? There is no way out for you, Chelsea. Oh, what wonders we have to show you," Pinhead disappears (though the other Cenobites still show up here and there), and it's eventually revealed that he and the other Cenobites were part of the hallucinations caused by the characters' drugging.

But just when you think this was one Hellraiser movie where nothing supernatural took place, at the end of the movie, the Host unintentionally summons the Cenobites in his hotel room. Pinhead welcomes him to hell, adding, "I should have come for you a long time ago." When the Host then refuses to believe that what's happening is real, Pinhead mocks him for it, telling him, "Your son was quite the prodigy. He opened the gateway to hell. But you never believed yourself, did you?"

And after the other Cenobites slice him in half after he futilely tries to "wake up," Pinhead remarks, "How's that for a wake-up call?" That's especially sad that, nearly twenty years after he and Clive Barker first created this character, Bradley ends his run as Pinhead with a lame, Freddy Krueger-like one-liner. Also, I have mixed feelings about this ending in and of itself, as we'll get into.

From a visual standpoint, Hellworld is similar to Deader in that, while it does have that same low budget, less than inspired look, it's often offset the aesthetic created by the Romanian cinematographer. There are some good shots and memorable color palettes to be found here, from the memorably somber-looking opening scene of Adam's funeral in the church to the cold, dark-blue look to the scenes set in the woods around Leviathan House (like with the exterior scenes in Deader, you can tell it was cold as crap during

filming), and the similar look to the Host's confrontation with the Cenobites at the end. And as much of the movie takes place within the house, the filmmakers do come up with ways to keep it visually interesting, from certain rooms and floors having a warm, brown look to them, to the scenes down in the basement being lit by some uncomfortable, pale greenish-blue lights, party scenes highlighted by flashing blue and red lights, and rooms upstairs, particularly the attic that Chelsea is locked in, having a deep blue look, often

with shafts of light coming through the windows. Also, while Rick Bota's direction isn't as memorable as it was in Deader, there are some noteworthy instances of cinematography, such as shots looking up from the foyer to the floors above, and up the spiraling, Vertigo-like staircases leading down to the basement, an upside POV shot from Derrick when he sees Pinhead about to kill him, and some genuinely kind of unsettling shots of Adam down in his basement, literally digging his 

own grave. The editing, however, is sometimes a little music video for me, like when the kids walk into the one room in the basement and the speed goes back and forth from slow to really fast. It does the same thing when Chelsea's arm gets stabbed with a pin, she gets really dizzy, and begins seeing things, and also has a weird shutter effect in some parts, along with some rapid editing of shots. And a moment late in the film when Jake remembers back to the scene in the Host's study and what it could mean is edited in the same way, and is also given a cheap-looking blue filter.

One thing that's definitely true about Hellworld is that it's both one of the most overtly Gothic films in the series in a while, and the most claustrophobic since the original. Again, the movie's opening scene is set in an old church, with plenty of shots of religious iconography on both the outside and inside, such as statues, stained glass windows, portraits, and the like, and that's to say nothing of Leviathan House, which was an actual house in Bucharest that the filmmakers were desperate to use as a setting. Though this huge

mansion is infinitely more spacious than the Cotton family home in the first Hellraiser, the whole movie is more or less set there, so there is that feeling that the characters are trapped there once they go in and the Host's plan begins to unfold. This feeling is punctuated further by the house being out in the middle of the barren, cold woods. There are actually two sides to the house's interior: the public spaces and the private ones. The main foyer is full of a bunch of partying people, with a

neon Hellworld banner above a door and a huge, rotating Lament Configuration, along with classic touches like a grandfather clock, a grand piano, and a pedestal with a statue of an eagle. There's also another room with a bar and dance floor, and a more quiet, intimate room that also has a bar. In addition, there's an interesting atmosphere of unbridled lust and debauchery going on, not just with women dancing seductively but some  

walking around topless, people having sex right out in the open in some rooms, and the whole thing with the masks, which are very reminiscent of Eyes Wide Shut, and using cellphones to contact someone you consider a "tasty morsel," as the Host himself describes, so the two of you can indulge in carnal pleasure.

