This movie should be called Hellraiser: Go Fuck Yourself, Horror Fans; because aside from someone breaking into your house and killing your family while you watch, or maybe catching your grandparents raping a horse in full fetish gear, this movie has got to be one of the most painful experiences that a human can endure.
If Clive Barker watched this movie, he'd have no choice but to kill himself, just so he could roll over in his own grave. In fact, he had this to say about the trailer, via his Twitter account: “Hello, my friends. I want to put on record that the flic [sic] out there using the word Hellraiser is no fuckin’ child of mine. I have nothing to do with the fuckin’ thing. If they claim its from the mind of Clive Barker, it’s a lie. It’s not even from my butt-hole.”
Clive Barker insulted his own B-Hole thanks to this movie, and gay men love their B-Holes. It's their love maker.
The first Hellraiser is a an unholy grail of horror cinema excellence. Part 2, we loved near as much. We liked part 3, though it was weak, and for some unexplainable reason, we enjoyed the hell out of part 4. 5-8 were like schmaltzy Lifetime movies in which Pinhead showed up for 45 seconds or so, and mean mugged. As movies, not bad. As Hellraiser movies, not good. They weren't anything worth discussing in great detail.
This one though... Revelations proves that the Hellraiser franchise is in the hands of people that just don't give a shit.
Not only does the 300k budget (seriously) show visually, but the script is abysmal, the acting nearly as bad, and Pinhead was laughable. No offense to the guy who dared play him, but that was not Pinhead; not in look or manner. He looked like a chubby, no-chin geek. Fucking Bert from Sesame Street made a more menacing Pinhead.
Above all else, the dialogue was awful. For us, a large part of what made the Hellraiser movies so amazing was the sharp dialogue that came from Pinhead and his Ceno-crew. Of course Doug Bradley and his delivery helped bring the words to life perfectly, but good lord how is "There's a secret song at the center of the universe, and its sound is like razors through flesh" replaced with "When you get to hell, your epiphany of suffering will be real bad, because we delight in your epiphany of suffering!" I had to paraphrase because I can't recall the exact wording, but it was awful. I am not overstating it at all. A good Pinhead with his sharp dialogue in tow could have made this one decent at the very least, but instead, he induced cringes every time he was on screen, whether speaking or not.
I will say that some of the gore was kinda fun, and there were interesting concepts at work here and there, but none of that could distract from the flaws that made up the other 98% of the movie. The rest of it was just bad, bad, bad. For the record, we liked Tracey Faraway too. She was nice to look at.
The Master Says- The fact that Hellraiser: Revelations was churned out cheap and fast for Dimension to avoid losing the rights to the franchise is no excuse for them offering up this pile of shit under the Hellraiser banner. Check the trailer below if you want to laugh, cry, or both. Aside from that, skip over this one and go watch anything else. Hopefully Dimension eats every last red cent of their production and marketing cost on this one.
