Review: Hellraiser: Revelations (2011)

"This movie should be called "Hellraiser: Go Fuck Yourself, Horror Fans" because the only Revelation it offers, is that Dimension doesn't care about this franchise, or its fans..."

This movie really should be called Hellraiser: Go Fuck Yourself, Horror Fans; because aside from someone breaking into your house and killing your family while you watch, or maybe catching your grandparents raping a horse in full fetish gear, watching this movie has got to be one of the most painful experiences that a human can endure.

If Clive Barker watched this movie, he'd have no choice but to kill himself, just so he could roll over in his own grave. In fact, he had this to say about the trailer, via his Twitter account: “Hello, my friends. I want to put on record that the flic [sic] out there using the word Hellraiser is no fuckin’ child of mine. I have nothing to do with the fuckin’ thing. If they claim its from the mind of Clive Barker, it’s a lie. It’s not even from my butt-hole.”  

Clive Barker insulted his own B-Hole thanks to this movie, and gay men love their B-Holes. It's their love-maker.

Maybe the glowing box pushed him over the edge...

The first Hellraiser is a an Unholy Grail of Horror Cinema excellence. Part 2, we loved near as much. We liked Part 3, though it was weak, and for some unexplainable reason, we enjoyed the hell out of Part 4. Parts 5-8 were like schmaltzy Lifetime movies in which Pinhead showed up for 45 seconds or so, and mean-mugged. As movies, not bad. As Hellraiser movies, not good at all. They just aren't anything worth discussing in great detail. This one though...

Revelations proves that the Hellraiser franchise is in the hands of people that just don't give a shit. Not only does the 300k budget (seriously) show visually, but the script is abysmal, the acting nearly as bad, and Pinhead was laughable. No offense to the guy who dared play him, but that was not Pinhead; not in look or manner. He looked like a chubby geek with no chin. Fucking Bert from Sesame Street made a more menacing Pinhead.

LOL (and that's not directed at Bert.)

Above all else, the dialogue was awful. For us, a large part of what made the earlier Hellraiser movies so amazing was the sharp dialogue that came from Pinhead and his Ceno-crew. Of course Doug Bradley and his delivery helped bring the words to life perfectly, but good lord how does such an iconic character go from "There's a secret song at the center of the universe, and its sound is like razors through flesh" to "When you get to hell, your epiphany of suffering will be real bad, because we delight in your epiphany of suffering!" I had to paraphrase because I can't recall the exact wording, but it was awful, and I am not overstating it at all. A good Pinhead with his sharp dialogue in tow, could have made this one decent at the very least, but instead, he induced cringes every time he was on screen, whether speaking or not.

Oh look, there's another Pinhead, and he looks like Darth Maul.

I will say that some of the gore was kinda fun, and there were interesting concepts at work here and there, but none of that could distract from the flaws that made up the other 98% of the movie. The rest of it was just bad, bad, bad.

She was good, good, good.

The fact that Hellraiser: Revelations was churned out cheap and fast for Dimension to avoid losing the rights to the franchise is no excuse for shitting on the Hellraiser banner in this way. Do yourself a huge favor and skip this movie, and go watch anything else. Hopefully Dimension eats every last red cent of their production and marketing costs on this one.

What is this, half-assed Hellraiser Cosplay?

For the record, we liked Tracey Fairaway too. She was nice to look at.