The private rooms are, as you can guess, more impactful than the others. The study where the Host invites the main group in for a drink is full of all sorts of interesting and often macabre collectibles, many of them related to the Hellraiser mythology, such as Lament Configuration replicas, whips and chains, the skeleton of a small cat, Hellraiser-themed tarot cards (fittingly, Pinhead's image is on the "DEATH" card), an old-fashioned perfume atomizer (which is how Allison unknowingly becomes drugged), and a portrait of

Phillip Lemarchand holding the box (said portrait looks nothing like Bruce Ramsay, though). Far creepier is the basement, with circular stairs leading from the wood-frame main area to a more clinical and industrial white-painted area, with tiled corridors that have pipes lining the walls, and the surgical amphitheater, which is filled with really disturbing specimens in jars, including babies (though I don't quite get their relevance to the place), and a hook and chain that runs the length of the room, which the Host says was used to haul

human bodies across it. Among the upstairs area is a room with furniture and statues covered with sheets, which is where Allison finds the chair where she dies; a room with a computer where Jake encounters the Host and gets the first hint that he knew Adam; a small bedroom upstairs where Jake is seduced by the apparent ghost of Sister Ursala; and an eerily threadbare landing in the house's highest story where Chelsea finds the door to the attic, which is not only filled with pigeons

but is also where she finds the proof that the Host is Adam's father, and also just looks really cool in the way it's lit almost entirely by the blue moonlight. While a number of these interiors were those of the actual house, albeit decked out by both production designer Christian Niculescu (who also worked on Deader) and Gary Tunnicliffe when it came to the paraphernalia in the study, other settings, like the basement and the attic, were done in different locations. Even the woods around the house were actually miles away from it.

Though Rick Bota did get into the franchise's nastiness and tendency to deal with un-PC subject matter in Deader, either due to the short prep time or because he wasn't feeling it anymore by this point, he scaled it back considerably with Hellworld. I would say it's slightly more screwed up than Hellseeker, with the unsettling stuff down in the basement, as random as it is, and the backstory of Leviathan House, which includes Sister Ursala, its last Mother Superior, becoming corrupted by the Lament Configuration's unholy

pleasures, the place later being turned into a mental asylum, and the staff dismembering each other in the surgical amphitheater, but the movie is still relatively tame. Despite the salacious activities going on in the house during the party, it doesn't hold a candle to what we saw onboard Joey's train car in the previous film, and the film is much glossier overall and doesn't have the rawness of the last one, either. The notion of being buried alive but not realizing it and dying there, either naturally 

or through unforeseen circumstances, is a frightening one, but the way it's executed here is not in the least bit scary (it's got nothing on The Vanishing, that's for sure). And finally, while Tunnicliffe and company, as usual, provided plenty of gore, it's not as gruesome or unsettling as in the past. If I had to pick the one here that does kind of get to me, I would have to say the Sacrifice Chair with Allison, which is a very Saw-like trap (even though this was shot a couple of years before that franchise began). While that is quite grisly and protracted, and Allison's screaming does make it hard to watch, the others don't unnerve me like many other scenes in the franchise.

Like with Hellseeker, some of these scenarios are rather ho-hum and don't do much for a well-versed horror fan. The prime example for me is when Jake walks into this one room and gradually discovers that he's apparently invisible to everybody in there. That could be terrifying if done right, but like I said, because I'm not that big on Jake's character, I don't feel that bad for him when he gets angry because he thinks everybody is ignoring him, even when he taps their shoulder and tries to turn them around, and stomps to the door. And then, when

he's leaving, he turns around in front of the doorway and sees a vision of everybody hanging dead from the ceiling, which goes away within seconds. Big deal. I feel the same way over Chelsea's nightmare about Adam's funeral in the opening, where he suddenly grabs her hand while she's paying her respects at his casket, and the moment where, while that random girl is giving Mike head, her mask briefly turns into this scary, snarling face that freaks him out, only for it to go 

back to normal within an instant. I do think Chelsea getting locked in a room and managing to call the police, only for them not to see her when they're looking right at the window where she's standing, is a bit freakish, especially when we see that the Host does know she's there, but the logistics of that, considering the twist, don't make sense to me. And though I should be unsettled when Jake is seduced and sleeps with the apparent spirit of Sister Ursala, until recently, it didn't register that that was supposed to be her. Maybe I'm dumb but, regardless, nothing more is done with it anyway.

