Nick Eversman:  Steven Craven
Steven Brand:  Dr. Ross Craven
Jay Gillespie:  Nico Bradley
Tracey Fairaway:  Emma
Sebastian Robinson:  Peter Bradley
Steven Smith Collins:  Pinhead

Release Date: October 18, 2011
Studio: Dimension Films
Genre: Horror
Rated R  1 hr 15 mins

CAST:

Hellraiser: Revelations

October 22, 2011

Reviewer: Rottenbucher

DIRECTOR:

Victor Garcia

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Attention, Doug Bradley is not playing Pinhead for the first time in the history of the Hellraiser franchise.  Steven Smith Collins (NCIS: LA and other TV program appearances) dons the facial nails.  Does this actor change make for a bad Hellrasier film?  It is safe to say no Hellraiser film has felt like a Hellraiser film since Hellbound: Hellraiser II.  In fact, the whole franchise has been running on few fumes for 20 years now.  But what Hellraiser: Revelations does, is try to channel the original.  It does so with very limited success in very limited settings.

Steven Craven and Nico Bradley (Nick Eversman and Jay Gillespie) are tired of their upper crust lives and are going to Mexico to tag some hookers and drink heavily.  They decide to video tape the misadventures.  Somewhere along the line a hooker dies and some creepy guy gives Nico the famed Box.  Nico summons the Cenobytes and the legendary combo of pain and pleasure occurs.  At least that is what Steven’s mom sees in the camera that was returned to her.  Her son Steven and friend Nico have been missing for over a year. The Craven and Bradley families have gotten together to have dinner and discuss what exactly could have happened to their sons and to skirt around the “found footage” of their sons’ Mexico trip.  Except Steven returns in the middle of dinner and brings a special guest with him.

Dimension Films supposedly only produced Hellraiser: Revelations to maintain the rights to the franchise.  The rights were set to expire and Dimension didn’t want to lose the ability to remake the film so they hired Victor Garcia (the culprit behind the ho-hum Return to House on Haunted Hill and the cracked Mirrors 2)  and Makeup Effects artist and screenwriter Gary J. Tunnicliffe to churn out a cheap quickie.  So quick and cheap that actor Doug Bradley refused to return to the franchise for the 9^th time and started an internet rumor that Hellraiser: Revelations was god awful. 

Hellraiser: Revelations isn’t very good.  But then how anyone can say stuff like Hellraiser: Hellworld or Hellraiser: Deader are good is pretty astonishing.  Since Hellraiser: Inferno, Dimension Films has been plopping a few scenes of Doug Bradley dressed Pinhead into cruddy horror scripts that were probably never intended to be Hellraiser films in the first place.  Fans of the original would scour the rental stores and get suckered into yet another ridiculous sequel that really made no sense why Pinhead was even in the film.  But Hellraiser: Revelations doesn’t get as silly as Cenobytes stalking the internet or a space station. Here the Cenobytes are left stalking… a living room. It’s pretty clear that 95% of the money was spent on the makeup effects and they actually look really good.  And Tunnicliffe’s script tries to channel elements of the original film and introduces a controversial new Cenobyte; something that hasn’t even been attempted since the 4^th film.  But that is about as good as Hellrasier: Revelations gets.  The absence of Bradley does further zap the life out of the film and the actors are forced to try to carry a who-done-it meets found footage meets flashback concept piece until the new Pinhead arrives to toss a few hooks and chains into flesh.

If you want to endure another Hellraiser film that has The Box and just less than 3 minutes worth of Pinhead screen time, Hellraiser: Revelations is the film for you. But if you are actually looking for a Hellraiser film that feels, looks, smells and sounds like a Hellraiser film, stick the original or the sequel.  The rest, just like Hellraiser: Revelations, stink.