Hellraiser: Deader (2005) — Triskaidekafiles

HELLRAISER: DEADER

WRITERS: Neal Marshall Stevens and Tim Day

DIRECTOR: Rick Bota

STARRING: Kari Wuhrer as Amy Klein
Paul Rhys as Winter
Simon Kunz as Charles
Marc Warren as Joey
Georgina Rylance as Marla
Doug Bradley as Pinhead

QUICK CUT: A reporter receives a mysterious box and opens it up to see what’s inside.

THE MORGUE

Amy - A determined reporter who goes to great lengths for her stories, isn’t ashamed of getting a little dark, and has some major daddy issues.

Marla - A dead girl who tries to recruit the aid of Amy. She seems nice enough, for someone obsessed with death.

Winter - A man with the ability to bring back the dead, for…some purpose. shrug

Pinhead - Wait, is he actually in this??

TRISK ANALYSIS: Welcome back, Triskelions! The heat is on, so it's time to head back to hell, with the seventh installment in the Hellraiser franchise, Hellraiser: Deader. *sighs* This movie...let's just get on with it. This is what I picked for my 350th review??

The movie opens up in a crackden where Kari Wuhrer wakes up and slides out of there, and we very quickly learn she's a reporter who was getting very method in her story on crackheads.

Amy heads back to the newspaper to meet with the editor. The secretary calls in to let him know Amy is there, and when she walks in, "Ah it must be Amy!" She was literally just announced!!

Her boss has a VHS tape to show her, and asks if she has heard of "Deaders" and she makes the expected joke about owing money, before I get the chance to do so.

We watch as a kinda sorta cult is shown off, meet a girl, who is handed a gun with a lone bullet by their leader, Winter. So, "Deader" is just a fancy way of saying "suicide cult" or "we like to play Russian roulette"?

The editing in this scene is *hilarious*. There are ACTION ZOOMS on people sitting down. Extreme close ups! Sharp pans! Short, almost MTV video style cuts! It is SO MUCH for...people watching a video.

So the girl actually goes through with it, after chanting "I'm not real" and luck is not with her, as she splatters her brains across the far wall.

But that is not the end of her story, as Winter kisses the dead girl, and breaths new life into her. I mean, she has a giant gaping GSW to the temple, but she's alive? I guess? I’m sure no one will notice.

She needed this like another hole in the head.

All of this piques Amy's interest, so she heads to Romania to investigate further, and grabs the next plane.

She finds the apartment of the girl who sent the video, Marla, and there is a horrible stench and flies everywhere. The landlord reluctantly lets her in, for a few minutes, and surprise! She finds Marla dead in the bathroom.

Marla left another package, but Amy has to reach past her rotting corpse to get it, so THAT'S a lot of fun! And wouldn't you know it, the corpse comes back to life for a few seconds for a good ol' scare.

Marla really let herself go during quarantine.

And yes, Marla Morte has the puzzle box in her hands. And on the video, she asks Amy for help, and warns her not to open the box. Which naturally is Amy's cue to play with it immediately.

The box opens, chains her up, and oh good, five seconds of Pinhead, a third into the movie. I am not joking. Dude shows up says "Don't think for a moment you are not in danger" and fucks off out of the movie.

Amy has a vision of a large man who, spoiler, is her dad, and was nasty to her when she was younger, implying deep trauma and zzzz.

Oh hey there, sir Barely Appears in this Film.

She heads to the train station and gets on board...I don't know? A party train? A moving night club for druggies, lowlifes, and the lost? Do things like this actually exist?

Anyways, she finds the man she's looking for who I guess is in charge, Joey, and pokes him for information. And he pretty much confirms the rumours of supernatural goings on.

That is, until she brings out the box, and he tells her where to go, to move this plot along.

Amy gets off the train, and sees Winter standing there on the platform, and he takes a header right into an oncoming train.

Oh my gods. This is the plot from Psychomania, isn't it? ISN'T IT??

The cops arrive, don't find anything, and while questioning Amy, she sees the cult leader alive and well, giving chase. But yelling and carrying on just make the police grab her and drag her off.

Charles flies in and bails her out, and she continues her quest, with some more wandering and walking. This movie sure does have a lot of that.

She finds the building Joey pointed her towards, and after a cheap pigeon jump scare, she finds herself in a cavernous basement, picking one path after another, eventually heading down an ever shrinking tunnel.

Why would you keep squeezing down it? Why not go back to find, I dunno, another normal pathway? I mean YES, there is someone behind her now with a KNIFE but she didn't know that and wasn't forced down this path!

HEY AMY WANNA CHECK OUT MY NEW CHEF'S KNIFE AND HOODIE??

But Stabby Lurksalot at least motivates her through the rest of the crevice, and she finds a shirtless dude on the other side, who leads her deeper still.

She's lead to the same room from the videotape, where Winter is busy inducting a new member to the Suicide Squad.

Winter wanders off, and Amy follows to get some mysterious exposition that is pretty much what you'd expect; I chose you, this is all planned, and when she shows him the box, he calls it a 'family heirloom'. Is...is he a LeMarchand?

