Hellraiser: Hellworld (2005)

Movie Info

I’m back for one last Hellraiser…lets try not to make it suck!

Hellworld is one of the most popular online games around.  Its followers are rampant for the MMOG that brings the dark world of Hellraiser to life.  When a group of Hellworld junkies lose one of their ranks to the game, Allison (Anna Tolputt), Derrick (Khary Payton), Mike (Henry Cavill), Chelsea (Katheryn Winnick), and Jake (Christopher Jacot) wonder if they are to blame Adam’s death.  The group wins invitations to a Hellworld party in a secluded mansion, and they learn that Hellworld might be real.  Now at the mercy of the party’s creator simply known as the Host (Lance Henriksen), the group discovers that Pinhead (Doug Bradley) and his Cenobites might actually exist.

Directed by Rick Bota, Hellraiser:  Hellworld (or Hellraiser 8:  Hellworld) follows Hellraiser:  Deader (2005).  Bota along with Hellworld also is responsible for directing Hellseeker and Deader.  Hellworld, like many of the Hellraiser sequels, actually wasn’t originally a Hellraiser script.  It was based on a story owned by the filmmakers and converted into a Hellraiser script.

I like Hellraiser in the sense that it is different than a lot of the other movies of the ’80s.  While many horror films turned to the slasher motif after Halloween, Hellraiser dug in and went grindhouse.  The concepts and ideas of Hellraiser are interesting…unfortunately, most of the movies are not.

We’re as bored as we look

Hellraiser:  Hellworld is possibly the worst sequel.  It feels like it is trying to be a ’90s horror movie and it came out in 2005.  It is filled with a young “hip” cast (of relatively unknowns) at a party…that could have been every horror movie released after Scream.  The party is lame and most of the characters are too cliché to begin with.  There is the goody-two-shoes Jake and Chelsea who actually feel guilt about their friend’s death, the womanizing Mike who tries to get every girl he sees, and the asthma ridden African-American guy Derrick, and goth-girl Allison feel like cut-outs of stock characters.  Even Lance Henriksen keeps his streak alive of pretty much playing the same character he’s played all his life.  It is a welcome relief when Pinhead shows  up for a few minutes to break up the party.

No fair…why do you get to die and get out of this crappy film before me?

The basic concept of the movie is another big problem…an internet game?  I know they went for the MMOG but I thought movies about deadly internet programs went out a long time ago.  It is just bad from the get-go…The movie (like Hellseeker) tries for a trick ending…It was all in their head…or was it!  It was such a lame direction to go for a series already struggling with legitimacy issues.  The Hellraisers straight-to-DVD status doesn’t help, but this movie is almost a nail in the coffin.

If nothing else the first movie was visually compelling.  By Hellraiser:  Hellworld, the shock and visuals of the movie were no longer shocking or visual…you can see the same type of stuff done better in films like Saw.

By the end of the movie I didn’t care if Hellworld was real or not, I just wanted it to end.  If it was supposed to be a real world Hellraiser, does that mean that Clive Barker still wrote the book in the universe?  That was never looked at…I guess they didn’t want it to become a Wes Craven’s New Nightmare.  It would have at least been entertaining, it isn’t like the story was original anyway….  Hellraiser:  Hellworld was followed by Hellraiser:  Revelations in 2011 but Doug Bradley did not return as Pinhead for this film.

Related Links:

Hellraiser (1987)

Hellbound:  Hellraiser II (1988)

Hellraiser III:  Hell on Earth (1992)

Hellraiser:  Bloodline (1996)

Hellraiser:  Inferno (2000)

Hellraiser:  Hellseeker (2002)

Hellraiser:  Deader (2005)

Hellraiser:  Revelations (2011)

Hellraiser:  Judgment (2018)