Hellraiser: Revelations

Plot synopsis:
Steven Craven and Nico Bradley run away from home and travel to Mexico. They film themselves engaging in several days' worth of drunken partying. The boys later disappear. The Mexican authorities return their belongings to their parents, including a videotape made by Steven that documents their final moments.
A year later, the families of the two missing boys gather for dinner. Tensions rise when Emma, Steven's sister and Nico's girlfriend, expresses frustration with their lack of closure. She demands that her mother reveal the contents of Steven's videotape, which she has been obsessively watching in private. Later, Emma sneaks a look at the tape, which documents Steven and Nico picking up a girl in a bar. A flashback reveals that Nico murdered the girl while having sex in the bar's restroom, and later threatened to implicate Steven in the killing to force him to continue their "vacation" together.
A final flashback reveals that Nico solved the puzzle box, opening a portal to the realm of the Cenobites: extra-dimensional sadomasochists led by Pinhead who offer the ultimate sensual experience. Steven flees, but Nico is taken to the Cenobites' realm to be subjected to extreme torture and mutilation. The box is nearby, allowing Nico to communicate with Steven. Steven later kills several prostitutes so their blood can regenerate Nico, but Nico kills Steven when he refuses to continue.
The "Steven" holding the families hostage is really Nico in Stevens' skin, who taunts his victims with a shotgun. He demands that Emma solve the puzzle box for him, intending for the Cenobites to take her in his place thus assuring his freedom.
Emma opens the portal and the Cenobites—including Steven—appear. Nico's mother ignores Pinhead's command to remain silent, exclaiming that Nico forced Emma to solve the box, and is killed.
Nico says he brought them so they would take Emma in his place, only for Pinhead to ensnare him with hooks. Pinhead recognizes in Emma a dark sexual desire and taunts her with innuendo.
When Emma's father shoots Nico, the Cenobites vanish with Emma's mother instead, saying they were owed a victim since Nico was dead. Her father apologizes, then dies in Emma's arms. The film ends with Emma reaching for the puzzle box.

Tags: revenge, murder, violence, flashback

Review:
At the time I am writing this review, the series has spanned nine films (with rumors of a TV-show possibly in the works), and countless spin-off media including a popular line of graphic novels and comics."Hellraiser" is a staple in horror, which is what makes this latest film so infuriating and heart-wrenching."Hellraiser: Revelations" is the latest in the series (beginning with the fifth film, all releases have skipped theaters and been plagued with lower budgets and even lower-grade actors and crews).
Steven brings Nico back from hell via sacrifices, and later shows up to a house where he and Nico's family are having dinner.At the house, Emma, Steven's sister, finds the box, and eventually the families begin to experiences strange and bizarre things over the film's anemic 75-minute running time, before a series of lame-brained twists that I won't spoil ends the film in an abrupt and very anti-climactic climax.First the acting.
Hell's still just a mass of swinging chains and pillars, which worked in the original film due to some excellent shots by Barker and the fact we hadn't seen anything like it before, but looks silly and cheap nowadays.And onto the biggest complaint most people have...
Now, Pinhead sounds kinda like Don LaFontaine (the man known for providing voice-over work as the narrator of just about every movie trailer before his untimely death) trying to whisper with a bad Eurpoeon accent while suffering a sore-throat.
But I was wrong.So I sat down to watch this movie, and I must admit that I was appalled to see that Doug Bradley wasn't in the role as Pinhead.
I am not saying that he is a bad actor, as I am not familiar with his work outside this one movie, but he didn't have that diabolic charm and wit that Bradley brought to the Pinhead character.
I don't know, but for us who have followed the growth and decline of the franchise, it was a rude slap on the face.The movie leaves little room for the characters to develop and grow, despite the actors/actresses doing their best with their given parts.
The effects and gore are nothing more than copies of scenes from the other movies with nothing new added to make it any more interesting.I love the original Pinhead character, played by Doug Bradley in all of the other films.
After watching this, I looked up the interviews with Doug Bradley to find out why he didn't get onboard with the project, after all, he's been involved with every Hellraiser film so far.
