Hellraiser: Hellworld (2005)
- Andrew Smith
- May 28
- 6 min read
"Evil goes online."
Plot
A group of friends, who log onto the Hellworld.com website, open a computerised version of the Lament Configuration box and are invited to a secret Hellworld party with other users. Here, they are greeted by a creepy host who tells them that they can drink and indulge in pleasures of the flesh all they like. Their troubles have only just begun though when their host intends to show them the truth behind the Cenobite mythos and they begin to get picked off one-by-one.
Review
The Hellraiser franchise has to have suffered one of the worst track records when it comes to horror sequels and general destruction of its own self from within. The series’ fall from grace from being a shocking journey into pain and pleasure in the superb original to being little more than a gimmick for seemingly stand alone horror films is rather pathetic and disheartening. Granted all horror franchises suffer from diminishing returns as their sequels progress – it can’t be helped because it’s the same thing over and over again. The trouble with Hellraiser is that the last couple of sequels were not written exclusively as Hellraiser sequels; they were written as normal horror films. But then some Einstein decided to stitch the franchise’s classic monsters into them and have a Pinhead cameo so that fans of the originals would keep shelling out hard cash. It's clear as day that this has been the case and it makes for uneven viewing. I mean, it's an artistically bankrupt but financially brilliant strategy. Think about it from a studio perspective: you have a cheap script that no one will ever buy a ticket for because it has zero brand recognition. But sitting in a vault, you own the rights to an incredibly iconic character. You forcefully graft that famous character onto the unknown script and suddenly you have a guaranteed return on investment from a built-in global fan base.
Hellraiser: Hellworld is marginally more watchable than the last few sequels put together because it ditches the confusing nightmare and dream sequences and gets back to basics. The film has come in for a lot of negative press, and you have to ask why? Maybe it's the fact that this is the first Hellraiser film to become self-aware. Like Freddy Vs Jason added the Scream-style self-awareness to its respective franchises, this is the first time that the characters in a Hellraiser film actually know what is happening and what to expect. They expect to see Pinhead when they open the box. They question what is happening to them when they haven't been impaled with chains. They understand the mythology surrounding the Lament Configuration Box. Crucially, they don't believe any of it is real and they just think they are walking through a really elaborate stupid haunted house based on the online RPG they play. So Hellraiser: Hellworld operates entirely on dramatic irony. The audience, sitting on their couches, knows the monsters are real, but the characters on screen think it's just an immersive promotional stunt. This is a more straightforward plot which doesn't allow for a lot of scope, but I was getting sick of the previous sequels attempts to confuse and contradict the viewer. It's time to simplify this franchise and that's what this instalment does, for better or for worse. The Hellraiser franchise had become completely bogged down in trying to trick the viewer. The previous sequels were obsessed with these mind-warping non-linear plots where characters would get tortured, wake up, realise they were still dreaming, get tortured again, wake up again.
There's some quick plot explanation at the start to set us up for the party and once the main characters arrive, it basically turns into a haunted house flick where they all separate and are killed off one-by-one. Cue your Noughties horror obsessions with rapid editing, plenty of strobe lights, rock music, smoke machines and all the trimmings – it’s the cheap kinetic adrenaline of being at a heavy metal gig. It may all look fancy but there’s not a great deal of substance to it. The interesting idea of the virtual version of the Lament Configuration box and the notion of the Cenobites in cyberspace is quickly dropped once the party begins - it was just a Macguffin to get the characters together. We know what is coming from the set pieces. We know which characters are going to survive and which aren’t. Predictability is this film’s second biggest problem after the unnecessary addition of the Hellraiser label and forced inclusion of the Cenobites. Since they downgraded the plot into a standard haunted house slasher, that inevitably downgraded the Cenobites themselves as unfortunate passengers.
In the original lore, the Lament Configuration isn't just a fun Rubik's cube. It's a mechanical key that physically breaks down the barrier between dimensions. The Cenobites weren’t just people with knives; they're essentially interdimensional monks. They have pushed the human nervous system so far past its limits that they no longer distinguish between extreme agony and extreme ecstasy. Now they have become no better than Freddy Kruger or Michael Myers - simply gimmick figures who kill people in ludicrous ways and pop out of closets to deliver a jump scare. The loss of their aura and mystique is one of the main reasons why the series went rapidly downhill after the first two films. Any shred of integrity had long gone from the characters, so I don't see the problem in attempting to give them something new to do here. The Cenobites had already been sent into space, so why not send them into cyberspace? Making them digital probably felt like a genius way to target younger demographics but it just massively cements this film right into the 2000s. They were already ruined it, so let's just see what happens with a new approach. That is bleak. And it's incredibly bittersweet, because this movie marks the final time the legendary Doug Bradley plays the iconic role of Pinhead. It’s a poor swansong for him to bow out this way, especially how good the character was in the first couple of films. His screen time is extremely limited, he's lost that commanding, terrifying aura, and he's basically reduced to a bouncer who occasionally spouts cliched one-liners (he practically says the same thing in every film).
I've been harsh on Lance Henriksen for starring in films like Mind Ripper when he was younger and more in demand for meatier roles and most of his recent work has just been bit parts in tacky horror films like Mangler 2: Graduation Day and Sasquatch Mountain but his presence here is most welcome and he gives the film a truly menacing tone as the creepy host of the party. The teen cast is your usual array of good-looking twentysomethings with no personalities whatsoever although Kathryn Winnick is amazing. I just love this woman. Beautiful and a talented actress to boot, it was only a matter of time before she hit it big and thankfully, as I revisit some of these older reviews for the new website, I see she’s become much more of a household name thanks to her role in Vikings. But because they downgraded the Cenobites into standard slasher villains, they had to downgrade the victims too. You can't have an MTV slasher villain stalking a 40-year-old man dealing with complex infidelity. There’s also another future superstar in the cast, a young Henry Cavill, who seemed to do alright for himself in the years following! At twenty-two years old here, I’m sure he thought his career was never going to take off the way it did hanging around with Pinhead in a middling Noughties horror.
Final Verdict
Hellraiser: Hellworld is a decent film on its own feet and it’s the only the addition of the Hellraiser tag and the presence of the Cenobites which is getting it so much hate. It's a refreshing change of direction from the previous couple of instalments, arguably the most original sequel since Hellraiser: Bloodline and is definitely a lot better than other critics are ranting about. Don’t get me wrong, the film isn’t good by any stretch of the imagination but it tried something different for the franchise (though identical to every other mid-Noughties horror) and didn’t spectacularly fail.
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Hellraiser: Hellworld Director(s): Rick Bota Writer(s): Clive Barker (characters), Joel Soisson (story), Carl V. Dupré (screenplay) Actor(s): Katheryn Winnick, Christopher Jacot, Henry Cavill, Khary Payton, Anna Tolputt, Lance Henriksen, Doug Bradley, Stelian Urian Duration: 91 mins |  |
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