Filmmakers ought to have sense enough to quit when they're ahead.
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Clive Barker's "Hellraiser" series reached its sixth installment with "Hellraiser: Hellseeker," a 2002 horror flick that, like its immediate predecessor, went straight to video. This is a little sad, actually. Although the original "Hellraiser" was not quite a genre classic, it did boast some wonderfully macabre graphics--all those chains hanging from the ceiling--a sometimes spooky atmosphere, and a memorable villain in old Pinhead. Now to have the films reduced to the point where their studio, Dimension Films/Buena Vista Distributing, doesn't have the confidence to release them to theaters is depressing. Filmmakers ought to have sense enough to quit when they're ahead.
"There is no greater sorrow
than to recall happiness in times of misery."
--Dante Alighieri, "Divina Commedia: Inferno"
That's the way "Hellseeker" is prefaced, but for the life of me I couldn't figure out how it related to what little story line the movie possessed. Maybe alluding to anything from Dante's "Inferno" is supposed to tie this entry into the series by reminding us that the previous installment was called "Hellraiser: Inferno." In any case, the preface is no more ambiguous or obscure than the film itself, and, besides, quoting from Dante can't hurt and always gives things a touch of class.
Fans of the "Hellraiser" series will be delighted to know that their heroine, Kirsty Cotton, is back after an absence of several issues, and that after making her first appearance fifteen years she's still played by Ashley Laurence. This isn't saying a lot, however, as Kirsty is thought dead for most of the picture and remembered only in flashbacks. But let me start at the beginning.
The movie opens with Kirsty's supposed death by drowning in a car accident. Her husband, Trevor (Dean Winters), was with her but escapes. The thing is, no one can find Kirsty's body. It isn't in the car when it's hauled out of the river, and it isn't found anywhere along the shore. So, what's up? She's listed by the police as a missing person, and the question we have to ask is, Is she really dead?
After the accident the film focuses on Trevor. He's having severe headaches, memory lapses, and gory nightmares. He begins hallucinating a lot, and the bulk of movie is made up of his dreams and fantasies. Plus, Trevor keeps having to beat women off with a stick. Illusion or reality? Like the character, the audience is largely unaware of what is fact and what is fancy in the story, and for a while the gimmick works. But an hour and a half of this basically non-plot is too much and wears thin. Very little actually happens in the first thirty minutes of the film, only a fraction more happens in the middle third, and then a throwback to the old "Hellraisers" finally happens in the final half hour, where Trevor is in a basement tormented by the usual demons. Unfortunately, it's too little too late.
The pacing of the storytelling is almost leaden by comparison to the first entries in the series. Blame this in part on the script, which tries to be as different as possible from the earlier "Hellraiser" entries, and on director Rick Bota, whose previous work in films was confined mainly to cinematography and special effects. It's no wonder, then, that "Hellseeker" looks good, even if one can also see that not a lot of money was spent on it. Bota keeps almost every scene in shadows and most often places his characters in dark, dingy places. Only at the end do we come to understand why a man with a good-paying job would live in a cheap, drab, murky, little apartment or why when his car goes into the river its windows, doors, and seat belts automatically freeze up.
Then there's the matter of Pinhead, the Cenobites, and the famous puzzle box. They are, after all, what the series is about and what audiences have come to expect. Yet they only make a token appearance toward the movie's end. I'm sure we should be grateful they appeared at all, and we should also be thankful this script attempted to put some atmosphere and mood above outright gore. Yet Trevor's dreams are plenty gory: like the opening of his head and an operation on his brain; a pin stuck through his neck; an eel coming out of his mouth; and several bloody deaths. Still, it's all mitigated by the fact that we aren't sure if they're real or not. I'll admit the ending is a clever twist, but the filmmakers have foreshadowed it so far in advance that it, too, loses much of its impact.
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[release]10634[/release]