I absolutely loved DEADER, and I feel that it's one of the strongest additions to the series since HELLBOUND. So, I held back from watching HELLWORLD so that I could have something to look forward to watching in the future (as I hadn't read ANY of the comments in this thread...) Finally, I decided to gave in and decided to watch it last night.
I am utterly shocked at the chasm in quality between DEADER and HELLWORLD. Stylistically, HELLWORLD has all the makings of a PG-13 theater horror flick. There were only two things that stopped it from being PG-13; one was the presence of a few vividly sexual scenes and the second was insufficient death to be a teenage slasher.
I'm all for trying new things with the franchise. Certainly, almost every installment since HELLBOUND has taken the franchise in a new direction (well... except maybe HELLSEEKER.) Regardless, DEADER showed us that a decent, intelligent (though at times incomprehensible) Hellraiser story can even be woven from a non-Hellraiser work. I'm assuming that the HELLWORLD script was written specifically for the franchise, and I have to tell you, this was far from a good story.
1) CHARACTERS - The first half of the film is driftingly slow. It revolves around the characters spending troves of time on each, yet managing to develop NONE of them. The token minority/asthmatic served little purpose beyond poorly timed comic relief, the horny bastard was NOTHING more than a horny bastard, the brooding teenager was nothing more than a brooding teenager, Chelsea tried oh so hard, and the British girl was a throwaway. How can you spend 45 minutes barely moving the plot forward, and STILL not expand the characters beyond two dimensions?! (And by the way, I think someone should recut the film and edit out the asthmatic comic the way STAR WARS fans edited that annoying fellow out of Episode 1. At least the film would be SOMEwhat darker.)
2) MUSIC - Nothing said "PG-13 teenage slasher wannabe" like lots and lots of party rock. It absolutely killed almost any sense of mystery and darkness that this film COULD have approximated.
3) CENOBITES - I love Chatterer, Bound and Pinhead, but come on. Where was the aura of majesty and intrigue and control that make the Cenobites so alluring? They were reduced to little more than slashers. Honestly, Henriksen could have done the killing scenes himself and it would have probably been BETTER. I'm all for keeping Cenobitic appearances limited, but then when you DO use them, for God's sakes, use them WELL.
4) "HOW'S THAT FOR A WAKEUP CALL?" - Besides the fact that the ending made less sense than the ending of BLOODLINE, and that it was probably more far-fetched than the ending of HELLSEEKER, throwing in this oneliner was the single worst thing they could have done other than have the Cenobites burst forth into glorious song... Pinhead has NEVER sunk to pun oneliners (unless I've forgotten.) Even in HELL ON EARTH, the puns were limited to the makeshift Cenobites, and Pinhead retained his majesty with some fantastic speeches. Someone needs to tell the screenwriter that he was writing for a HELLRAISER film, not A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET.
5) SHODDY EDITING - Take your DVDs to timecode 1:01:41 and watch closely with the volume up until 1:02:20. Ignore the fact that Pinhead jams a wooden stake (?!) through the cop's throat. Watch the actors' mouths and listen to the dialog and just picture the actress and a voice-over actor in a recording studio with headphones, microphones and a sound mixer. This was the most POORLY CONCEALED looping I've seen since HELL ON EARTH's "S***!!! GASOLINE!" And at least that was only one line, not an entire exchange. I'm all for ADR, but TRY to do it a bit better...
6) ENDING (SPOILER WARNING) - This was a lot like A.I. (the Spielberg film), in that it could have ended several times, but was dragged unmercifully on and on. It could have ended with Chelsea screaming in the coffin. That would have been best under the circumstances. Or it could have ended at her rescue. Or it could have ended with Lance looking at his son's photo. But no, they threw in a puzzle solution with no apparent reason. (See #4.) And then they dragged it out EVEN FURTHER with a vanride and scenes from the police arrival at the hotel room.
7) The minor stuff - Then there's the stuff that's just plain petty, things that annoyed me in this film, but probably wouldn't have in a stronger film: 1) Lance, lose the earring. You're cooler without it. 2) In the scene in the attic (1:13:00) In ONE minute of edited footage, they cut to the flapping pigeons SEVEN BLEEDING TIMES! ENOUGH!!!! 3) Did anybody notice in the beginning that van had a European license plate while driving and then pulled up with an imitation New York one? That was just blatant. *sigh* ...
Grr...
"How's that for a wakeup call?!" THAT was how we followed DEADER?! If there's EVER, EVER another HELLRAISER film on the table, please, PLEASE give it to Tim Day to correct FIRST.
