39. "Hellraiser: Inferno" (2000, Derrickson)
By Eivind Langdal
21st January 2010

And so we come full circle. What does that mean? Allow me to explain: Hellraiser: Inferno was, as anyone who read my review of the first film in the series knows, the film that I would constantly eye every time I was allowed to go the video store when I was a kid. I never got the chance to see it, and understandably so. I mean, no parents equipped with full brain capacity would ever let their child see this film. Why not? Well, it’s violent and gory. It’s also pretty intense. The fact that you even have to ask is troubling. Okay, so maybe you didn’t ask, but why ruin a good line?

I say the film is violent and gory, but the truth is, it’s rather restrained compared to the previous installments in the saga about Pinhead and his cohorts. Some would say “tame”, but not me; I found its preference of psychological terror over physical terror to be quite refreshing. You don’t find that very often in modern horror films. Hell, you couldn’t even find it in the original Hellraiser films. Except, of course, for the original (which, admittedly, still played the gore thing at a high volume).

There’s no sign of any previous characters in the series. That is to be expected. Now, would you believe me if I told you even Pinhead himself is hardly there? That’s right, the guy who was given far too much exposure in the previous films has now become an entity even less seen than he was in the first film; and you know what? It works. We get a glimpse of him early in the film, but for the most part, he keeps himself in the shadows. To say that he makes a return later in the film would hardly be a spoiler (he is on the cover, after all). It really is more effective this way; not because Pinhead isn’t an interesting villain, but because the anticipation of him can be just as scary as his entrance (perhaps even more).

The plot goes like this: a raunchy police detective named Joseph Thorne (played by the guy who played Keith in One Tree Hill) discovers the Lament Configuration at a crime scene where a man he used to know has been killed. All that is left is some piece of meat and a lot of blood (I can imagine the annoyance of investigating such a case before the likes of C.S.I. made their entry). Thorne takes the box for himself (along with some of the victim’s cash). He considers himself a man who likes mysteries, and in voice-over, he explains that his ability to solve puzzles is one of the reasons he became a police detective.

Although he is happily married and has a beautiful young daughter, Thorne is living on the edge. He does cocaine, and after tucking his child in her bed, he cruises around town looking for hookers. One night, after having had his way around one of them, he opens the Lament Configuration, and gets a terrifying vision of mysterious creatures that pleasure him through pain. But unlike the people who opened the box in the previous films, he is not killed. Instead, it turns out that the visions were a dream. However, when he gets back to the police station, he gets a call from the hooker he just left. She is screaming in agony and pleading him to come. That he does, but all that is left is her corpse (surprisingly not shown for a long time by the director).

Eventually, Thorne starts seeing a man with a rather scary appearance in everyone around him. At one point, the man sends him a videotape of himself brutally murdering one of Thorne’s informants. When he shows the same videotape to his colleagues, it shows nothing, but when Thorne takes them to the crime scene, every detail is as he described them, including the fact that a severed finger was left there. Thorne believe that the finger, which is just one of many that has shown up in crime scenes, is the key to a larger mystery and a very big puzzle, perhaps his biggest yet. He is right. But the answer is not the one he expects.

It’s impossible to watch Hellraiser: Inferno and not think of the excellent Se7en at least a few times. Though they are very different movie, I couldn’t help but see a bit of David Fincher’s movies in the many dark rooms that Thorne visits. But the general atmosphere is very different. Whereas Se7en has a mood that feels gothic, yet is ultimately based in reality, Hellraiser: Inferno has a more dreamy quality about it. The closer the film comes to its conclusion, the more the lines between the real world and the dream world are blurred.