Hellraiser: Revelations (2011)

Oh, how the fanboys raged - and even Clive Barker - who sold his "art" to many inferior movies - got into the discussion and publically denounced Hellraiser: Revelations on Twitter. What very few of them obviously couldn't grasp with their mini-minds is what we have here is a real, quite ambitious sequel that's not only the first script written specifically for a Hellraiser-film since part 4, it also quite cleverly builds a story much in the vein of the first movie and through this goes back to the roots of what the fans should like. I think the problem is that it looks cheap, and fan boys often confuses cheap with bad. There's a special story behind the making of this part (and it has happen a couple of times before): New Line realized that they had to make a movie within a certain time to be able to keep the rights to the Hellraiser-franchise. So they tossed talented director Victor Garcia and writer/special effects master Gary J. Tunnicliffe maybe 100-200 thousand dollars and a production schedule of three weeks... so this was a rushed production. So that's why it's surprising it turned out SO good.

Steven and Nico is two teenagers going on one last trip to Mexico to have fun and fuck around with cheap whores. Well there it's kinda boring, but a dirty old bum gives them a puzzle box and says it will give them all the pleasure in the world. Steven thinks this is a great idea and tries it... and then both of them disappears. Some time after this, Nico stumbles back into his parents home and slowly the story of what really happened unveils....

This is micro-budget film making how it should be done. The script could probably have one or two rewrites before shooting could being and the directing might not be as thought-through, but what to expect with such a short notice? They had eleven days shooting the film with very little means. What I really like about the script is the claustrophobic, chamber play feeling. This is an interesting deconstruction of the American bourgeois family - always pretending to be perfect, but with the bloody help of the cenobites there's more revealed about themselves than they could imagine. There's some very fine references to the first Hellraiser-film, and they are a lot more fresher than what a lot of the other sequels had. The script also has some twists that feels very interesting and works fine. This is the second time I've seen then movie and I still wasn't prepared for some of them.

If you, like me, have no problem with low budget movies, you wouldn't have any problem accepting the style of this film.  The effects, designed by Tunnicliffe, looks splendid. It's a gory and violent movie but of course, because of the budget and time, some steps of the kills and effects is off screen, but don't worry. It has quite a lot of gory goo anyway. The make-up is fine also, but here we also come to one of the few problems with the film: Stephan Smith Collins. Yeah, he plays Pinhead. And no, there's actually nothing wrong with him and his acting, it's just his look - he's so far from the bleak, almost androgynic look of Doug Bradley (who said no to star in the movie because the pay was to bad and he thought the script needed another rewrite) in make-up, and here he just looks like a slacker, a couch slob, who just happens to have walked by the make-up room and cast as Pinhead because there wasn't any other choices. Nothing personal, Mr Smith Collins.

Hellraiser: Revelations is a nifty and emotional strong sequel that could have needed some more time fixing the slightly corny dialogue and a bit longer shooting schedule to be perfect, now it's just a good little DTV movie with more ambitions than money. Oh, and the Mexico sets looks very bad, they could have used some more work to! ;)  

Give it a try, see it with your own eyes and just don't believe all the negativity around this film. It's worth more than just another generic, unimaginative fanboy-bashing.