Wednesday, August 29, 2012

HELLRAISER: INFERNO (2000)

Detective Joseph Thorne is your average cop: crooked, abusive, dishonest...intelligent. Okay well maybe he's not average after all. One day while snorting coke, he's called to a murder investigation. After pocketing the money from the dead guy's wallet, Thorne also takes The Lament Configuration box that's found near the mutilated corpse. He then goes home long enough to insult his wife and traumatize his daughter before going to a seedy hotel and getting baked with a hooker.  Later on he starts messing around with the cube. Unlike the earlier movies, hooks and chains don't shoot out of the box followed by an entrance of Pinhead and Friends. Instead it starts a series of almost David Lynch-style nightmarish events. The hooker he was banging ends up dead and in order to save his own hide Thorne blackmails his partner by making it look like he killed the hooker! At the same time Thorne starts digging deeper into where the cube came from. The entire time he's haunted by visions of demons and everybody around him getting murdered.

Despite the fact that Pinhead is only in the movie for like 3 minutes(!!!) total HELLRAISER: INFERNO is an alright film. It's not really a straightforward horror film but more of a tripped out MULLHOLLAND DR.-style nightmare (and yes I realize MD wasn't even out when this film was made). If you're looking for a Pinhead-fest then you're going to be disappointed, but if you go into it with an open mind you might actually enjoy it. H:I would've definitely been improved with a larger budget, but for what it is it's an entertaining watch. Will I ever watch it again? Probably not, but I don't feel that my time was wasted either. Check it out...or not.

Part 1 - Hellraiser (1987)
Part 2 - Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988)
Part 3 - Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth (1992)
Part 4 - Hellraiser: Bloodline (1996)
Part 6 - Hellraiser: Hellseeker (2002)
Part 7 - Hellraiser: Deader (2005)
Part 8 - Hellraiser: Hellworld (2005)
Part 9 - Hellraiser: Revelations (2011)
Part 10 - Hellraiser: Judgement (2018)
Remake - Hellraiser (2022)

I've had weekends like this.