Since they didn't have much prep time, or a completed script going in, it feels like the filmmakers took the safest, most standard approach to Hellworld. Make no mistake, this is, without a doubt, the most mainstream attempt at a Hellraiser movie since Hellraiser III and, in this case, it's in the aesthetic of an early-to-mid 2000's teenage horror flick. Besides the undeniable meta influence of Scream, as I'll get into, it especially has, as Cody Leach on YouTube mentioned, something of a Halloween: Resurrection vibe, with the main plot

centering around a party at a house and the internet being part of the story. The film also has the fairly glossy look and feel of many horror flicks around that time, a soundtrack made up of rock and metal songs (albeit cheap, low-rent ones, considering the budget), the main cast is made up of good-looking, hip young actors who project an awareness of how these sorts of scenarios usually play out, and rather than truly horrific sights, disturbing imagery, and taboo subject matter, it instead spends much of its time on familiar slasher scenarios. Those who die

get separated from the main group in some manner (Allison is exploring the house, Derrick has to find his inhaler after he drops it down the air vent, and Mike is lured down to the basement by the woman he's been passionately making out with), and their deaths are sometimes a result of them doing something ill-advised that leaves them open to attack. While Derrick laying down and trying to compose himself after finally getting his inhaler is understandable, Allison stupidly sits in the

Sacrifice Chair and Mike, despite seeing the Cenobite called "Banded," just says, "Not good," and doesn't move, leading to him getting hooked in the back. And again, except for the ending, the Cenobites are little more than slasher movie villains here, especially Pinhead in how he suddenly appears with a cleaver and slices Derrick's head off, or how he puts a spike through the back of the one cop's head, appearing behind him as he drops out of sight, as you would expect Michael or Jason to do.

The Scream influence comes from how this movie's story is based around people who are fans of the Hellraiser franchise and its mythology and, thanks to this Hellworld computer game, know everything about it. They know about the Lament Configuration and how it works, the Cenobites, and Phillip Lemarchand, and sometimes comment on how, if it were real, things should follow the rules. At the beginning of the movie, when Mike shows up at Chelsea's apartment wearing a Chatterer mask, not only is she not scared, but she

points out that, "Cenobites don't exist, and even if they did, I never opened the Lament Configuration, which, as we know, isn't even real, anyway." Late in the film, when she's in the attic and is talking with the Host on her cellphone, she decides to call him Pinhead, since he's the mastermind of all of this, and says he doesn't even know how this works, saying, "Get your mythology right, buddy. First, I have to open the box, then Pinhead appears, the hooks and chains, but none of that's happened. Why? Because none of it's real." And not long after

that, when Chelsea suggests to Jake that they may already be dead and in hell, Jake notes how nobody opened the box, which sounds like something of a commentary on how the last few movies were very lax when it came to following the mythology established in the original and its first few sequels. However, some feel that the movie didn't go deep enough into this idea, especially in how the actual Hellworld game is just a device to get the story going and we see very little of it, likely due to the

budget. I can agree that the movie might've succeeded more if it focused on the game itself and how it affects those who play it, but to really make that work, they would've needed more time and money, instead of throwing the movie together like they did. And some of the attempts at being clever and meta are as eye-rolling as some of the lamer parts of the Scream movies, like the Host's remark about the car not starting and when Chelsea asks if he's going to, "Rip off your face and morph into some franchise icon, right?"

Speaking of which, here's the most interesting question one can ask about Hellworld: does it take place in the same continuity as the other movies? Obviously, in the Scream franchise, the horror movies that they reference are just movies, but it's more vague as to whether or not that's the case here. You'd think that would be the case, given all the Hellraiser paraphernalia, merchandising such as the game itself, which has Pinhead's voice speaking lines from the previous movies, Mike's Chatterer mask, Derrick wearing a T-shirt with an

image of Pinhead's face taken from the original's poster, and the tarot cards, and how it's often referred to as a fictional franchise, specifically by Chelsea numerous times. But then, there's the issue of Leviathan House and how, like the Lament Configuration, it was supposedly built by Lemarchand. While that could also be something the Host made up from all of the Hellworld mythology Jake unknowingly told him in the chatrooms, especially in how you'd have to ask yourself why, during his time, a Frenchman

