i'm not 2 minutes into Hellraiser: Revelations and i already fucking hate everything about it, jesus fucking christ, this is going to be a miserable hour and 10 minutes. at least it's mercifully short, the shortest Hellraiser so far, i doubt much hell will be raised, but ig that is the tiniest victory i can get from this. but amazon put like six fucking ads in between the movie so i'm sure it's going to be like fucking 2 hours while actually watching.
Woah, two Hellraiser films in one night! It's like Christmas, but like, if Christmas was Hellraiser: Revelations and your parents hated you. So what make this, the ninth film, so remarkably special isn't just that it's bad, no. No no no. Bad, bad is something we can deal with.
This is a special kind of bad.
You see, Revelations includes a significant number of elements from the original film that I've found sorely lacking in the sequels. This one actually recreates a fair number of story elements that are unique to film one (and by extension, the original novella).
A pleasure seeker meets a mysterious figure who gifts him the Lemarchand Box. After being ripped apart by the Cenobites, he is revived through the spilling of blood which escalates into a series of murders at the hands of an accomplice to give life back to the pleasure seeker. The pleasure seeker ends up wearing another's skin as a ruse.
I think the best description I have for this one is unnecessarily exploitative. These films don't shy away from sex and violence, but in a very weird way, I don't think any of it actually adds anything to the movie. What exactly did that thing with the prostitute in the restroom actually add to this movie?
So there are two narratives happening. The first, which as I've outlined above, is basically the original Hellraiser's Julia/Frank plot and is background information which is periodically revealed to us as the second plot plays out. In the present, we have what feels like a standard home invasion, but where there's no invasion and everyone just sort of screams at everyone.
There's an interesting element in which our lead ends up stealing his friend's skin, who opens the Box and becomes a Cenobite. What I liked about this was that it actually shows us a brief moment where the Cenobites are doing Cenobitical things: we see a brief moment in Hell in which nothing is a plot to manipulate the damned, or punish a victim. It shows a brief glimpse of what is an actual Cenobite being taught and learning. This is actually kind of cool and flashes the world out ever so slightly more and would have been an excellent thing to expand on. The identity of this Cenobite is supposed to be a secret, but you've guessed the Reveal long before it's honestly worth setting up a Reveal.
There's an uncomfortable incest scene which is the exact moment you should have pieced together the Act Three Reveal, that Nico is wearing Stephen's skin.
This reveal, actually, this whole plot annoys me because I cannot for the like of me figure out what the point of the scene where he exposits in a trance is for, from a character perspective. Why would this character, if they are in a fugue state, speak as though he is not in fact, Nico in disguise? This feels like the writers had completely different intentions for these characters, then changed their minds as they continued, but did not go back and edit the script to accommodate.
I think I've keyed in on the biggest issue. This entire movie feels like a Rough Draft script written solely to get a script out. It feels like zero revisions were made and not a single person stepped in to polish it.
There's a return to basics that I did appreciate: The Cenobites are never actually given an Infernal explanation in this one. Hell, our live action Harry DuBois only uses the word "angel" to describe them. I love this interpretation of their purposes, which I guess makes sense since it is literally ripped directly from the first film.
I'm serious, this guy reminds me of Harry DuBois:
He's the vagrant who gives our leads the Box, which I guess technically would make him the Engineer, but, once again, that role seems to be had by the nail-headed Hell Priest.
We don't see much in the way of Cenobite design (truth be told, we don't see much of anything: this entire film's lighting feels like David Yates' most depraved fantasy; filters other than blue exist, you know!), but none of them are particularly new. Just rehashed versions of the nail-headed Cenobite, the Chattering Cenobite, oh look! There's a second nail-headed Cenobite!
So, why is this one so bad?
The best moment of the film is like thirty seconds long. The original parts of the story are boring, loud, and generally poorly written. The not-so-original parts are exactly the same as the first film, but they have chosen the exact worst ways to implement them.
I will admit, I saw exactly one turn on the Box that made me squee happily, if only because it was a corner turn and not the exact same two-move opening that has so royally pissed me off seeing. That's right guys, I got more joy out of a character making a move on the Box that was different than the opening sequence used in basically every other movie (any points this would have awarded us are lost because this turn exists in one scene, and the three other instances of the Box being opened return back to the standard two moves). It's a Puzzle Box, dammit! Is it really that fucking difficult to show this thing being opened like an actually fucking Puzzle Box??
I do not want to watch Judgement after this complete waste of time reboot. Officially it's a sequel, but this has reboot written all over it. Actually, this has "I'm about to lose franchise rights" written all over it.