She sees more flashes of her father's cruelty, and suddenly she's on the death bed, and then after some yelling, she awakens in her tub.

Amy awakens in the middle of the night after more daddy issues, and then all of a sudden blood is pouring everywhere.

She realises there is a knife through her back, somehow shoved so deep, and so large, that the tip is poking out the other end.

Do not pull it out yourself, get to a hospital!

Eventually she does pull the knife out, gets a phone call from Marla saying "Only he can bring you back", one of the movie's many motifs, along with Pinhead's earlier line.

Speak the devil's name, and Pinhead appears for another 30 seconds. Dude appears once every 25 minutes, no joke.

Pinhead rambles on that the Deaders are using some sort of loophole through his realm, Amy is important, but they can never be allowed to win. Whatever that entails. It's all rather vague and mysterious.

Amy cleans herself up and heads out, but still is leaking like a stuck crackhead, because well, gaping knife wounds.

She makes her way back to Joey's soul train to get some help, and after some chatter, suddenly everyone on the train is a whole lot dead.

Marla shows up to ramble on a bit more about the plot, how Amy's mostly dead, but not quite in the same way as Winter's minions, and he needs her to become one of his, for whatever his plot is with the box because... *shrug!*

There's more daddy issue flashbacks, and suddenly Amy wakes up in a hospital strapped down, but recovering.

She wanders around the hospital for a bit, with more weird happenings, including more conversations with Marla.

I will say this, the movie does almost hit the right notes a Hellraiser movie SHOULD hit, with forbidden knowledge, seeking it out, and going too far. A reporter works well for that, especially one with the darkness in Amy.

This all culminates in more scenes with her father, with some genuinely good cinematography of her own struggles with her knife wound, mirrored with her stabbing her father. It's some good refletions of scenes, which they botch in the end, but overall it works. But sometimes you gotta cut these people out of your life.

Ultimately though, something about the scenes with her father feel hollow. Are they not fleshed out enough? Are they too separate from what's actually going on, since they're literally flashbacks? It illuminates some of Amy's thoughts and trauma, but little else. The movie would be less without them, but they're not much more with them, either.

But we find ourselves right back at the death bed, with Winter holding a knife out to her, so she can kill herself and yadda yadda, ultimate power or whatever. And wait, was the majority of the movie, since last we were on the death bed, ALL A DREAM??

*throws a puzzle box out the window!* NYEHH!

Amy raises the knife to take her life and complete the ritual aaaand...she stabs the table instead. She grabs the puzzle box, and calls forth Pinhead to deus ex boxina this plot to a close.

Winter and Pinhead square off, he mentions Winter's family is that of a toymaker, and I guess that vaguely confirms things. That’s actually pretty cool, I wish we knew more about the connection.

Pinhead chains the guy up, as he is wont to do, and promptly tears his face apart. And he then makes quick work of all the minions by ramming chains straight through the lot of them.

Things we learned from this movie: Don't stand all lined up single file in front of the guy who likes to blast chains straight out across entire rooms.

Pinhead is ready to collect his last victim, but Amy refuses to give him the pleasure, and possibly any power over her, and takes her own life.

For some reason, the box squawking supernovas, destroying the building and everything in it, leaving only the box behind.

Back at the Denouemont News, Charles brings in another reporter, sits her down to show her the same tape, and send her off and...well, that raises questions. Is he in on it, trying to do something, and oh I don't care.

And every collector of demonic antiquities just jizzed their pants recognising the artifact.

TRISK ASSESSMENT

Video: Not bad, as it should be for anything after the turn of the century.

Audio: Same here.

Sound Bite: “An hour ago I stabbed you in the heart, yet you're still walking around. Isn't that a bit unusual?” says an Undead Marla

Body Count: Since they don’t stay dead, this was kinda unsatisfying for most of the movie.

1- Girl on video Russian Roulettes herself about ten and a half minutes in.
2 - Winter jumps in front of a train
3 - But much later, Winter gets torn to pieces.
4-11 - Pinhead wipes out the Deaders in a single instant with some chains.
12 - Amy takes her own life.

Best Corpse: I’m partial to Marla, since we got to spend some time with her rotting self through the movie.

Blood Type - C+: Not bad, and a few great moments, like when Winter gets shredded, but not a whole lot else.

Sex Appeal: Lotsa boobs on the dance train.

Drink Up! whenever Pinhead appears.

Movie Review: This is tough. I actually think there’s something here. The idea is solid enough, but it’s pretty unsatisfying. The acting is fine. Pinhead is frustratingly an afterthought. But it is well made enough, with some hilarious editing at the start. Honestly, remove the Hellraiser tropes to let it stand on its own, and polish the plot, and you’d have a fine indie story here. Pinhead and friends add nothing. The plot makes sense, but the motivations are weak. What are the goals? Bringing people back from the dead creates an army…for what? But for basic competence, two out of five knives to the back.

Entertainment Value: There’s nothing so terrible as to be so bad it’s good territory, and at least the acting is competent, so you’re watching people who are good at their craft. There’s no high camp, not even Pinhead brings enough of it. And there’s nothing really WTF about the movie. It tries, it’s okay, but it’s ultimately just kinda there. Two out of five rides on the party train.