The acting is average, sometimes bad, and the direction simply gets the job done.The reason that this movie is worst than the rest, is the fact that Doug Bradley refused the part of Pinhead, so it went to someone it shouldn't have.
The result, dubbed Revelations, was such cinematic cancer that Barker took to Twitter page to distance himself from the tripe.Steven (Nick Eversman) and Nico (Jay Gillespie) are two young horndogs who escape their middle-class family for the seediness of Mexico, where they hope to guzzle tequila, f**k prostitutes, and generally act like annoying a**eholes.
We flash back and forth in time between Steven being forced to lure victims for his friend in order to regenerate his body and skin, and the family's utter shock at Steven's sudden re-appearance and increasingly bizarre behaviour.Series regular and all-round horror icon Doug Bradley turned the movie down.
But soon they discover that it is not Steven's soul that is inside his body."Hellraiser: Revelations" is a very bad sequel, actually the ninth movie of this franchise.
Actually I think I would have had more of an emotional connection to cardboard than the cast.The storyline and I use the term in the loosest possible sense was so jumbled it was nigh on impossible to keep track of what was happening and when it was happening.I am so glad Doug Bradley refused to appear in the film as he would have shone so brightly among the others the screen would have just been a white light.So Revelations.
In this ninth installment of the Hellraiser franchise, two friends discover a puzzle box in Mexico, which opens a gateway to Hell.I hardly even want to write a review about this crock of rubbish, because others already have and have done a better job.Dread Central wrote, "Not only does this entry make all the other sequels seem great in comparison, you could easily confuse this for some Hellraiser mockbuster from the folks at The Asylum." This is spot-on, as they have stolen everything good from the first two films -- Pinhead, the mattress rebirth, the homeless man -- and made them into pale comparisons.No one has been harsher than Scott Weinberg, who called the film a "contractually-mandated piece of intentional garbage that exists for no other reason than pure, simple greed...
And if your one of these people who reads all the reviews and thinks 'i'd like to make up my own mind', this is one of those times you should listen to your conscience, No good will come of it, the world will be a better place for you not watching it, trust me, please!.
Usually the latter; in the case of Hellraiser: Revelations, the former.Without saying too much on the plot-- the word count won't permit me-- this is the first Hellraiser since the fourth to be intended as a Hellraiser film (and not a hasty rewrite of an unrelated horror script) and the first since "Hellbound" to treat the Cenobites and their backstory the way Barker wrote them.
Make no mistake-- the Pinhead here is a far inferior version of the previous entries', and Doug Bradley's presence is sorely missed; he brought a certain charisma to the character this is difficult to articulate, let alone replicate, and his absence from the movie is in fact its most glaring flaw.
Missing from many of the sequels was the idea that the box-- and by extension, the Cenobites-- sought prey for a reason, and that the fates that befell them were simply amplifications of what would have become of them in everyday life.This all said, the movie is not completely devoid of flaws beyond Bradley's absence.
Before the DVDs were even pressed, "Revelations" was doomed not because of its inherent value but because fans had decided already that this was going to be the worst Hellraiser ever (a difficult undertaking, considering that the last four entries were unrelated horror stories hastily doctored to include Pinhead, and three of which-- Hellseeker, Deader, and Hellworld-- were abysmal).
And thus the prophecy was fulfilled; I've yet to read a review of the film that takes it seriously as anything other than a Hellraiser movie without Doug Bradley.
'HELLRAISER: REVELATIONS': Two and a Half Stars (Out of Five) This ninth chapter in the popular horror franchise was made on a budget of just $300,000, filmed in just three weeks and rushed into and out of production in order to save the studio, The Weinstein Company, from losing it's rights to the material.
Due to the hastiness of the production long time star Doug Bradley decided not to return as 'Pinhead' and the resulting film is undoubtedly the weakest and most disappointing of the series.
Like with pizza though, even a bad 'Pinhead' film is good horror.
Like with pizza though, even a bad 'Pinhead' film is good horror.
Hellraiser: Revelations (2011) * 1/2 (out of 4) The ninth installment in the never ending series has two teens heading to Mexico where they drink, party and wind up finding the puzzle box, which of course they open and release Pinhead (Fred Tatasciore).
