Hellraiser: Revelations (2011)

Plot so thin, it passes unnoticed.

Horrible, fascist and poorly acted

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

Capitalizing on bad movies, the film opens up with the annoying hand held camera as 2 young males (Nick Eversman and Jay Gillespie) head to Mexico in hopes of a sexual encounter. The next thing you know their car is jacked, then they are opening the puzzle box. Pinhead appears. Now I understand real people age and in hell they don't so they needed another pinhead. But if you are going to have someone speak monotone lines and sound odious, you must use voice enhancements, like they do in low budget films. There are times when both guys are being filmed at the same time and you have to ask why is the camera still jerking around? Now I can't remember the last Hellraiser I saw, was it the corporate one or the thing in outer space...or was that a Jason thing? And apparently it doesn't matter how it ties into the other films in the series.The two boys have disappeared and the sister/gf (Tracey Fairaway) is extremely interested in what happened. 10 minutes into the film I was thinking, they are going to need some good nudity to save this one, and with the first hooker still having her clothes on, I didn't hope for much. Then there are some plot points I am confused about. We see Pinhead take the puzzle box, but it appears in the boy's room in his bag along with the camera they had when they went missing. How did this get back to his room from Mexico? The police saw the movie on the camera, but didn't keep it for evidence.The puzzle box is not really a puzzle as everyone seems to be able to open it. It opened once by pushing the top, a second time by twisting the corner. Could we have a little consistency? And doesn't Tracey Fairaway take showers? The vagrant (Daniel Buran) had some of the best lines, which to say were not that great. Nick Eversman as Steven was very weak and unconvincing as one of the main characters.The movie breaks down into a bad home invasion film with a Hellraiser background. The poor ending hints at a squeal.F-bomb, nudity, sex, torture.

This movie is not THAT BAD! Attention: 2.8 is NOT FAIR score!I agree, it might not be the best movie I have ever seen, but it is not the worst one either! Don't look the IMDB score, give it a try!1) Yes, it has new Pinhead, but Mr. Collins did a great job. And yes, we all have Doug Bradley's face in our heads, but don't hate the change!2) It has all the core and violence needed. Cutting faces, stretching skin, raping, killing, torturing in all imaginary ways and much more!3) Special effects are good enough! If I think about the budget (around $350k), I actually loved the effects. There are many movies with cheap special effects and unrealistic CGI and they look much worse! This one actually stays quite realistic.4) It has twists, mixed with scenes from the past and the present and it is rather hard to guess, what comes next. Love the way how the storyline was built up!5) It's psychological! Fucked up minds taking over. It builds up characters, good is not always good, or if it was good, it might not stay that way!6) It's not typical Hollywood! That's my favorite part actually. Hellraiser is not dead!Story: 6 Presentation: 6 Special effects: 6But because it has Pinhead, I give it 8

I am commenting completely independent of this movie, without any affiliation whatsoever. I am also a die hard horror movie junkie. Okay...What the hell (no pun intended) is going on with the reviews of this movie? Straight up haters and horror snobs. There is so much horror CRAP that is spewed forth at the rate that cockroaches breed that I cherish a good horror movie these days. They are like diamonds in the rough and hard to find. Was this a great movie? No, it wasn't. But a 2 on IMDb it absolutely is not. I believe horror movies should be judged by their own standards. An absolute score might be a 3 or a 4, but a relative horror score (a score horror fans should pay attention to) would be closer to a 6. I watched this movie in its entirety and was entertained. This is what I consider to be a diamond in the rough - when you're scrolling through Netflix and you see 'sand Sharks' and 'sharknado' and various other turds, and you find yourself wanting to punch your own face, click on 'revelations' and enjoy a decent horror flick. I would say that the special effects were actually far better than the budget would otherwise suggest (here on IMDb estimated at 350k).Summary - if you're a horror snob from Harvard you will rate this movie a 1 or 2. If you are a normal horror loving fan then you will probably be entertained, but please leave your expectations at the door because it's not winning any awards. This is the one on Netflix you should at least try. Sincerely, A dude that hates scrolling through countless crappy horror movies and just wants to watch one that is entertaining (but you can call me Luke for short)

...heaven help you if you make a *boring* film. I used to say that constantly when I was younger and full of pep and had just taken a walk into the DVD-Video format that refuses to go away in spite of looking like a dirty dish with a crack in it compared to actual (that is, not "upsampled") HD.I started writing this "review" as a kind of response to a very surface-scratching and short attempt to defend this film. Because after they once again told us to forgive the film based on how little they had to work with, that is what comes to mind. The film is utterly boring.It is also well worth noting that this film exists for one reason, and only one reason: to prevent the rights to this moribund franchise from reverting back into the hands of Clive Barker. It is one thing if one makes a bad film with honest intentions. For example, Ed Wood's intentions ranged from pleading for acceptance of transvestites (in the 1950s, I might add) to stopping the nuclear arms race before we ended up without a planet to live on. That his delivery of such messages through cinema was comically inept is beside the point, because although the message gets lost in the unintentional comedy, simply knowing that that was partly what he intended is enough to see he had more in mind than just money. Not the makers of Hellraiser Revelations. All they cared about was money, and it shows.Stories generally go through a lot of rewriting before they are presented to an audience. Generally, when an author looks at his first draft, he sees mistake after mistake leaping out at him, crying for correction. Characters he was in love with during the first draft might seem like complete nonces whilst rereading, and are thus modified during the subsequent drafts. Actions undertaken by characters that got the basic plot from A to B in the first draft might make zero sense on rereading, and thus the author will rewrite the sequence of events to make more sense. Why am I describing these parts of the writing process? Because it is plainly evident that precisely none of that happened with this script.The story as it unfolds in this film goes something like two spoiled brats go on a road trip to Mexico looking for booze, sex, and good times. The things that go wrong eventually lead them to sit in a bar where a bum who looks strangely like the bum in the original film offers them the box. Astute readers will note that this is quite a difference from the original, where one brother actively seeks out the box in a South-East Asian market because he is bored and jaded with all the thrills and spills the world can offer him. Dialogue is given in which one brat explains for the audience that he does not want to spend the rest of his life in what I inferred from this speech was a hicksville village (the film itself is not too clear about where they actually live). Although it was not great at doing this, the original gave the audience plenty to imply that one brother was a boring, tepid personality and the other a wild, outgoing man. In Revelations, almost everything is told to the audience rather than demonstrated. That can work with good actors, but the actors here mostly look like they would find it difficult to read out a battle scene from The Phantom Blooper in a way that stimulates interest.Hellraiser Revelations is only useful for two things. One, to demonstrate there is no low to which the Weinsteins will not sink in order to keep a property, no matter how far they have run that property's value into the ground. Two, as a teaching tool at film schools. One film school teacher quoted in the Plan 9 Companion says one useful teaching tool is to show a student an example when film is not being done well and make them take notes of what is not being done well. Hellraiser Revelations offers a goldmine of material for a class like that.