Review: Hellraiser Judgement (2018)
By William Pattison
Now it is my pleasure to review the final Dimension
Hellraiser film.
Hellraiser: Judgment (2018)
Detectives Sean and David Carter are on the case, to hunt
down a gruesome serial killer terrorising the city. Joining forces with
Detective Christine Egerton, they dig deeper into a spiralling maze of horror
that may not be of this world. Could the judgement awaiting the killer's
victims also be waiting for Sean and can he survive Leviathan’s Cult of
Judgement?
I am of two minds when it comes to this film. I really find
the new group of Cenobites, The Cult of Judgement, interesting and a breath of
fresh. I also like that in this film we firmly establish that there is more
than one Hell Priest in Hell since the one in the cult is clearly not the
Pinhead we’ve known, which also helps my head canon with Hellraiser Revelations
and the fat Pinhead.
I really like the Hell Proest in this film. He is a lot like
our old Pinhead but there are enough differences, shit his costume is different.
He seems to be Leviathan’s contact person between it and the cult. I really
liked that.
I also liked the unique way the cult serves Leviathan. Their
methods and goals are different from The Gash. They seduce extremely evil
people and through putting them through the tests of Judgement they determine
if the person’s soul is worthy of Hell. A plain old naughty person isn’t enough.
They want prime evilness to brim to their master, basically they are the Gordon
Rameses of Hell. Good stuff in my book.
What I hated about this film was that the serial killer in
this film was a carbon copy of the killer in SEVEN. Come on people! You give us
a total new group of Cenobites but get cheap with the killer. I was pissed and disappointed
when I saw this. This film could have saved Hellraiser and steered it in a new
direction with a new set of Cenobites. Also, in this film they brought in the
angels and did something very interesting with that plot line, but spoilers…
let’s just say Heaven isn’t put in a
good light.
The ending of this film was a lost opportunity that would
have made an interesting next film, but allas.
All in all as a Hellraiser film this one is ok. It kind of
reminded me of the original Hellraiser comics where they played with the mythos
in interesting ways. But this film does not have the strength nor brutalness to
reenergize the series. We’d have to wait
for the reboot for that…
