Review of Hellraiser: Hellworld (2005) by Kenneth B — 07 Aug 2012

So Hellrasier 8 is the one where they go all post-modern (whatever that means these days) and start referring directly to the franchise. The idea is that we are living within a world where Hellraiser is fiction and people play Hellraiser games on computers and go to Hellraiser themed events. So a group of friends go to one such event in a mansion which is being host by Lance Henriksen. Therein various odd things happen and I'll leave the synopsis there because it gets very muddled indeed. In fact there is a whole segment at the end where they basically recap the whole film, just in case we either missed it the first time or just enjoyed it so much. Actually neither is true, its just padding the film out and is a feeble attempt at justifying the 'reveal'. Of course the things that they show in flashback are things that we noticed anyway and kind of saw coming.

There is nothing good about Hellworld. The acting is dreadful, the production values are a mere notch above woeful and the writing it dead on woeful. This is the weakest of all 8 Hellraiser films that I have seen and is just so far removed from the original that if not for Doug Bradley's prickly antagonist this could have been any brainless, lowest common denominator horror film from the past ten years.