Review #101: Hellraiser: Deader (2005)

This review was originally written in October 2020.

October Movie Review #18- Hellraiser: Deader

Hmm.

This one was... I don't really know. It started off great, very much like the last two, and I was intrigued and interested for about 60% of the film. But then the movie got really confusing, and unlike Hellseeker (which was also very confusing at times), this time around the confusion didn't go away and so the ending just kind of felt like a mess.

So this movie follows a journalist, Amy, who gets a tip about this weird death cult (called "Deaders", hence the goofy title) that supposedly gets its members to show their dedication by committing suicide, at which point their enigmatic leader (a man named "Winter") is somehow able to bring them back from the dead. Amy goes to investigate, finds the puzzle box, and starts having weird visions/experiences where she thinks she's... already dead? Or undead? Or immortal? Or cursed?

See, this is what's really confusing me. There's a big chunk of this movie (like, kind of an absurdly long part of the film) where Amy finds out that she's been stabbed straight through her chest, but is somehow unable to die from the wound. (So she like, tries to bandage up this giant gaping bleeding wound and travel across town without attracting attention, since the wound isn't actually going to kill her, it'll just leave a giant pool of blood anywhere she decides to stand for a minute or two.) So how is she able to survive this? She hasn't yet been killed/revived by Winter (as they're still trying to get her to do so in the final showdown) so how is she unable to die?

And all the while she keeps getting visited by Pinhead, who tells us that this death cult is attempting to find a way to circumvent the cenobites' dominion (I guess by freeing themselves from the normal cycle of death, with Winter's resurrection ability) which is actually a really cool concept, I just don't understand how it works within the story. A big deal is also made that Amy is super important to this- not a prophesied "chosen one" exactly, but they make a big deal about how they need someone who's able to solve the puzzle box and is also willing to join the Deaders- but I don't see what that has to do with her. In this film I don't recall Amy ever "solving" the puzzle box- every time it opens up, it seemingly opens up of its own accord, so I don't exactly see why Amy was necessary.

(And that's actually been kind of a gripe of mine for this whole series- likely due to the fact that the original puzzle box was a cheap prop made on a budget, it's... not exactly a puzzle. The middle part lifts up, turns, and goes back down. That's basically it, but this series makes it seem like it's some sort of Mensa-level lateral thinking puzzle to open the thing.)

And so after a whole bunch of is-it-real-or-is-it-an-hallucination scenes, Amy winds up back at the Deader hideout and has to decide whether to kill herself and join the Deaders, or join Pinhead? Or something? Then she throws the puzzle box (which then opens by itself- again, she did nothing to open it) and Pinhead kills everyone. Except Amy, who kills herself. And it turns out that Winter is descended from the toymaker that made the box back in the 1700s? Uh, what? I had assumed the continuity was just ignoring Bloodlines because (unless I'm mistaken) it canonized the fact that Pinhead was trapped in the box until 2146 or whatever, so the idea of Pinhead acknowledging Lamarchand's bloodline by killing one of his descendants seems real odd. Also, what purpose does that even serve? It certainly doesn't explain how Winter got this resurrection power, so why introduce that element into the story at all?

And then the final scene really feels like it's hinting at something (Amy's boss is about to interview a new journalist, he reacts to the interviewee's name like it's someone we should recognize, then the camera zooms in on a photo of Amy) but as far as I can tell it doesn't go anywhere.

Like I said, this one started out really interesting- I was super on board with the Deader video and the subway car that's actually a mobile underground party- but then it starts flashing back and forth and the story just doesn't make a lick of sense.

Overall Rating: 5/10 Really Bad CGI Chains

That's Where I Know Her From: The lead actress, Kari Wurher, looked really familiar and I knew the name sounded familiar. She played Maggie on Sliders (the replacement for Wade after Sabrina Lloyd got unceremoniously dumped by the producers)!