2.42

I have liked each movie in the HELLRAISER series in my own way especially HELLBOUND: HELLRAISER 2 which I think is the best movie of the series. Clive Barker hated HELLRAISER: INFERNO, but HE LIKES HELLRAISER: HELLSEEKER (the sixth movie in the HELLRAISER series) and says it is the best movie since HELLRAISER 2. He is right because HELLRAISER: HELLSEEKER is one of the better movies in the series.
The latest movie is like a puzzle that keeps adding pieces until you get the whole picture at the end of the movie. HELLSEEKER opens with Trevor and his wife, Kirsty (the main character from the first two HELLRAISER movies played by Ashley Laurence), driving in a car when it goes off a bridge into a river. Trevor gets out, but he cant get Kirsty out. She drowns. Trevor wakes up in a hospital. Later he talks to a black detective who says they cant find Kirsty’s body. As the movie goes on, Trevor is followed every-once-in-a-while by a faceless stranger. Of course, I forgot to mention that Trevor starts to see some strange things like he seeing a murdered woman in his apartment and in the next moment she is gone (and alive in her own apartment). HELLSEEKER works like that. It takes you down one path and then diverts you by throwing different pieces by taking some pieces away.

We are treated to memories from Trevor’s past as he remembers what happened before the car accident bit by bit including Trevor getting a mysterious card that leads him to a place where he acquires the Hellraiser cube that opens the gate to Hell. What is cool about that cube scene is the cube starts as a sphere before transforming into the well-known cube. Trevor also gets a memory of him giving Kirsty the cube as a present and see her ask him where he got it (as fear rises up in her eyes).

What is going on with Trevor? Is he in Hell already and he is just remembering what happened before he opened up the cube? Did Kirsty open up the cube to get out of the car? Did Trevor kill Kirsty? Is Kirsty alive? You are treated to many questions in this movie as it goes on and twists and turns up to the shocking ending that I didn’t see coming. Did I wish Ashley Laurence was in the movie more than she was? Yes. But Kirsty is at the center of the plot. Did I really like the movie? Yes. HELLRAISER: HELLSEEKER may not be epic in scope like the second or fourth movie, but it is one hell of a movie. It is well directed and written. It is a movie that shocks you and gets under the skin. The director approaches things the right way and kept me glued to my seat as I tried to figure out where this movie was taking me. The next movie, HELLRAISER: DEADER, will be shot in Romania this fall. I hope the next installment is as good as this movie. Now one wonders if Dimension will ever release the original cut of HELLRAISER: BLOODLINE and will there be an eighth movie in the series. I hope so as long as DEADER is as good as HELLSEEKER.

HELLRAISER: HELLSEEKER comes out on VHS and DVD on October 15th in the US.

This review is copyright 2002 David Blackwell. HELLRAISER: HELLSEEKER is copyright 2002 Dimension Films.