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| Journalist Amy Klein (Kari Wuhrer) investigates a mysterious cult. |
Release Date: June 7, 2005. Running Time: 89 minutes. Screenplay by: Neal Marshall Stevens, Tim Day. Directed by: Rick Bota. Produced by: Rob Schmidt, Stan Winston.
THE PLOT:
Fresh from an undercover story that saw her living in a London crack house, reporter Amy Klein (Kari Wuhrer) is given a new and even riskier assignment: a cult calling itself the "Deaders" that operates out of Bucharest, Romania. Amy's editor (Simon Kunz) was sent a tape by Marla (Georgina Rylance), a member of the cult looking for an escape. The tape depicts the cult leader, Winter (Paul Rhys), presiding over the ritual suicide of a Deader - then bringing the young woman back to life.
Amy arrives in Bucharest only to find that Marla is already dead, a puzzle box held by her corpse in a literal death grip. Amy wrests the box away and flees. She is able to track the cult to its lair, where she is greeted by Winter himself. The cult leader warns her: "Don't think for one second that you're not in danger."
Winter is a descendant of Philip LeMarchand, the French Toymaker who first invented the box, and he considers it his birthright. He knows that Amy has it, and he wants it back - and he wants her as a willing member of his cult!
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| Winter LeMarchand (Paul Rhys) and his cult have a particularly dangerous supernatural encounter. |
CHARACTERS:
Amy Klein: Our heroine, a reporter who was exiled from her job at The New York Post because of her lack of respect for authority. We're told that she has a self-destructive streak, though the only real evidence for that is a penchant for sarcasm and constant chain smoking. She also has a dark past, detailed through grainy, black and white flashbacks. It's all pretty generic stuff, though star Kari Wuhrer commits fully and does about as much to bring Amy life as I think any actor could have.
Winter LeMarchand: Most of the Hellraiser trappings add nothing, or even outright detract, from this story. However, I kind of like the decision to make Winter a descendant of The Toymaker. It's entirely reasonable that a few branches would grow in the LeMarchand bloodline over the course of centuries, and that not every descendant would turn out to be a good guy. Paul Rhys is decent, if a bit wooden, though I never feel particularly clear as to what Winter's actual plans for Amy and the box might be.
Charles: As Amy's editor, Simon Kunz injects a certain low-key, energetic sleaziness into his few scenes. He observes that when Amy's self-destructive traits are exactly what makes her useful to him, comparing her relentless search for information to gluttony: "For the average person... we want to know just enough to take the edge off our appetite... That's why I still need you. Because all that stuff I don't eat, I still want. So I send you in to do the eating for me, so I get to experience it without actually suffering any mental indigestion." When Amy compares him to a demon, he just smirks and parrots back trivia about the word "demon" coming from the Greek word for "knowledge."
Joey: Marc Warren, who was in the midst of a run of fairly high-profile roles at this time, inexplicably pops up for a cameo in this direct-to-video "B" horror flick. Cast as a man who appears to live on a train car holding a never-ending sex party, Warren chews the scenery with abandon. He goes a bit too over-the-top for my tastes, but at least he seems to be having fun with his few minutes of screen time as he alternates between leering at Amy and dropping self-consciously portentous dialogue. I fully expected that would be his only scene, but he turns up again near the end.
Marla: Georgina Rylance, another recognizable face from British television, is another actress you wouldn't expect to pop up in a small role in a direct-to-video horror flick. Unlike Warren, she plays her role straight. Marla is the cult member who had doubts, and it's those doubts that Winter blames for her death - basically invoking the old faith healer spiel that your own doubts are the reason the mumbo-jumbo didn't work.
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| Pinhead and the discount Cenobites arrive to try to convince us that this really is a Hellraiser movie, honest! |
PINHEAD:
He will tear your soul apart... by boring you past endurance with dull cameos in direct-to-video cheapies.
Deader sees the least interesting use of Pinhead in the series to date.
To be clear: The problem is not his lack of screen time. He was in even less of Inferno, but his big monologue in that film was fantastic, ranking among the character's best scenes. No, the problem is that, in Deader, he's boring, existing merely to exchange some borderline incoherent exposition with Winter and to haul out some CGI chains to persuade us that this really is a Hellraiser movie, honest!
