Hellraiser: Hellseeker

 

This is where things start to repeat themselves. Hellseeker is a very, very similar movie to Inferno. It makes a single attempt to link to the original series by bringing back one of the original characters, but even that is weak and underutilised. You can really tell that this was written as a different horror movie before having the Hellraiser title slapped onto it.

The film follows Trevor, a man married to Kirsty Cotton (from the first two Hellraiser movies). They’re involved in a bad car crash in which Kirsty goes missing, presumed dead. Trevor barely walks away alive, spending time in the hospital and being prescribed powerful, potentially mind-altering medication, but there are suspicions he was responsible. As he seeks out what happened to Kirsty he begins to have horrible visions as those around him start to act strange. He begins to have horrible visions and waking nightmares as his fractured memory begins to return and he finds out what happened to Kirsty.

It’s not a fun movie. Almost all of it involves people talking shit to Trevor, either accusing him or murder, being aggressive with him, yelling at him or, in the case of women, aggressively trying to seduce him. He just seems confused most of the time, and never appears particularly freaked out by any of it. Even horrific nightmare things like witnessing a murder or a suicide don’t seem to bother him. Funnily, Trevor is played by the same guy who played Dennis Duffy, Liz Lemon’s moronic dirtbag ex-boyfriend from 30 Rock. Dennis was a self-confessed sex addict who was always involved in some horrifically outdated business venture (like selling beepers or investing in coffee vending machines), was caught seeking sex with a minor on ‘To Catch a Predator’ (“What are you doing here sir?” “I’m here to bang a chick named Judy”) before going on to marry a perpetually drunk Irish woman named Megan and adopting a black son who he named ‘Black Dennis’. I find it hilarious seeing him in a horror movie.

Trevor has a rough, aggravating time. The police constantly treat him like a piece of shit, women aggressively try to seduce him and his friends and co-workers constantly demean him, all passive-aggressively accusing him of murdering his wife. It does not make for an interesting or entertaining movie. Everybody is angry and annoyed almost all the time, while Trevor seems alternatively exasperated or bored by it all.

 

I said Inferno was sort of like Jacob’s Ladder, but Hellfire has even more in common with it. Hell, the entire film is pretty much just a worse movie with the same basic premise. The film is also very repetitive. Something freaky will happen and then it’ll be revealed as a dream. Trevor wakes up from about a dozen dreams, or maybe more, with every big moment immediately being followed by him waking up confused and disorientated. It’s full of a lot of ridiculous, horrific but silly looking stuff that means nothing. At one point Trevor throws up an eel. It’s made of CGI and has nothing to do with anything, but it’s kinda gross. There’s a bit of CGI nonsense, and it all looks pathetic. It’s never scary, it’s just fake.

Kirsty Cotton is back! But she’s sort of a bitch. She’s only in the movie for a little while, maybe three or four minutes screen time tops. Apart from a few glimpses in Trevor’s memories, she’s really only there for the ending twist revelation, same with Pinhead hwo only actually shows up to explain the plot.

In the end all is revealed – Trevor has been dead the whole time and is in Hell! It’s revealed that Trevor was a dick who only married Kirsty for her money (she’s inherited a lot of stuff from Larry, Frank and Julia apparently), and cheated on her with a whole bunch of women. He comes up with a plan to kill her to inherit her money, and tries to do so by forcibly giving her a puzzle box. The Cenobites came for Kirsty to pay for past dues (she did technically open the box in the first film so they own her), but Kirsty made a deal – her freedom for five souls. So she murdered the women Trevor had slept with and one of his friends, framing Trevor for it, before killing him and staging it as a car accident. It’s a bit of a silly accident considering the massive gunshot wound to the head he has when they retrieve the body though.

You know, Trevor doesn’t actually seem to be bothered by any of this. When the revelation happens and he’s given back his memories, and even sees his deceased body, he’s surprisingly accepting of the whole ordeal. It’s the same reaction as if he’d lost his car keys, spent a few agitating hours frantically searching for them before finally seeing them. He seems almost relieved actually.

 

The end twist sort of makes Kirsty into a horrible, violent bitch. She’s no longer surviving by the skin of her teeth; she’s now a murderer killing off people she doesn’t know to save her own ass. I get the idea of being a survivor, but you see the crime scenes she left and the girl went more than a little overboard with some of those killings. There’s a difference between shooting somebody and torturing them to death in an elaborate way to frame the man you’re about to kill.

You get a very quick glimpse of some Cenobites, and they’re sucky again. One is just covered in straps, one has his face stitched closed and one has a steel mask on. They don’t do anything – there’s no murder or threats, so they’re more like props than anything else. That’s the big problem with these last few films – the Cenobites don’t really do much, and are only there because since they’re using the Hellraiser title they felt obligated to show some Cenobits. Pinhead shows up every now and then for a few seconds, either glimpsed in a nightmare or there to say something creepy or cryptic. He’s only really there for the end, where he tells Trevor what’s going on.

A lot of nonsense happens. Whenever he’s brought to the police station he sees people being tortured, while the hospital is full of horrible surgery nonsense. Some effects are pretty decent (in an early nightmare scene doctors perform brain surgery on a conscious Trevor), but a lot of it is pretty generic by this point. Guy in prison with chains on him? Random guy with tattoos and piercings? Stuff like that isn’t scary, but the film treats it as though it all is.

Hellseeker is another bad one. It’s about on equal footing with Inferno actually, since they’re almost the same movie. I will say that Trevor is less of a horrible asshole than Thorne was, and doesn’t have the constant crazy-eye stare that psycho detective had. Maybe that’s just me though, since now all I can think about is a Hellraiser comedy sequel starring Dennis Duffy unapologetically being a tool the entire time. Once again this isn’t a Hellraiser movie in pretty much any sense. It’s not about Pinhead or hell or the Cenobites or the puzzle box – they’re in the film sure, but it’s not about them. I don’t know why they want to go psychological, but they just keep doing it from this point on.