Review: Hellraiser VII (Deader)

In which I contemplate whether I have sentenced myself to my own personal Hell of reviewing dour, direct-to-video Hellraiser sequels for eternity.

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In the considerable downtime during the plot of Hellraiser VII, I allowed my mind to drift and compile a partial list of things I would rather be doing than watching this movie. Allow me to share an excerpt:

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#957 - Rewatch any of the first four Hellraiser movies

#958 - Rewatch any of the Nightmare on Elm Street sequels, even the really bad ones

#959 - Stare into space while enjoying a snack bag of Chesapeake Bay Crab Spice chips and a can of Mango Chainsaw Liquid Death, something that would cost no more than the $3.79 I spent to rent this movie

#960 - Watch an old episode of MTV's Remote Control to remind myself that Kari Wuhrer once had a pleasant screen presence

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In my last couple of Hellraiser reviews, I lamented that the series may have found a formula going forward, and while I kind of liked the first iteration of that formula (Hellraiser V - Inferno), I had no interest in seeing it play out over and over again. Technically, the plot of Deader is not the same as the previous two entries into the series, but in all of the ways that matter this is yet another iteration of that formula. Whurer stars as an investigative journalist who is on the case of a group of so-called "Deaders", who follow the ideology of a cult-like leader that convinces them to kill themselves so he can bring them back to life. This is all tied, naturally, to Pinhead and the lamentation configuration, but I would be hard pressed to expand on the nature of that connection. Deader retains the same gritty, noire vibe of the last couple of Hellraiser films, and it also leans into a similar disorienting plot design which makes it unclear whether what we are seeing is reality, vision, alternate reality or something else entirely. I enjoyed that ambiguity the first time it was deployed, but it was already tiresome when it popped up again in the subsequent movie. This time, I found the approach exhausting and non-sensical, draining any stakes or investment from the story. Between the long passages of nothing of note happening on screen and the uncertainty about what was actually happening when it did, I had a hard time staying engaged. For example, our protagonist ends up stabbed through the chest like four times in this movie, and I still don't know if she was ever actually stabbed through the chest at all. Tough to muster up much concern over a character through all of that, much less a character that is so one-dimensionally written.

Delving further and further into the Hellraiser series, I have come to the conclusion that Pinhead is the horror icon who most failed to reach his full potential. Freddy, Michael, and Leatherface all have at least one classic movie to their names, and while that may not be indisputably true for Jason and Chucky, at least the majority of their movies are actually about them. I think the first couple of Hellraisers hold up to varying degrees, but Pinhead is really a tertiary character to the main protagonists and antagonists in those stories. The third and fourth entries go a long way to rectify that, and I do enjoy them, but you'd be hard pressed to call either one a high quality effort. Since then, the quality has remained relatively low and Pinhead continues to be largely relegated to the sidelines, making me wonder how he has achieved iconic status at all. The character design and all those Fangoria covers are doing a lot of heavy lifting, in other words. I haven't completely made up my mind yet, but I am strongly considering Hellraiser VII the stop at which I debark from this unholy ship. I know I was having fun not that long ago, but the type of bad the last couple of movies have been is not the type of bad that is remotely enjoyable to watch or even to write about. There's a good chance that I take some time away from the Cenobites and come back next year jumping straight to the 2022 reboot to see if there is anything worthwhile left to glean from the cinematic universe that promises to tear your soul apart.