would've been asked to build a convent in America, or why they would hire a toymaker for the job (not to mention the issue of Phillip's death happening not long after his creation of the box in Bloodline), it's still left ambiguous. For me, Chelsea's referring to the box itself as a "myth" rather than an entirely fictional creation also seems to suggest that everything we've seen in the previous movies may have actually happened, but also that the movies themselves exist as well and 

were based on those events, which led to the Hellworld game. Or it could be nothing more than a legend that was still the basis for this franchise, and everything the characters go through are indeed just drug-fueled hallucinations. It could've been done better, yes, but that kind of ambiguity would've likely made the film more interesting, if it weren't for the ending, where the box and the Cenobites do turn out to be real. While part of me likes having at least one scene where Pinhead and the Cenobites act the way they should (save for Pinhead's bad final line), I also don't like the way it simply spells everything out for you.

And then, there's the very end where, after the Cenobites have sliced him apart, the Host suddenly calls Chelsea and Jake as they're driving off, he appears in the backseat of their van, grabs the steering wheel, nearly causes them to crash, and after Chelsea manages to stop the car, he's gone, while at that very moment, the police break into his blood-covered hotel room. I don't know if they're trying to hint that he's now going to haunt them from the Cenobites' realm or if he is a Cenobite himself, or what, but that was such a cheap shock ending that it's just pathetic.

Remember in my Deader review when I said that the woefully underused other Cenobites had more to do in Hellworld? That is true, but I shouldn't have made it seem like it was significantly more, as they probably do about as much here as they did in Hellseeker. Also, this is the movie with the least amount of Cenobites, as it's just Pinhead, Chatterer (who's stupidly referred to as "Melted Face Cenobite" in the credits), and the male version of Bound introduced in the previous film, now referred to as "Banded." In any case, there is more

to them here than just appearing at the end and standing around, like in Deader; Chatterer gets to menace both Chelsea and Jake, Banded actually gets to activate the hook that kills Mike, and both of them slice through the Host's body at the end with chained scythes, but it's still hardly anything to write home about. Besides the Cenobite makeups, Gary Tunnicliffe also created a burned version of Adam, which you get brief glimpses of during the opening nightmare scene and in the attic

with Chelsea, and some grisly makeups for undead versions of Mike and Allison who chase after Chelsea during the third act. Mike has a mangled, stitched up face, with his left eye sealed shut (though that doesn't reflect the way in which he was killed), while Allison has an open throat wound, and appears to still have the blades from the Sacrifice Chair sticking in it. They also did something with her voice to make it sound distorted, and it is a tad disturbing, and they both 

have crazy-looking eyes. And at the end, when Chelsea and Jake are rescued but the others' bodies are found within the coffins, we see some simple but effectively gruesome dead makeups, with their skin being deathly pale, their eyes glassy (save for Allison, for some reason), and Derrick having a bit of spittle on the side of his right cheek from when he expired of an asthma attack.

Getting to the kills, the first one, with Allison in the Sacrifice Chair, is very gnarly, with blood not only flying out of her neck as the blades slice into it and covering her face, but also splattering on the Host's face and covering the camera lens in one shot. It's also genuinely unsettling in how it's so drawn out, both in the buildup as the blades slowly inch towards her neck, and how it goes on and she continues screaming even after her throat has been reduced to hamburger meat, loud enough that Chelsea can hear her over the sounds of the party.

Derrick's death comes after he has to run downstairs to get his inhaler, and then has to use a scalpel in the amphitheater to unscrew a vent in order get to it (would someone with asthma be able to last that long and run all the way down there?). He then dies when Pinhead chops off his head as he's lying on a table, and there's a prolonged shot of his head falling and landing in a tray on the floor, splashing blood everywhere. Later, before he dies, Mike finds Derrick's body down in the

basement, we see that it has since had its midsection opened up, and he then sees his severed head in a jar. Banded then hooks Mike in the back, before slowly cranking the gear and lifting him above the floor, with blood spraying out and covering the floor, as well as some of the specimen jars. He struggles and screams, while futilely begging the Cenobite to stop, and even grabs the underside of a light before he finally expires. And there's the cop who gets the stake through the back 

of his neck, out his mouth, and through his hand and walkie-talkie. There are other gore gags here and there, like Chelsea's arm being stabbed with a pin and it then being pulled out, Jake's thumb getting pierced by little spikes on the Lament Configuration replica (a very wince-inducing sight), and during the reveal of how the characters actually died, you see Allison with another bloody throat wound.

