Hellraiser Judgment – Plenty of Gore, Paper Thin Story
Director: Gary J Tunnicliffe
Writer: Gary J Tunnicliffe (Screenplay) Clive Barker (Characters)
Starring: Damon Carney, Randy Wayne, Alexandra Harris, Heather Langenkamp, Paul T Taylor, Gary J Tunnicliffe
Plot: Detectives Sean and David Carter are on the case to find a gruesome serial killer terrorizing the city. Joining forces with Detective Christine Egerton, they dig deeper into a spiraling maze of horror that may not be of this world.
Tagline – Evil seeks evil.
Runtime: 1 Hour 21 Minutes
There may be spoilers in the rest of the review
Story: Hellraiser Judgment starts as two brothers and detectives, Sean (Carney) and David (Wayne) are joined by forensics specialist detective Christine Egerton (Harris) after a string of gruesome murders by a serial killer.
When Sean locates a house connected to the killer, The Auditor (Tunnicliffe) he gets to experience the process being prepared, before bringing his brother into the investigation, one that is out of this world being controlled by Pinhead (Taylor).
Thoughts on Hellraiser Judgement
Characters & Performances – Sean Carter is the older brother who has been through the more traumatic life, he will investigate more of the house involved with the mysterious disappearances and killings, looking to get to the bottom of everything. David is the cleaner cut of the two brothers, playing more by the rules, supporting his brother through the troubles. Both of the two lead actors are fine, they do the basics well through the film. Christine is the new detective that is forced to work with, she does bring something new to the table, which works, when she gets a chance on screen, but we don’t get enough of this character. Pinhead is the figure we are waiting to see, he calm presence on the world of balancing of evil in the world. He is still the most intriguing character on screen.
Story – The story here follows Pinhead working worth to locate a serial killer to add to his next victim, as we see the judgment he is waiting to give to people. When it comes to the Hellraiser series we know that we are looking for a deeper story, we should be looking elsewhere. The idea is evil meets evil, only we don’t seem to dive into enough of the potential serial killer side of things, with most events just being sudden. If we know the myology behind the character, this will end up being all we need it too be. This does focus more on the gore, looking for shock over the story.
Themes – Hellraiser Judgment does bring us to the horror genre, where we get to see the gore filled moments that will do everything you would expect to see, always looking to push the barriers of what we are seeing. The locations are not as impactful as we would like, but the house is interesting to see what is going on within the film.
Hellraiser: Judgement is on Digital Download 22 February and Blu-ray/DVD 1 March from Lionsgate UK
Hellraiser Judgment is an improvement on a few of the previous outing in the franchise, which does give us shock value over anything else.