‘Hellraiser: Deader’ (2005) Movie Review

A journalist uncovers an underground group who can bring back the dead and slowly becomes drawn into their world.

The Hellraiser series travels to Romania for its seventh film, and proves it can suck internationally like a pro. Not content to stay domestic, Deader travels to the ancient and visually striking, Romania, and like a fucking tourist that only eats at Applebee’s wherever they go, misses out on all the local charm. I have no idea why this was filmed on location when any generic location or sound stage would have sufficed. It’s not like we’re treated to beautiful crane shots of Cismigiu Park, just random interior shots with enough scenes filmed outside to remind you this isn’t set in the vacuum of space.

Amy (Kari Whurer) is a hotshot investigative journalist with a flair for the darker side of life. Fresh off her ‘How to be a Crackwhore’, piece, Amy’s boss shows her a videotape that plays like a snuff film mixed with Necrophilia. In the video, a group of “Deader” resurrects a woman after she is forced to put a 357 to her head. Seeing the story of a lifetime, Amy travels to Bucharest to find the suicide cult. When she gets there, blah, blah, blah.

These terrible Hellraiser movies have a specific formula. It goes something like this:

Introduced to new and interesting protagonist.

New protagonist has a link to the box somehow.

They have an encounter, then start hallucinating hellish happenings.

They find out about the box.

They unravel over the course of the film, while we learn about some traumatic life instance. Child abuse, infidelity, murder, etc.

The characters tremble and shake for the entire film, until we watch a five-minute climax with Pinhead giving a speech. Sometimes the box is used as a weapon against secondary bad guys or the Cenobites themselves.

Also, most of the time, some super shitty and unimaginative Cenobites terrorize the character.

The end. Oh, and chains.

Rinse and repeat, tweak story slightly, hire intern to create direct-to-dvd box art, and release another sellout franchise turd.

Doesn’t that really cover it all? Do we need to know how terrible the acting was? Can’t we imagine how lame the story was? I think we all can, at least any of us unfortunate enough to have made it seven films deep. Hellraiser: Deader is a colossal waste of time. Twilight might me an upgrade.