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| Chelsea (Katheryn Winnick) feels uneasy while attending a Hellraiser-themed party. |
Release Date: Sept. 6, 2005. Running Time: 95 minutes. Screenplay by: Carl Dupré. Based on the short story, Dark Can't Breathe, by Joel Soisson. Directed by: Rick Bota. Produced by: Ron Schmidt.
THE PLOT:
Hellworld is an online computer game based on the Hellraiser mythology. Adam, one of a group of teens addicted to the game, kills himself, leaving his friends to debate whether they could have done something to save him. Chelsea (Katheryn Winnick) thinks they should have gotten him to stop playing. Jake (Christopher Jacot) blames all of them for Adam's death. And Mike (Henry Cavill) blows off the thought of any responsibility, scoffing that "it's just a game."
Two years later, they are all attending Generic College in Somewhere USA. Jake has no more contact with them. Chelsea is still friends with the others, but she has stopped playing the game. Still, when she learns that Mike, Derrick (Khary Payton), and Allison (Anna Tolputt) have gotten invitations to a "Hellworld Party," it doesn't take much prodding for her to join them - and sure enough, they learn that Jake is there too.
The party is at a remote and rather spooky mansion. The Host (Lance Henriksen) welcomes them to his party. But Chelsea senses something not quite right about him. All too soon, the friends become separated. And then they begin to die, one by one...
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| The Host (Lance Henriksen) offers Jake a very special gift... |
CHARACTERS:
The Host: He is all smiles as he welcomes the group to his party and shows off his collection of Hellraiser memorabilia, but his eyes are cold and his smile creepy even before he becomes openly malevolent. He doesn't actually have much screen time after his big introductory scene, mostly just popping in and out of the movie to whisper creepy words in the victims' ears. Even so, Lance Henriksen is always good, and he seems to be having fun with this, winking just enough at how silly this all is to entertain without crossing the line into sending it up. His sheer screen presence does much to keep Hellworld watchable.
Jake: The broody loner of the bunch, Jake (Christopher Jacot) resents the others for continuing to play the game even when it was clear how badly it was affecting Adam. He stopped playing Hellworld and cut all ties with the group, meaning that he had to be lured to the party. The bait? A first date with his online girlfriend. Because if you bitterly resent a thing, you're going to absolutely want to date someone whose ideal first date is a party dedicated to that thing. In any case, he's a bit smarter than the others. This is not an impressive feat, but there are at least enough neurons firing for him to pick up on clues the others miss.
Chelsea: Future Vikings star Katheryn Winnick, paying her dues as this film's "final girl." Chelsea feels guilt over Adam's death. She stopped playing and is trying to move on with her life, even as her friends insist on dragging her back into it. There's not much else to say about her as a character, though she does think to do something that few horror heroines do: When events turn creepy and she finds herself unable to simply leave, she calls 911.
Derrick: Future Walking Dead co-star/Cyborg voice actor Khary Payton, paying his dues as this horror movie's "designated black guy." So you know what happens to him (though to the film's credit, he's not the first to fall). Derrick suffers from "Hollywood asthma." An attack is both severe enough to require an inhaler, yet mild enough to allow him to traverse a room and a spiral staircase and even retain coordination to use an item as a screwdriver. My wife suffers from asthma. A severe attack would allow her to do exactly none of these things. We're not talking about some rare and obscure condition - Surely somebody on set could have said, "Yeah, none of that's how asthma actually works."
Mike: Future Man of Steel and Witcher star Henry Cavill, paying his dues. Mike is the cocky jerk of the group, and that's pretty much where his characterization begins and ends. So... Yeah, if you've ever seen a horror movie, then you already know he's dogmeat; I was legitimately surprised that he made it into the second half. Credit to Cavill, though, who shows flashes of the screen presence that would carry him to better things.
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| Doug Bradley's final performance as Pinhead. It is not a worthy exit. |
PINHEAD:
This was Doug Bradley's final appearance in the role, and he's once again barely in the movie. Pinhead appears in quick, seconds-long flashes just before the victims meet their deaths. He's in full slasher mode, snarling about how "Adam was right" before murdering his victims. None of which sounds much like Pinhead... though in fairness, there is a narrative reason for that.