Unfortunately, what should've been the most spectacular death in the film, that of the Host, was mostly done through bad CGI. While there is a seemingly practical shot of the aftermath, with Lance Henriksen's actual head behind a severed torso, the shot of his body actually falling apart after he gets sliced looks so damn bad (and it was meant to be a tribute to the Alien Queen tearing Bishop apart). Fortunately, aside from the few glimpses we get of the Hellworld game, the bad digital effects aren't as egregious here as they have

been in previous movies, with other notable examples being the moment when the woman's mask turns into a monstrous, fanged face and freaks Mike out, a bad fire effect for when we see Adam light himself up, and electrical sparking coming from the Lament Configuration when the Host opens it at the end.

For those who weren't the biggest fans of the last three movies, especially Inferno and Hellseeker, Hellworld's big revelation near the end, that the characters were unknowingly buried alive not long after they arrived at the party, may cause them to roll their eyes in frustration, as it is a variation on those twist endings. I, on the other hand, can deal with it because, while I can poke a lot of holes in it, and I will in a bit, it's much more clear cut than trying to figure out when exactly Detective Thorne

entered hell in Inferno, or what exactly happened in-between Amy Klein's first run-in with the Deaders and that movie's finale. It's also hinted at throughout the movie, with sporadic glimpses of the characters freaking out in the coffins, sometimes through the ventilation tubes that the Host attached to them (one of Clive Barker's notes to Rick Bota when he saw the movie's rough cut), as well as shots of him digging the graves. Even the way Mike, Derrick, and Allison are innocuously drugged, with the first two partaking

in a drink the Host offers them in the study, and Allison accidentally spraying herself in the face with an atomizer, is kind of a clever, although the moments where Chelsea and Jake are drugged forcefully is where the movie shows its hand a little too early. That's just one of many issues with the twist, which is just as problematic as the High Tension twist when you think back on the movie.

First of all, the Host's plan is one where everything had to go exactly right for it to work out. Even though we learn he had backup plans in case some of them didn't want to drink his drugged liquor, Allison unknowingly inoculating herself with the perfume sprayer and the little bit of it on the tarot cards that got on Mike's fingers makes you wonder where else the Host may have strategically placed it throughout the house. Maybe it was all in that study, but he also had to count on all five of his

targets arriving at the same time so he could get to them as soon as possible and without the other party guests noticing. Second, since he had to directly inoculate Chelsea and Jake, and they appeared to lose consciousness immediately, does that mean it took longer for it to kick in with the others, since they were all present down in the basement when he stuck the pin into Chelsea's arm? You'd think so, since it would be hard to contemplate them keeling over from it and Chelsea

and Jake not raising any questions, or the Host being able to get them out of the house and bury them without Chelsea and Jake knowing or wondering where they are while he's giving them the tour. But then, did they all drop right before he stuck her? And since Jake was drugged a while after Chelsea, why didn't he notice what the Host did to her and the others? Despite his anger towards them over Adam, you'd think he would still be confused and possibly concerned if they all suddenly passed out and the Host forcefully stuck a

pin in Chelsea's arm. This would've worked out a lot better had they all been drugged at the same time. Third, while the nature of the hallucinations does make sense, given the Host's hypnotic suggestions coupled with their knowledge of Hellworld and the mythology, I don't get why Pinhead would appear to Chelsea and Jake immediately after they're drugged. What, the Host is already influencing them before he's even buried them? 

