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If this movie wasn't supposed to be a Hellraiser film (spoilers)


I'd probably like it a lot more. If you look at it as a revenge film with the hallucinations taking the place of the Cenobites it wouldn't be half bad. Turn the Cenobites into ghosts that inhabited that house when it was a mental institution or whatever.

The movie itself is a lot better than some crap I've seen (insert any Asylum picture here) Lance Henriksen's son could come back as a vengeful ghost and off him at the end, and then you still get the ending with Lance in the back seat.

The thing that really makes it suck is that it has zero to do with Cenobites, they're crammed in there as an afterthought, almost. Apart from the giant Lament Configuration in the foyer there's not much there. Though to be fair I guess you could say this about any of the sequels after Hell on Earth.

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"It's better not to know so much about what things mean." David Lynch

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Your thoughts about this film are much the same as mine.
The use of the Hellraiser mythos actually took me out of the film by reminding me that this was just a typical slasher film with its cliché cast of characters and revenge motivation but it has been decorated with lament puzzle boxes.

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Of all the "not originally a Hellraiser film" films, this one I thought must SURELY have been written to be a Hellraiser film. After all, it is all about Hellraiser fans! How could it NOT have been a Hellraiser film? What was it originally about; Princess Diary fans?

If fact, after seven previous films, it was HIGH TIME that they make a film about Hellraiser fans loving on Hellraiser films. And I thought this was just right.

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For a film which is ostensibly all about Hellraiser and its fans, they sort of completely glossed over the whole 'demons to some, angels to others'/beings who have crossed the line between absolute pleasure and torturous pain/why the box finds itself in the hands of certain types of people/ in favor of...a big party filled with stupid teens where Supes gets jacked up. It's a fairly basic slasher with revenge as the motivation.

They ditched all of what makes Hellraiser so great as a horror film to give you a standard revenge film which could have had any group of vengeful ghosts filling in for the Cenobites. Hell, it might as well have been about Princess Diary fans getting knocked off at a big party. Just take out the tacky spinning Lament Configuration on the ground floor and replace it with something Princess Diary fans like. I wouldn't have minded watching that movie.

In fact, I think you're on to something there. Quick, write the script!

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"It's better not to know so much about what things mean." David Lynch

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Yeah that aspect of this movie really annoyed me. They turned Pinhead and the Cenobites into generic slasher villains with none of the original elements that made them cool and unique.

I really liked the start f this film and the direction it was going, but then it just kind of lost steam.

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