Starring: Fred Tatasciore, Nick Eversman, Steven Brand, Tracey Fairaway, Adel Marie Ruiz, Sanny van Heteren, Jay Gillespie, Stephan Smith Collins.
Director: Victor Garcia.
Y'know, I thought franchise month would be fun but the sitting through the seemingly endless parade of crappy sequels has caused me to age ten years. I think I'm going even balder as a result of these things. At least I've finally reached the end of the Hellraiser franchise and can move onto...oh, crap, Friday is the 13th...so...Friday the 13th is happening. Hooooookkkkaay........
Anyway, here we have reached the dark, dank depths of what this franchise has to offer: the infamous Hellraiser:Revelations. Somewhere, someone said "Y'know, I like Hellraiser and all but you know what? I think it'd be better if we remove Doug Bradley and add some found footage." After what must have been a mountain of cocaine and a few(possibly unrelated) head injuries, someone wiped off the blood of the hookers they killed and said "Yes. Yes, let's do that."
It's not Fred Tatasciore's fault he isn't Doug Bradley. It really isn't. His nasally growls as Pinhead don't hold the operatics of Bradley's natural gravitas, but...okay, so it's terrible. I can't even pretend not to hold with the franchise fans on this one. Can't pretend. I can't pretend any of this is alright. Oh, god, I just did some research and discovered that Pinhead is played by two dudes: one does the looks and the other does the voice. Holy shit. That's awful. Anyway, rather than the effort of re-writing the whole paragraph, I'll add that Stephan Smith Collins is the physical Pinhead.
I wanted to, you know. I wanted to give this an honest shot, maybe see if there was some hidden strength to it. Everyone hates it, and I wondered if it was just because of the lack of Doug Bradley-which is kind of enough, really-but it's just not a good movie anyway.
Two idiots-for some reason the script named the two families Craven and Bradley-travel to Mexico and act like typical assholes, film themselves being assholes, and then we also cut to the families watching the video/discussing what happened...because narrative is for suckers. Anyway, the dipshits kill a girl, find the lament configuration, open it and a faux-pinhead shows up...and then back to the families.
I will say that it doesn't really screw around: it takes no time for one the shitheads to show up in a lot of pain and the like and...well, then the action stalls again. I don't know. All I can do is ride this thing out. I don't know that there's anything I can write about. My skills of rationalization, analysis, humor, and empathy are considerable, but this movie might be beyond me. I can find the good in damned near anything but this is...
At some point, you have to ask yourself whether or not you should do something. You might have an idea, some concept...and it might even be an admittedly interesting concept of merging Hellraiser elements(with amoral teens instead of Frank and Julia, which isn't the worst thing in the world) with home invasion tropes...but you need to look at your resources, look at your potential audience, and just ask yourself: should I do this?
The flashback device really doesn't work. It seems like filler, really. It's almost like this was a really spirited and not-so-bad short fan film that somehow got expanded and accidentally released to the public.
Really, this acts as a remake and the concept is actually kind of solid. They use the basic beats of the original story: Guy summons Cenobites, cenobites kill him, he comes back via blood onto the mattress he died on and becomes the actual villain of the story. Pinhead is no longer the "villain", so to speak, but back to his original "explorer" character archetype. Even some of the torture scenes look pretty good: there's a skin peel sequence that looks better than it should, even if it is ruined by the character looking at the camera and uttering a terrible line-read of ridiculous dialogue.
It adds some elements of home invasion/hostage stuff and that isn't so bad either, except that those tropes rely on sustained tension and claustrophobia to work. So ducking in and out of flashback kills all of that momentum dead. Also, while the actors do their best, they don't quite have the talent to pull this all off.
Tracey Fairaway is pretty, but...she can't seem to act. None of these people really can.
I will say that the scene where what appears to be Brother and Sister (the "brother" is actually the bad guy wearing his buddies skin) flirting and then making out is really creepy. Not because it's well shot but because that kind of thing is creepy.
I think this might be my favorite "How I spent my summer vacation" story, ever. "I went to Disney World this summer. It was fun. What did you do?" "Oh, we killed a hooker, opened an evil puzzle box, I died, came back without skin so I took my friends skin and now I'm home. Hey, mexican vacations amiright?!"
I could accept the recasting of Pinhead, I think, if they cast someone who could do a better job with it. Also if the cenobite make-up effects were better. But neither of those conditions are met. In fact, they seem rather spitefully denied on purpose.
I will say the movie went pretty dark in the end, even if it's a little unearned it isn't entirely ineffective.
Final Thoughts: Ugh. There's some good ideas in here-there really are, god help me-but the execution is really subpar. Poorly acted, poorly directed...just poorly made. There really is some good conception, and I've seen worse horror film endings...but this was pretty rough.
Final Rating: One star.
No comments:
Post a Comment