Review of Hellraiser: Bloodline (1996) by Bradens584 — 19 Dec 2020

And the downward spiral continues. Hellraiser: Bloodline is the fourth film in the Hellraiser franchise, and it’s the worst one so far. There were some bits I liked, the entire film has a cool framing device of an interrogation.

Doug Bradley’s back as Pinhead, and I liked seeing the origin of the puzzle box. Adam Scott was entertaining while he was onscreen, you can see he was a real pro, even back then. There was some really bad writing, but his delivery almost convinced you it was good.

And now for the bad, the writing and acting are plain bad. I sort of liked the new villain, Angelique and her dynamic with Pinhead, but at a point Pinhead isn’t even the main villain, and I know that was the case in the first movie, but Frank and Julia were really interesting, and the rest of the movie was good.

In that movie, Pinhead was used as a foreboding background character, and when he was put on screen you really felt his presence, and that’s not the case in Hellraiser: Bloodline. Doug Bradley’s great, but Pinhead’s just kind of thrown in randomly, and Angelique was just discarded to make way for the climax, whereas in the original, Frank and Pinhead are both incorporated into it.

The cinematography is completely uninspired even compared to Hellraiser III, not to mention the first two. The three main characters are all the most bland things I’ve ever seen put on a screen. The special effects are all pretty boring when compared to its predecessors, nothing is shown that hasn’t been seen before in previous instalments, and, after the beginning, they don’t even get really intense until the end.

The Cenobite designs are also lacklustre, there are only two new ones, and no returning ones other than Pinhead, one is just a boring design and the other is cool, but at a point, the effect gets too ambitious and ends up looking pretty bad.

Hopefully the fifth one’s better.