Review of Hellraiser: Bloodline (1996) by Ivan D — 09 Sep 2009

"Pain? How dare you use that word? What you think of as pain is a shadow. Pain has a face. Allow me to show it to you. Gentlemen, I... Am... Pain." --Pinhead.

Well, well, well. In the words of Pinhead "I cannot die. I am forever." and that certainly describes where the Hellraiser franchise is going. With this fourth entry, all is feeling a little drawn out and a little over run with mediocrity. As with this movie too. A little long and a little drawn out.

This is perhaps a step up from the train wreck that is "Hell On Earth", but "Bloodline" isn't a leap up the scale either. Ironically, this one starts off pretty solid and conceptionally is, once again, very cool. This one has to do with the creation of the box by Merchant a long long time ago and it skips through three generations of his bloodline as they try to destroy the box that they created. It's interesting to see the box's creation and how it all plays out. Unfortunately, because of the story this film is pretty ill on flow and very poorly paced. Not to mention that some of the acting in this one is the worst of the series...the main guy just irritates the shit out of me (especially his future self).

I really enjoyed the first 2 generations of Merchants in this film, but the space and future side of the film suffers greatly from poor special effects and a very anti-climactic ending. Really, as with almost all "Hellraiser" sequels this benefits from an interesting story and Doug Bradly as Pinhead (whom has some of his best lines in this one including my favorite - "Do I look like someone who cares about what God thinks?") but suffers from poor pacing, inconsistencies of story, and horrible acting. Not to mention the ending seems to drag on forever on the space station.

I actually felt that had they skipped the entire 'Hellraiser: In Space!" concept and focused on the creation of the box and the threads from "Hell On Earth" then it would have been much better. Giving that odd team of Angelique and Pinhead a bit more time of banter and comparisons of what Hell was to what Hell is now, along with focusing on character development with Merchant the architect and his family and this would have benefited so much more. But alas they had to fit in the 'slasher' side of the film in the future and the new Cenobytes (which are a step up from Cd Man and Camera Man from "III" but far from being anything but screen padding in the end and still way too ridiculous...I'm still not sure how the 'twins' killed that one guy) into an ending that just felt like it was tacked on to finish the story.

Again, this is another frustrating addition to the franchise, which fails to impress. At this point, "Hellraiser" is still a great concept that has repeatedly failed to make it to film correctly since the first one. This one has its moments, its odd storytelling structure doesn't benefit it at all. I guess, its on to #5 now!