After the cinematic disaster that was Hellraiser: Bloodline, the Hellraiser franchise was supposed to have been retired. But that is not dead which can eternal lie or at least be resurrected by studio executives with a spare intellectual property lying around and some spare screenplays to add to it in an attempt to make a few more dollars off an established franchise name, and so here we are with Hellraiser: Inferno.
Detective Joseph Thorne likes to solve puzzles. Other things he likes include cocaine, stealing drugs from crime scenes, being an ass to everyone around him and cheating on his wife with prostitutes. He starts working on a case where the victim - who Thorne also bullied in high school - appears to have made the mistake of opening a Lament Configuration, and soon afterwards, of course, he finds the infamous puzzle box and solves it himself. It doesn't take long after that before he's up to his neck in strange visions, murdered prostitutes and a severed child's fingers, all of which lead back to a mysterious individual known only as the Engineer. The more Joseph investigates, the higher the body count rises and the stranger things become - not to mention the worse things become for Joseph. Can he find the Engineer and save the child apparently being held hostage and tortured before it's too late, possibly saving himself in the process?
Holy crap, Craig Sheffer looks like David Boreanaz in this film. Seriously, if you were watching Hellraiser: Inferno - or even just the trailer - and were only half-paying attention, you could probably be forgiven for thinking this was a pretty dark and copyright-infringing episode of Angel. Sheffer was also in another of Clive Barker's films; the brilliant and sublime Nightbreed, and it's interesting to see him in another, albeit pretty different role.
Joseph Thorne is more than a little Bad Lieutenant but thankfully with no naked Harvey Keitel dancing. We're not even five minutes into the film before we discover that our apparent protagonist is quite an asshole, and things continue to go downhill from there. Interestingly, he's still something of a relatable character - partly I think because he at least admits to (some of) his flaws; and partly because he does start to try to redeem himself as the film slithers towards its climax.
As well as the comparisons to Bad Lieutenant, Hellraiser: Inferno also has some similarities to some other movies and media as well. I'm reminded of Twin Peaks and Silent Hill (the games and not the movies); the latter especially when the Cenobite twins (more on them later) appear. There's also another movie that has some strong similarities plotwise with this one, but I'm not going to name it because knowing it would spoil the end of the film. Because - and this is probably going to come as a shock after Hellraiser: Bloodline - I think Hellraiser: Inferno is actually a pretty good film.
Hellraiser: Inferno (and at least a couple of films after it) were not originally Hellraiser films; originally they were standalone stories that got combined with the Hellraiser mythos because it was felt that the stories weren't strong enough to stand on their own. I'm not sure that I actually agree with that - I think that the film could have done pretty well on its own as a psychological horror/supernatural crime thriller-type of movie. Hell, the Cenobites and the Lament Configuration are barely in the film at all - Pinhead doesn't even turn up till the end for some contractually-obligated exposition and so for most of the rest of the movie the only Cenobites we get are the aforementioned twins and a Cenobite that's just a torso, head and arms.
With regards to these Cenobites... They're in the movie a lot less, as I already said, but they're also a damn sight better than the new Cenobites we've seen in the previous two movies. The new twin Cenobites, for example, are very much BDSM dominatrix-types, and they would be considered pretty sexy by most standards... except for their faces, which look like someone took a hand sander to a Grey's face and then gave the result a ponytail facelift. The torso Cenobite has similar facial features, but much less of a sexy wardrobe. The Cenobites also play a much less direct role than in previous films - here they're more subtle and representative of Thorne's vices and numerous flaws.
Overall, Hellraiser: Inferno is considerably better than Bloodline, but that's not exactly difficult considering the hatchet job that was done to Bloodline. However, Inferno is also barely a Hellraiser film; just a film that happened to have Pinhead stapled (hah!) onto the end of it.
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