"How's that for a wakeup call?" *sigh* On the other hand, it was begrudgingly better than VAN HELSING.
I am utterly shocked at the chasm in quality between DEADER and HELLWORLD. Stylistically, HELLWORLD has all the makings of a PG-13 theater horror flick. There were only two things that stopped it from being PG-13; one was the presence of a few vividly sexual scenes and the second was insufficient death to be a teenage slasher.
I'm all for trying new things with the franchise. Certainly, almost every installment since HELLBOUND has taken the franchise in a new direction (well... except maybe HELLSEEKER.) Regardless, DEADER showed us that a decent, intelligent (though at times incomprehensible) Hellraiser story can even be woven from a non-Hellraiser work. I'm assuming that the HELLWORLD script was written specifically for the franchise, and I have to tell you, this was far from a good story.
1) CHARACTERS - The first half of the film is driftingly slow. It revolves around the characters spending troves of time on each, yet managing to develop NONE of them. The token minority/asthmatic served little purpose beyond poorly timed comic relief, the horny bastard was NOTHING more than a horny bastard, the brooding teenager was nothing more than a brooding teenager, Chelsea tried oh so hard, and the British girl was a throwaway. How can you spend 45 minutes barely moving the plot forward, and STILL not expand the characters beyond two dimensions?! (And by the way, I think someone should recut the film and edit out the asthmatic comic the way STAR WARS fans edited that annoying fellow out of Episode 1. At least the film would be SOMEwhat darker.)
2) MUSIC - Nothing said "PG-13 teenage slasher wannabe" like lots and lots of party rock. It absolutely killed almost any sense of mystery and darkness that this film COULD have approximated.
3) CENOBITES - I love Chatterer, Bound and Pinhead, but come on. Where was the aura of majesty and intrigue and control that make the Cenobites so alluring? They were reduced to little more than slashers. Honestly, Henriksen could have done the killing scenes himself and it would have probably been BETTER. I'm all for keeping Cenobitic appearances limited, but then when you DO use them, for God's sakes, use them WELL.
4) "HOW'S THAT FOR A WAKEUP CALL?" - Besides the fact that the ending made less sense than the ending of BLOODLINE, and that it was probably more far-fetched than the ending of HELLSEEKER, throwing in this oneliner was the single worst thing they could have done other than have the Cenobites burst forth into glorious song... Pinhead has NEVER sunk to pun oneliners (unless I've forgotten.) Even in HELL ON EARTH, the puns were limited to the makeshift Cenobites, and Pinhead retained his majesty with some fantastic speeches. Someone needs to tell the screenwriter that he was writing for a HELLRAISER film, not A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET.
5) SHODDY EDITING - Take your DVDs to timecode 1:01:41 and watch closely with the volume up until 1:02:20. Ignore the fact that Pinhead jams a wooden stake (?!) through the cop's throat. Watch the actors' mouths and listen to the dialog and just picture the actress and a voice-over actor in a recording studio with headphones, microphones and a sound mixer. This was the most POORLY CONCEALED looping I've seen since HELL ON EARTH's "S***!!! GASOLINE!" And at least that was only one line, not an entire exchange. I'm all for ADR, but TRY to do it a bit better...
6) ENDING (SPOILER WARNING) - This was a lot like A.I. (the Spielberg film), in that it could have ended several times, but was dragged unmercifully on and on. It could have ended with Chelsea screaming in the coffin. That would have been best under the circumstances. Or it could have ended at her rescue. Or it could have ended with Lance looking at his son's photo. But no, they threw in a puzzle solution with no apparent reason. (See #4.) And then they dragged it out EVEN FURTHER with a vanride and scenes from the police arrival at the hotel room.
7) The minor stuff - Then there's the stuff that's just plain petty, things that annoyed me in this film, but probably wouldn't have in a stronger film: 1) Lance, lose the earring. You're cooler without it. 2) In the scene in the attic (1:13:00) In ONE minute of edited footage, they cut to the flapping pigeons SEVEN BLEEDING TIMES! ENOUGH!!!! 3) Did anybody notice in the beginning that van had a European license plate while driving and then pulled up with an imitation New York one? That was just blatant. *sigh* ...
Grr...
"How's that for a wakeup call?!" THAT was how we followed DEADER?! If there's EVER, EVER another HELLRAISER film on the table, please, PLEASE give it to Tim Day to correct FIRST.
"How's that for a wakeup call?" *sigh* On the other hand, it was begrudgingly better than VAN HELSING.