MovieChat Forums > Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988) Discussion > Just don't care for this sequel

Just don't care for this sequel

posted 9 years ago by TheSolarSailor
3 replies | jump to latest

I watched this on Netflix again last night, as I haven't seen it since it was in theaters. I thought that maybe I might like it better now than I did then. The first half was pretty good and cohesive for the most part, but the second half really fell apart and just didn't make a whole lot of sense. Why is the script so disjointed and nonsensical? So yes, my major gripe here is the story. They didn't seem to have a good idea of where to go, choosing instead to just pile on things from the first film that people liked, hence the utterly useless sequence with Frank. More skinless people, more hooks and chains, more gore, more boxes. Even had they gotten Andrew Robinson to return, I don't think he could have saved it. I mean, why would Larry even be in hell anyhow, seeing that this is some strange other-dimensional hell and not the Christian one. He was merely a victim who died at the hands of a murderer, not someone who opened the box. By that logic, is every victim who Julia kills in hell too?

With that said, the visuals are really fun and I really do love the design of hell as some sort of incredible labyrinth. Leviathan is a great and really strange design as well, much better than some monster, I think. There is a reason why Leviathan stayed so fresh in my mind over all of these years. Very striking and original.

Pretty much, it was all just as I remembered it, and my feelings towards the film are still the same. I was really hoping to like it better, as I have revisited many things I used to not like but ended up appreciating now. Oh well.

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I am not a fan. I just happen to enjoy movies. Fans are embarrassing.

[–] ElectricWarlock 8 years ago

I really liked it. It felt kind of like an Italian horror film similar to Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci to me. I agree that it seems the story kind of took a backseat to the visuals but I didn't really mind that at all. The whole film in general felt like some sort of surreal dream and I enjoyed it almost as much as the first one.

[–] SoraIsWatching 8 years ago

The movie overall is interesting, but I, sincerly, can't ignore some things related to it, especially a character in particular. Julia seems so rotten to the core in this, pure evil. In the first one, she's quite a nice person (if you exclude the moments when she kills those people). She didn't think of herself as the evil step-mother (as she says in the sequel) and, from what I saw, she was more distant towards Kirsty than being mean to her.

[–] HellboundHero 8 years ago

I think Julia crossed the line near the end of the first one, finally giving in to Frank and helping him kill Larry, and then holding Kirsty while Frank tried to stab her.