| Overall Grade: |
B+ |
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| Story: |
B |
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| Acting: |
B |
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| Direction: |
A- |
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| Visuals: |
A |
|
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Disturbingly fun
by mike (movies profile)
Oct 28, 2005
6
of
7 people found this review helpful
I popped in my new Hellraiser DVD at midnight or so last night after a long day of moving into a new house. I fully expected to fall asleep watching it and have to finish the next evening. That's not what happened at all.
Hellraiser is the story more or less of "pleasure seeker" Frank Cotton. One day while on one of his journeys in Thailand he hears of a puzzle box that if solved brings the ultimate pleasure. When he gets the box and solves it he gets a rude awakening. The reward is the cenobites, scarred, torturous demons whos idea of pleasure is the ultimate pain. Frank and his soul is ripped to shreads by their hooks that come out of seemingly nowhere.
A few years later Franks older brother Larry and his wife Julia move into their parents old house that hasn't been used in years. They find remnants of Larry but assume he has long since abandoned the place. When Frank cuts himself while moving a bed, and drips blood on the same floor where Larry was done in by the cenobites, Frank is somehow able to escape them and return to human form.
We slowly find out that Julia slept with him on her and Larry's wedding day. She then enters the room and finds Frank re-incarnated but he is nothing more then bones covered in muscle. He tells her it was the blood that brought him back and he needs more to be fully regenerated to human form. Julia begins luring men back to the house and killing them for Frank who starts looking more and more like a normal person. He continues to tell Julia that once he's fully restored they can be together.
Meanwhile Larry's daughter Kirsty walks into Franks room one day, and discovers uncle Frank. He tries to silence her, but she gets ahold of his box and escapes with it. Needless to say she solves the box and unleashes the cenobites. They are about to take her out when she strikes a deal to show them where Frank is. For this she may get to keep her life.
I'm not going to give away any of the ending. I was both unsatisfied, and then satisfied with the way this movie ended. I'll leave it at that.
The strong point in Hellraiser was that the story wasn't driven by the villains or cenobites. It was driven by people, Frank in particular. You can probably even make a case that he is the villain, and that the cenobites were his punishment for being a bit to curious.
The effects in Hellraiser were also superb for such a low budget movie. It's one thing for a movie to be gory, but it's completely another when it's so chilling and effective how the gore is used. There is alot of violence in Hellraiser that you'll never see in any other movie. The cenobites also looked awesome. It takes a twisted mind to come up with monsters that look like that. Kudos to Clive Barker for making his book come alive. My personal favorite was the monster with the skin folded back on his face that was forced to constantly grind his teeth. Simply chilling.
The one weak part of Hellraiser that kept it at B+ and out of A territory was the plot holes. I don't mean real holes in the plot, I simply mean a few times when things aren't explained enough for us to understand why they are happening. In a movie so weird we need to constantly be reminded why something is happening so we can ourselves be made to believe it. The one thing that really irked me that I wanted to know was....How did Larry's blood hitting the floor help Frank escape the cenobites, and more importantly bring him back to human form. The man was dead for christ sake. Few plot holes aside Hellraiser is an original and classic horror entry that you will not soon forget. |
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