Fourth, I don't get the logistics of Chelsea calling the police, be it in actuality or in her hallucinations, and her seeing the Host looking up at her from the yard while the police don't see her, if she's actually in a coffin the whole time (you could argue it's all another scenario he cooked up but I would like to think it was partially real, given that she did have a cellphone and thought she was where she told the police she was), or, for that matter, their confrontation with him after they've, somehow, 

found their own graves. And it sure is a big coincidence that the police officer who appears at the house in Chelsea's mind is a real person who's on the scene when she and Jake are rescued. Finally, why would Chelsea find evidence that the Host is Adam's father in a drug-fueled hallucination, specifically a photo that, like that cop, exists in reality? I guess you could say the Host implanted the idea into Chelsea's mind so he could have the satisfaction of them knowing exactly why they've been put through this and who

did it, but why not just insert himself into their hallucinations, as he's been doing, and come out and say it? Why would put in such a specific clue for one of them to figure out? But then again, why such an elaborate plan involving this party and set-up, when he could've gotten his revenge through such a simpler method? (Obviously, because that would make for a less memorable movie, as well as that he wanted the pleasure of beating them at their own game, but I still had to ask that question, given the circumstances.)

So, I can completely understand why a lot of Hellraiser diehards are not fond of this film, and it is a bad movie, regardless. But, despite all of its issues, I enjoy it more than I do a number of other films in the series, particularly the last three. Like I said at the beginning, after three movies in a row that go for a type of horror which this franchise wasn't about to begin with, and all with mixed results, I find Hellworld to be a breath of fresh air, despite its own problematic third act twist and it

not being the best at the aesthetic it specifically goes for, either. Speaking of which, as much as a lot of people may have gotten tired of that glossy, meta approach to horror around this time, I've always had some nostalgia for it, as it was the type of horror that was popular when I came of age in my enthusiasm for the genre. It may have gotten stale after a while, but watching one of these movies, even the really bad ones, always makes me think back to that simpler, more innocent time in my life. And finally, after Deader's very dour tone

and slow pacing, it's nice to then move on to a movie that has more of a sense of fun about it. Yeah, maybe Hellraiser isn't supposed to be a "fun" franchise, but I'm able to roll with it. I do have genuine issues with the movie, as I've gone into, but on the whole, it's not one of the absolute worst in my opinion.

The music score was the work of Lars Anderson, who mainly did music for video games, like the James Bond game Nightfire, Command & Conquer: Generals, Command & Conquer: Generals - Zero Hour, and Rise of the Kasai. Like the scores for the last couple of movies, it's nothing special in the long run, but it's not bad, either. It has a haunting opening titles theme, which sounds like a church choir because of all the voices singing, which is appropriate for the opening scene and the convent aesthetic of Leviathan House; an eerie, soft piano theme for the scene where Jake is seduced by Sister Ursala; an especially spooky, ethereal piece of music for the ending scene where the Host unintentionally summons the Cenobites; and a music box-like jingle for the Hellworld game that does bring to mind the tune that accompanied it in the original when Kirsty first played with it. However, Anderson also puts in a corny bit of comical music when Mike's prank on Chelsea at the beginning falls flat. And, unfortunately, most of the soundtrack is made up of songs and sections of music by some low-rent rock and metal bands, both during the party scenes and others taking place elsewhere. Some examples include I Funk Therefore I Am by Sonicanimation, Break Off Your Wings by BossHouse, Unsaid by Jettared, and Look Who's Standing Tall, also by BossHouse, which plays over the ending scene and the first part of the credits. Even though I'm not a metalhead by any means, I know that these groups are pretty low tier and are the only ones this movie could afford.

There are a lot of things not to like about Hellraiser: Hellworld, especially if you're a purist. The movie takes a more mainstream, mid-2000's, meta horror approach that it could've done a lot better, there are some missed opportunities regarding the core concept, the main group of characters are pretty shallow, despite the talent involved, the Cenobites not only don't have a lot of screentime again but are treated as typical slasher movie villains up until the final scene, the nastiness and taboo aspects are toned down considerably from Deader, the soundtrack is full of bland songs by low-tier rock and metal groups, and it has a third act twist full of more holes than Swiss cheese, as well as a cheap final shock at the end. On the other hand, it benefits greatly from Lance Henriksen's presence, it's a much more fun film than you usually get in this series, especially in comparison to some of the last few, those who have nostalgia for this era of horror will find it strangely comforting, there are some good gore effects yet again, and the actual music score, though not great, is better than you might expect. Not a good movie, but if you can put your expectations for the Hellraiser franchise aside and try to enjoy it as a guilty pleasure, it can make for a fun 94 minutes.