I’m a bit of a Hellraiser fan. So when I heard that a possible sequel starring Ashley Laurence’s Kirsty had been scrapped and replaced with this, I was geared to hate this movie. It was directed by Rick Bota and written by Tim Day, the duo behind the awful piece of trash that is Hellraiser: Hellseeker. But when I sat down to watch Hellraiser: Deader, a strange thing happened, I started to enjoy myself. It isn’t great, but it does exactly what it sets out to do, it’s scary. It has legitimately frightening scenes and concepts that make it worth the watch. Kari Wuhrer, who plays the main character, journalist Amy Klien, is a talented actress with good charisma. But almost everyone else is horrible. The cinematography had the signature Rick Bota/Gary Tunnicliffe flair, which I found annoying in Hellseeker, but I actually found it a bit less so in this one. It kind of fits in with the entire movie feeling surrealist and outlandishly strange. There are really three things that sink this film. The first, and least significant, is the title. Deader? Really? The cult in the movie is called ‘the Deaders’, but still; it sounds really stupid. The second is the writing; aggressively bad. The third is the fact this is a Hellraiser movie. Like Inferno before it, there’s extremely little Cenobite appearances. But, in Inferno, when they do show up, they’re damn good. But Deader manages to make Doug Bradley bad. How? That was a feat even Hellseeker couldn’t pull off.
Mediocre story mixed with the annoying slow pace and acting that could be better, Hellraiser: Deader is slightly better than Hellseeker, which isn't really saying anything.
Maybe im just a hater, but this film really f**king ****.
At the end, the main protagonist experiences around 20 minutes of fake outs. THAT IS 20 GODDAMN MINUTES THAT COULD HAVE BEEN CUT OUT!
And it's sad really, that this film could've been good, being a story about a cult who can bring the dead back to life and access another dimension, but that dimension is evil. But nope, JUST TURN IT INTO ANOTHER F**KING HELLRAISER DTV SEQUEL! F**K YOU
I honestly can't think of a single good thing about this movie. It's yet another Hellraiser film where the cenobites are barely featured (mainly just for the ending) and we have to suffer through yet another terrible plot with equally bad acting.