**spoiler alert**
The movie opens with five friends (Chelsea, Mike, Allison, Derrick and Jake) attending the funeral of a sixth friend named Adam, who had recently committed suicide. We learn that they were all into a role playing online game called 'Hellword' that is based on the Hellraiser mythology, and that Adam apparently became obsessed, leading to his demise. The five remaining friends hold themselves somewhat accountable for not helping Adam.
Two years later, Mike, Allison, and Derrick have gotten back into Hellword, and get invited to a themed party in the game's honor. Chelsea (Winnick) is reluctant to go, but finally agrees so she can "keep an eye on the others". The party is being held at a gothic looking mansion (really, where else could a Hellraiser party be?), owned by an unnamed person referred to only as The Host (Henriksen). He leads the five (Jake showed up on his own) on a brief tour providing drinks, and revealing the horrible history of the mansion - once a convent where the nuns all mysteriously disappeared, and a criminal psychiatric ward soon after that - complete with its own morgue/operating theater in the basement.
The five soon split up and venture through the house mingling in the party, but soon becoming caught up in a horrific revenge plot being sought by Adam’s father – who we learn is The Host. Not everyone survives.
The reveal is somewhat of a let down, and creates a plot chasm that I am unable to resolve in my mind. We learn that The Host drugged the five and buried them in pine coffins with breathing tubes, on the back of his property. He then “created” terrifying scenes (what the audience witnessed and believed was happening) in their minds through suggestion. He accomplished this by placing cell phones in each of their coffins and we learn Mike, Allison, and Derrick who we thought were killed while being attacked in the mansion, actually died in their coffins while The Host was describing the attacks to them. Chelsea and Jake who had been fighting through their (imagined) assaults in the house are rescued and unburied by the police who show up several days after the party – while The Host, of course, is long gone.
The final sequence shows The Host in a cheap hotel drinking. He has some of Adam’s belongings, one of which is the puzzle box which he decides to open. The Cenobites show up and tear his soul apart.
What worked: I like the theory of Hellraiser using the online/ gaming medium; the idea of people creating their own “hells” wasting away in front of the computer really could have worked, especially with as many people who currently game online.
The ambiance of the mansion, and the action taking place against the backdrop of a rave style party worked pretty well. The scenes, sets, and gore/ splatter were all effective and believable. As I have noted in the past, there is something about old psychiatric wards that I find very creepy, and a perfect fit for horror movies.
Winnick and Henriksen did very good jobs in their character roles; everyone else was “horror movie cliché” as far as what he/she brought to the screen.
What didn’t work so well: The story, like several of its recent predecessors, was based on a non-Hellraiser related plotline (a script that Dimension already had), so that the Hellraiser mythology was just woven into the screenplay; almost haphazardly in the case of Hellworld. The victims, it seems, would find themselves isolated in different rooms of the mansion and eventually killed with a Cenobite standing there. There appeared to be no effort to use the Cenobites in the scenes, other than to have them physically be in the shot. I felt no tense build up that the movie could have used to work these elements in effectively. This also stepped “to the side” of a person building his or her own hell and then summoning the Cenobites via the puzzle box, to oblige.
One could argue that the victims did, in fact, open the puzzle box by playing the online game and created their hells by not helping their friend who committed suicide, but I did not feel the story unfolded that way.
The entire plot direction could not reconcile to the audience whether they wanted us to think that the Hellraiser mythology was all fiction that eventually turned out to be “real”, or whether the mythology was “real” all along and that the online gaming was just incidental to the 6 friends and the revenge plot by The Host.
Final Thought: I believe this could have been a great Hellraiser installment had a better approach been taken to the treatment of the mythology’s and Cenobites’ place in the story – either as fiction and part of a hallucination, or as being “real”. Stumbling along implying “both”, but without giving us a little more development just did not work.
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