I think a decent movie could have been made out of the subject matter but while watching the film it just seemed like it wasn't complete.
Tatasciore isn't too bad as Pinhead but after eight movies with Doug Bradley it was a little strange not seeing him in the part.
HELLRAISER: REVELATIONS is a cheap movie that was clearly rushed through production, which pretty much tells you what the studio thinks of the fans.
While its certainly not on par with the early Hellraiser movies I feel it is far better than any of the more recent efforts, as they do for the most part attempt to stay close the roots of the original films.Obviously the first thing you will notice is the lack of Doug Bradley as Pinhead.
I know he has a chubbier face and deep down we all hate to see someone else as Pinhead but heres some advice for if you watch it...You will get more out of this movie if you stop yourself from comparing the new actor to Doug Bradley.
I was glad this wasn't another run of the mill detective story with Pinhead thrown in at the last minute like some of the previous ones have been (Inferno, Hellseeker.) Its not going to be your new favorite Hellraiser but if you give it a chance you might be surprised..
But there was a lot of Blood and gore that was a plus, yet the gore and all of that was not the best i have seen it was a 6/10 the acting was all right the screams were real (sorta) and it was a okay movie not recommended if you are going to watch a Hellraiser watch an older one PLEASE, The length of the movie was normal length for a movie like that, it bored me throughout the movie because of how it was shot all Indie style and it was weird to watch...
(Even though for most horror fans, actor/stuntman Kane Hodder is still Jason Voorhees.) But back to the ninth (!!) Hellraiser, in the making as a remake, that explains why the story is very familiar to the original movie.
But this rushed nature allowed one thing to happen that hadn't occurred since the largely underrated Bloodlines in 1996: an original Hellraiser movie was written.See, with Hellraiser 5-8 the studio merely took existing scripts they owned and reworked them to fit in Pinhead, much to the degradation of the series as a whole.
when the first hellraiser film came out, it was a British production that gave us a unique icon, interesting characters and pretty good story.
I am actually glad it wasn't, even though that would have been more interesting than the rehash of Hellraiser and Hellbound: Hellraiser II which this one ended up being.My two major problems with this film.1 - Acting (it's so bad I nearly stopped watching it twice, it is on a par with a lot of the scy-fy films that have been released over the last few years, if not worse)2 - No Doug Bradley (He is Pinhead.
Not only was the script already so bad that we now have Pinhead played by Stephen Smith Collins beacuse original actor Doug Bradley turned the role down but this movie is also a shining example of those movies you can watch with a bunch of friends, get drunk and then start playing "find the only good actor".
Not a single dialogue even tried to make this movie enjoyable or make you like any of the characters and the only moments this film becomes watchable is when the dark scenes come up, depicting the world the cenobites live in.
As a VERY big fan of the Hellraiser series I had very small hopes for this movie as I learned that Doug Bradley had nothing to do with this film.
I found this film to be good entertainment even though it didn't have all the features you would wish for.You as a Hellraiser fan might like it too if you can look beyond all the cheesiness.
Coming off the heels of past direct-to-video disappointments like "Deader" and "Deadworld" -- movies which are assuredly every bit as stupid as their titles suggest -- one would think the "Hellraiser" franchise could not sink any lower.One would be wrong.Enter "Hellraiser: Revelations," the ninth installment in the "Hellraiser" series and first in over half a decade.
It's a well-known fact that Doug Bradley, who stuck with the character of Pinhead throughout the thick and thin of eight films, was re-cast for the film, partially due to time/budget constraints, but more likely due to the actor having a spine and deciding that enough is enough.
I doubt that even if it had Been Doug Bradley playing the part that the film would have been any better since his presence didn't save Hellworld or Hell on Earth.If you have never seen a Hellraiser film this is not a good introduction to the series.
It didn't bother me much knowing that Doug Bradley had been replaced, the Hellraiser films at their heart aren't even about Pinhead anyway, don't get me wrong Doug is great in the role, irreplaceable, but let's be honest he is no Robert Englund and Pinhead has very rarely been the focal point of a Hellraiser movie.In summary Revelations follows two family's at a dinner party who's son's have each gone missing while on a trip to Mexico, suddenly one of the boys shows up and he has a plan to save his soul from the Cenobites who are in hot pursuit.I'll start off with what's good in this movie.
