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Directed By
Tony Randel
Written By:
Peter Atkins
Cast:
Ashley Laurence, Clare Higgins, Kenneth Cranham, William Hope, Oliver Smith, Sean Chapman, Doug Bradley, Nicholas Vince, Angus MacInnes, Edwin Craig, Oliver Parker, Andrew Robinson, Robert Hines, Michael Cassidy, Simon Bamford, Imogen Boorman, Barbie Wilde, Deborah Joel, James Tillitt, Bradley Lavelle, Ron Travis, Catherine Chevalier, Anthony Allen, Grace Kirby
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Hellbound: Hellraiser 2 (1988)
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Movie Review by Jarrod
August 15th, 2007
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'Hellbound: Hellraiser II' is not so different from its predecessor, which introduced Clive Barker to the horror genre, and identified him as a man of unique and grisly vision, with a sadomasochistic bent. That has not changed with this sequel, in fact, one might say it is even grislier than the original Hellraiser, and certainly the special effects are better, we even take a trip into Hell itself.
Unfortunately, Hell is really just a labyrinth with a bunch of corridors that all look the same. This gets at the heart of the problem with 'Hellbound', it is boring, its story, a lot of its visuals, even the Cenobites this time around, who are not as menacing or as terrifying as they were the first time. Kirsty (Ashley Laurence) is in a mental institution, since nobody believes her when she talks about demons and how her father died, and that the body of her stepmother will come out of a bloodstained mattress. Her stepmother, you may recall, was Julia (Claire Higgins) who brought men to feed to her ex-lover Frank, her brother-in-law. She even killed her husband to give Frank back his humanity, so she could screw him again.
Kirsty's tale catches the ear of asylum director Dr. Channard (Kenneth Cranham), who decides to take one of his patients, who thinks there are bugs all over his body, escort the man to his home, have him sit on the mattress, and hands him a straight razor to cut off his own skin, in an effort to kill the imaginary bugs. Julia comes back to life, and Channard essentially does for her what she did for Frank. Channard ultimately morphs into a Cenobite himself, a revolting creature to be sure, but one that looks ridiculous. Kirsty travels into Hell after a mute girl named Tiffany (Imogen Boorman) deftly solves the puzzle of the box, which opens the gates to Hell. Kirsty thinks she can go there to save her father, or some such thing. The plot is still hard to follow, and is not engaging, as it takes itself very seriously, and I just did not care too much about what happened. It does try to show us how and maybe why Cenobites are created (they were once human), but even this I found uninteresting.
Compared to the half dozen or so 'Hellraiser' movies that followed this one, it is not bad, but I did not react to it, it did not shock me, scare me, entertain me, most of the time, I felt like I wanted to go to sleep. Barker's novels are great, I have read most of them, but this movie just doesn't cut it. It is very gruesome, with loads of gore, but it all seems gratutious and overblown, and fake, despite the superior quality of the special effects and production values.
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 | Zombie Boy
Aug 15, 2007 4:33 PM
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This one, however, kinda sucked.
In fact, the only HR film I liked besides the first is Bloodline, the fourth, which most horror fans don't like. *shrug* |
 | Zara
Aug 15, 2007 6:35 PM
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| The HELLRAISER movies are the reasons why most people won't attempt to read Barker, something that's a shame really. |
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