People in the Movie: Dean Winters (TV’s
Law & Order: SVU; Mayhem on the Allstate commercials), Ashley Laurence,
Doug Bradley
Director: Rick Bota
Pigeonhole: Psychological
Thriller / Horror
The Basics: This is the sixth
Hellraiser movie, and was direct to video/DVD.
The
film opens with Kirsty (Laurence), one of the main characters from the first 2
Hellraiser films, riding in a car with her husband Trevor (Winters). There is an accident, and the car goes off a
bridge into a river. Trevor is pulled
out and sent to the hospital, but Kirsty’s body is not found. Even worse, Trevor’s memory seems to be full
of holes, and his reality appears somewhat fractured, as well. As the plot unfolds, and his memory returns,
all is not what it seems.
Recommendation: I enjoyed seeing
Laurence return – even in a limited role – and that the story plays out more
like a psychological thriller than a horror movie. I enjoyed the film, as I believe it stayed
true to the Hellraiser theme. ‘R’ rating
is for violence, language, gore, and sexuality.
This film works just fine as a standalone (meaning you had never seen
any of the previous films), although you feel more attached to Kirsty’s plight
if you have seen the first one.
My Take: **spoiler
alert**
Very
much like Hellraiser: Inferno, this film plays out like a murder mystery story
with the Hellraiser elements woven into background and the periphery. I personally feel like this was the correct
way to continue using the Hellraiser themes without butchering the Hellraiser
mythology as happened in several of the preceding sequels. I was slightly disappointed Pinhead (Bradley)
was, again, more of a cameo because I feel that using these murder plots would
allow us to see Pinhead very much like a “judge” witnessing and waiting to hand
down a sentence to the “guilty”. But,
that is another story for another day.
Trevor
is portrayed to us, initially, as a sympathetic character who seems to be a
victim of circumstance and just trying to put his life back together after the
car crash. Even worse, his reality,
memory, and dream states all seem to be criss-crossing each other. Work colleagues and other acquaintances
speak to him about things that happened in the recent past that he seemingly has
no recollection of, much to his frustration.
Two police detectives continue to question him about Kirsty and the
state of their marriage, as well as the events prior to the crash. The tension builds while fragments slowly
fall back into place and suddenly the proverbial picture becomes clearer.
Piecing
the flashbacks, dreams, and memories together the audience learns that Trevor
is, in fact, a dirtbag. He was having
affairs with his aggressive female boss, his neighbor, and his acupuncturist. After learning that Kirsty was the
beneficiary of her uncle Frank’s (remember him?) large estate, Trevor decides
he is tired of his marriage and having to work for a living, so he conspires with
his co-worker to have her killed by presenting her with the infamous puzzle box
so that he can inherit the money. What
Trevor does not know is that Kirsty has a history with what the puzzle box and
what it does, so the tables are turned on Trevor.
In
the climax/reveal we that Kirsty opens on the puzzle box only to make a deal
with the Cenobites to trade 5 other people’s lives for hers – those 5 being
Trevor, his sexual partners and his murder plot conspirator. Trevor ends up in the hell he has created,
and sees his own body on the slab after the accident. While I would say that the conclusion had
shades of the wrap-up of Inferno, there was something satisfying with Trevor’s
demise in Hellseeker, and that the door was left open for Kirsty to come back
in a future installment. As I previously
noted, I felt that it stayed to true to what my interpretation of Barker’s
Hellraiser mythos is all about.
Final Thought/ Extras/For Fun: Kirsty has not returned to any other Hellraiser films
as of this writing…
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