The acting was atrocious all around, there wasn't a single likeable or relatable character in the film, the story line was full of plot holes, like when everyone's cars just disappear, and their phones suddenly stop working, these are the kind of things that I take issue with because the Cenobites have never done anything of that manner.
I'm not going to complain about the Pinhead replacement, I didn't think he sucked that bad, what sucked was his makeup and the fact that he just doesn't look the part, which comes down to poor casting, not poor acting.From top to bottom there are almost zero likeable things about this movie, the gore is good, but not good enough to save it from being the worst in the franchise by far.
I'm not gonna get into the second rate acting, the lack of special effects, or the difficulty posed by making a Hellraiser movie without Doug Bradley.
'Inferno' was the least bad of the post-'Bloodline' films where the 'Hellraiser' franchise jumped the shark in quality, having little of what made the original so good and not feeling like 'Hellraiser' films, where Pinhead and the Cenobites increasingly became underused and pointless.The general consensus is that 'Hellraiser: Revelations' is the worst of the series.
The Cenobites on top of looking awful have completely lost their mystery and creepiness that made them memorable in the original, while Pinhead is here an amateurish-looking villain more suitable to a 'Hellraiser' mock-buster, it was said very well on a website that the whole film feels like a franchise mock-buster and that is a perfect summation.
But, as a fan of Clive Barker's world, I got everything I wanted: an expansion of the suspenseful Pinhead, and a formulaic honesty to the original two films before "Hellraiser III" transitioned the lively horror-drama into a pop franchise.
Eventually all hell breaks loose and we find out exactly what happened in Mexico.If you read in the trivia section how this movie came about, how production was rushed and took only a few weeks; how it was written by a guy who does make-up, and directed by someone with little experience, the surprise is that Hellraiser: Revelations isn't even worse.
This film was boring, low budget looking and a disgrace to an already silly movie genre.I mean the first few Hellraisers are scary in the sense of what they are.
When I saw the first movie back in the 80s I became a faithful fan of the whole mythology that it created.If had somebody asked me back then how would I like to see this mythology evolved in order to become a franchise, I would have told him that introducing the box to many different characters in many sequels (with each of them having his own personality and facing different situations) would be a great idea.Hellbound gave us the opportunity to explore hell, the world of the Cenobites and its presentation was a novel one.Hell on earth was one of the worst sequels in my opinion, because he overused pinnhead turning him into a Freddy/Jason icon which didn 't work for me, but at least was faithful to the whole mythology.
I found that film terribly bad and I cannot accept it as a part of the franchise.Inferno had a good approach in the way that treated the franchise, because instead of adding more extra clues on the mythos and overuse pinhead like the previous 2 installments did, it took the right decision in exploring the "man-discovers-the-box idea" and presenting us an another aspect of hell that me personally I gladly bought it.Hellseeker was a disaster, because it wanted to turn the franchise to a pinhead-Kirsty case.
The later sequels took a different turn where the scripts were written and Pinhead was added in later sometimes not making it feel like a Hellraiser film at all.
With a very lousy budget and short time to make the film, Hellraiser makes Ed Wood look like Steven Spielberg.
I understood the storyline a little bit, but what made me mad the most about the movie was Pinhead wasn't the same actor who acted in the previous eight films.
The actual Hellraiser creatures didn't appear like until the last two minutes!!).With these things in mind, I still thought I might watch this film with a very open mind.
Even with Doug Bradley no longer playing Pinhead, it wasn't a bad film.
Well, the good thing I will say about this film is that it's not someone else's horror idea where they shoehorned in Pinhead and had Doug Bradley phone it in, which was really the case with all the "Hellraiser" direct to video crap after the fourth one.And that's kind of about it.
Some of the film looks OK.Sound: 4/10 Not very effective.Acting: 0/10 Stephan Smith Collins is a terrible replacement for Doug Bradley as Pinhead.