Hellraiser: Judgement is a lacking and muddled entry into this famous staple franchise of the horror genre and ends as nothing more than a popcorn flick.
Hellraiser: Judgement does little to carry the legacy of this famed franchise made by mastermind Clive Barker. The overall plot of the story is decent enough on paper. Three detectives played by Randy Wayne, Alexandria Harris, and Damon Carney are tasked with tracking down a serial killer known only as The Preceptor, who is killing people who are violating the ten commandments. You’re not alone if David Finchers Seven popped into your head when you first heard this as this is what I went to, the difference being that seven is off the seven deadly sins, but the premise is similar enough. Eventually Damon Carney’s character ends up involved with the cenobites, who are led by the infamous Pinhead, while following a lead. Like many horror/serial killer movies there are some serious twists with who the killer is and even some appearances by some more heavenly immortals that counteract the power of the cenobites.
Ultimately this solid base plot is thrown off by some bad acting. The performances of Randy Wayne and Damon Carney are middle of the road at the best. They come off like they are trying to harken back to the golden days of the 1940’s film noir detectives but fail at this. Our female lead, Alexandria Harris, isn’t much better and she is also not helped by the up and down quality of the dialogue, her line “Did that take a lot of detective work to uncover information about a detective,” made me cringe. It just felt as if they weren’t giving effort and even they knew what they were acting out wasn’t meshing with other aspects of the story. Now I thought Pinhead was solid. Like everything else in this movie there’s a negative to this as pinhead doesn’t get much screen time until the very end of the flick.
Going back to the topic of the actors not believing in something meshing together, I believe that is the overall character development. This movie wants to us to think that these people are deeper than they are and the way the movie unfolds they’re just not. Harris’s character has zero development, and quite literally just shows up out of no where and then at about mid-way thru the third act reveals why she was tasked to the case and it is a half-hearted reason at best. The movie also wants you to think there is some type of relationship between the brothers, but it could have done without this little plot point all together. They even go so far to use that as part of their big reveal and why the killer they’re chasing did what he did, but I just didn’t care at all.
As far as the core and heart of the Hellraiser franchiser, gore, this movie also falls short if you compare it to its predecessors. There are some moments that make you squeamish, but nothing like in the original when you see a body come up out of the depths of hell and literally regrow itself. The cenobites little HQ does have some creepy factor to it but in this iteration of the franchise it’s nothing more than an old house with some creepy fat guys in it. Pinheads look though is solid. It’s a sleeker more modern look and he himself walks about with a strong demeanor that matches the visuals, which makes it all the worse that we don’t get to see him as much. Look I know that in the first iteration of the film you don’t get to see him a lot, but in that one he also wasn’t the only thing worth watching.
The film also tries to push some sort of moral narrative about the current generation and their fascination with technology but like its character development it gets lost in translation.
Overall this movie isn’t as awful as I’m making it seem, it just suffers from not catering to the stronger parts of the franchise, namely Pinhead. These horror sequels and reboots are a touchy thing and when in doubt you should go to what works. Keeping the scope of the plot in mind would have helped a lot, and maybe even cutting down on the number of key cast members i.e. get rid of Harris’s detective, also would have been nice for this to not have just been a fusion of Seven and Taking Lives wrapped up in the Hellraiser universe. Basically, this movie doesn’t know what it wants to be or who it wants to be and even when it does do good it doesn’t stick to it. Watch it if it gets picked up by Netflix and it’s late at night and you’ve gone through all the top-notch horror on that platform and don’t want to risk it with an unheard of indie flick…or you could just go do something else…That wouldn’t be a bad choice either.
