Hellraiser: Hellseeker Movie Review

It was only a matter of time. The Hellraiser series, which began with a creepy as hell opening in 1987 and managed to stay fairly scary through Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth, has finally gone the way of Leprechaun and Children of the Corn.

Hellraiser #4 took place in outer space. Number 5 went straight to video.

This one is number 6.

As the Hellraisers deal with otherworldy demons that may or may not be real, it's kind of impossible for them to be defeated, so there's no end to the Hellraiser series in sight. This time around, Pinhead (Doug Bradley, who's appeared in all six films) is back to terrorize his old opponent Kirsty (Ashley Laurence, last seen in Hellraiser III) and the rest of humanity. (In truth, Laurence has virtually no screen time -- almost all of it in flashback.)

Trevor (Dean Winters) goes off a bridge in a wild car crash that kills his wife and leaves him hallucinating all manner of crazy things -- from his boss groping him in the break room to those wacky hellish minions stalking him day and night. A body count rises, but are the killings for real? Is anything here real at all?

Like its predecessors, the movie has some creepy moments, but the story is so random I was too confused to be scared. The script is a put together as if a series of fright gags (eel is regurgitated from man's stomach, et al.) popped into the writers' heads and were put on paper with little regard for the plot so far.Trevor doesn't seem to care if he makes it from one scene to the next, so why should we? Thrills don't totally have to make sense to scare you (Trevor watches a videocamera monitor record his bosses murder... when nothing is actually happening in front of the camera -- huh?), but they do have to lead you toward a logical conclusion that comes together in the end (see Jacob's Ladder, an obvious inspiration for Hellseeker).

A commentary track and deleted scenes (given there was no theatrical version, deleted from what?) add little to the DVD.