Doug Bradley, who is usually excellent even when the material isn't, seems to be going through the motions here. I can't blame him. His only significant scene is mostly tedious and very obviously tacked on. In this case, the movie would have been better without him.
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| Amy with her editor, Charles (Simon Kunz). |
THOUGHTS:
Hellraiser: Deader is frustrating. The first two thirds come very close to being a decent "B" horror flick, only for all the story's potential to be bungled in the final Act.
The script is not in any way a slasher. Instead, it's an atmospheric slow burn that's deliberately patterned after the wave of Japanese horror films that were gaining attention at the time - titles like Ringu and Pulse. The focus isn't on gore, but on maintaining a sense of the eerie and the unsettling.
Even in the first hour, there are plenty of faults. Amy's opening story, about going undercover in a crack house, seems about ten years out-of-date in 2005 to actually get much attention. The videotape Charles received is too edited to be taken by one camcorder; Amy and Charles might think the cult is worth investigating, but neither should consider for even a second that it's real.
Also, some of director Rick Bota's directorial flourishes backfire. There's a bizarre transition that sees Amy accepting the Deader story, at which point we cut to her traveling to Bucharest... only to immediately cut back to her talking to Charles... and back to her traveling... and back to her exiting Charles's office... before finally cutting to her arrival at Bucharest and staying there. I'm sure Bota thought he was doing something with that bizarre transition, but I honestly couldn't say what.
Overall, though, Bota's direction is much improved from Hellseeker. The Romanian location filming pays dividends in production value, and there are some sustained shots that generate a reasonable amount of atmosphere, notably when Amy sneaks into the Deaders' lair around the midpoint.
Most of the first hour flows pretty well from one plot point to the next. Amy is a proactive heroine, and her investigation builds up to the point when she finally meets Winter, who shifts between trying to charm and threaten her. Kari Wuhrer invests more in the character than is really on the page, using moments of emotion and shock to puncture the external cynicism that seems to be at least half a front. At the 50 minute mark, I was pleasantly surprised to find myself interested in what would happen next.
Alas, what happens next is the Hellraiser rewrite takes over, and the whole thing goes to... Well, where it goes is kind of in the title, isn't it?
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| Amy gets attacked by unconvincing CGI chains! |
"HELLRAISER"-ed
Like Hellseeker, this started life as a spec horror script. After it was selected to be the basis for the seventh Hellraiser, writer Tim Day was tasked with grafting the Hellraiser elements onto it.
There are a few small bits added to the first half: the Lament Configuration, mainly, with multiple characters mentioning the box and Winter insisting that it belongs to him because of his lineage. This much fits into the script well enough... though a flash appearance by Pinhead after Amy gets attacked in her hotel room by comically unconvincing CGI chains does not.
The most substantial change, however, is the complete replacement of the original script's third Act. Too bad: You can about pinpoint to the second where the jump from the original script to the rewrite happens... and after that, what had been passably interesting quickly becomes awful. Were you enjoying a generally well-structured story? Too bad: We're back to the hallucinations and fake-outs that plagued Hellseeker. Forward momentum ceases, with budget-friendly surreal scenes seeming to exist just to mark time until Pinhead's arrival.
I'd love to know how the original final Act would have played out. Regrettably, all I've been able to turn up is that it was thrown out to make way for a Hellraiser-ish climax. Given how badly both story and atmosphere are jettisoned by the final half hour, I have to think the original ending was better than what we actually got!
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| Amy keeps following the story, even when she becomes frightened of where it's leading... |
OVERALL:
Even with the lousy final half hour, I would still rank this above Hellseeker. Unlike that film, it actually has a story, as well as a lead character who does things to move the story forward. It benefits from the location filming, and it's generally pretty well-acted.
It ends up being the Hellraiser elements that ruin the film in the last half hour. By rewriting the final Act to shove in jump scares and Pinhead, the filmmakers destroy the slow burn that was so effective across the first two thirds. In its place are CGI chains, an increasingly ragged-looking puzzle box prop, and... not much else except the wreckage of a potentially good story.
Which sadly seems to be an apt metaphor for the direction of the entire franchise at this point.
Overall Rating: 4/10. Though the last thirty minutes would barely merit a "2."
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