Alas, the same reason means that Pinhead gets no good scenes. He was barely in Inferno too, but at least he got that wonderful speech about humanity's refrain of, "I don't understand." Hellseeker was awful (worse than this, frankly), but at least Bradley got to sink his teeth into Pinhead's desire for Kirsty.
Forget any of that here. He might as well just be what Henry Cavill pulls from the Tarot deck early on: a Pinhead-decorated Death Card. It's far from a fitting exit for an actor who took what was little more than a bit part and made him into the face of a horror franchise. I honestly feel more dread at the next two "imitation Pinhead" sequels than I've ever felt at any of the movies.
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| A harmfully addictive MMO in 2002. When Final Fantasy XI already existed and World of Warcraft was around the corner. |
HELLWORLD - THE GAME:
Like too many film and television works that invoke the specter of video game addiction, it gets nothing right about gaming and very little right about the Internet. The tiny glimpse we get of the game Hellworld suggests something from the early 1990s at most.
Yes, this movie sat on the shelf for a while before release. But it was still shot in 2002. That was the same year that online role-playing game Final Fantasy XI was released and only a year before World of Warcraft came out (which was still two years before Hellworld actually released). Those are games that people still play!
Given that these college kids could be playing those, what reason would they have for even glancing at the primitive flash graphics and sound effects we see on Mike's and Derrick's computer screens? No one would get hopelessly addicted to what we see. They might ironically log in to laugh at it.
It does make me wish that a good developer would make an actual Hellraiser game, though. With the mythology surrounding the franchise, there's more than enough to make for a good RPG or survival horror (or better still, mix the elements). Though given the history of licensed games, the lack of one may be just as well...
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| Chelsea and her friends arrive at the party. |
THOUGHTS:
Hellraiser goes meta, with the emphasis on the "meh."
Like director Rick Bota's other Hellraiser flicks, this isn't very good. The low budget shows in the limited sets and locations. It moves in fits and starts, with the bulk of the narrative just a holding pattern until the heavily telegraphed twist ending. Whenever anything halfway interesting happens, it is sure to be followed by several minutes of nothing before anything happens again.
Oh, and a lot of that nothing is punctuated by sleaze. Jake has a sex scene with a pretty nun. Which occurs after a girl in a mask gets down on her knees to give Henry Cavill a happy. It also occurs after an anonymous couple has sex on a public sofa (and occurs shortly before that couple is seen again). Now, it's been a while since I've been young - but I suspect most of today's kids - let alone those of twenty years ago - still prefer to find a room with a locking door!
I will say that Hellworld at least seems to realize that it's a "B" movie and tries to have some fun. The young cast enters the party simultaneously enjoying the atmosphere and making fun of it. When a topless woman walks down the stairs, Derrick makes a meta quip about the "gratuitous tit shot," with Mike correcting him that it's a "necessary tit shot." That's amusing (and also takes care of the "R" rating, so I'm not sure why we needed the subsequent sleazy bits).
Props to the casting director for finding up-and-coming young actors who actually did go on to careers. I won't pretend that their performances are in any way remarkable. Given two-dimensional characters, they deliver the expected two-dimensional performances, though Cavill and Payton should be credited for a couple decent moments. Winnick, who went on to a pretty good career, comes across the weakest of the bunch... but then, she also gets the blandest role.
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| An early tipoff about Pinhead's lackluster role in this film. |
OVERALL:
I don't really have much to say about Hellworld. It's watchable. Outside of the overly obvious twist ending, it's your basic slasher movie, but it has some fun moments and gets a boost from Lance Henriksen and a decent young cast.
But even judging it just a slasher flick, it's still quite middling. The most imaginative kill is the first one, with the rest being tepid stuff (oh, someone got hung on a hook - I've never seen that before). The pace is slack and, once the premise is established, the bulk of the running time is spent waiting for the big reveal.
It's better than Hellseeker and less disappointing than the final half hour of Deader. But I'd still rate this - and really, all three of Rick Bota's entries - as strictly for franchise completists.
And with Doug Bradley exiting the series, I have a nasty suspicion that the worst is yet to come...
Overall Rating: 4/10.
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