I wonder what brand of chain Pinhead uses. Who’s his chain vendor?
One Battle After Another glowers at me from multiple available streaming services as I shamefully slide yet another shitty horror sequel into my PlayStation. Along the way to my horror trash PhD, I’ve seen some very bad movies, but Hellraiser: Bloodline feels specifically embarrassing. It’s no wonder that it was Alan Smithee’d; you can almost pinpoint the moment around the hour mark when the vibe shifts from “let’s make a great movie” to “let’s just finish this fucking turd”. And then it desperately crawls to an 84-minute feature length WITH credits.
This is a shame because the movie actually holds some really potent ideas and a decent start. More than other franchises, the “__________ in space” of it all actually intrigues me, and the time-hopping triptych structure could have been fun and/or epic. Adam Scott as an 18th century French sadist? Sign me up! Nevertheless, it doesn’t just “fall short” of these aspirations, it doesn’t even get fucking close.
Great ideas mean nothing if the writing, directing, editing, special effects, and acting all suck. Stylistically, it’s all over the place. There’s poor directorial vision: a jittery framerate thing, then a Dutch angle, then very basic blocking, then an out-of-focus shot, then another shot that’s blatantly reused. Later on, the amateur editing makes it exhausting to watch. There’s zero sense of momentum or act structure, and the characters constantly change so you can never connect with any of them.
The gore and make-up effects are okay-at-best. The unfortunate thing about the Pinhead make-up is that whenever he moves his mouth, it deflates a lot of the impact. It looks cheap and not “painful”, which is the precise point. Then there’s a practically-made dog-monster that is genuinely humiliating for a studio-made film of this caliber. I think that dog-monster, when viewed on film in the dailies, is probably what triggered the director’s existential meltdown.
As far as positives go, Doug Bradley does a pretty great job. The principal villainess is also well-cast and she gives a solid performance. I love me some K’nex representation in our LEGO-pilled world. There’s a fun reveal at the very end of film, but it’s preceded by a laughably bad attempt at a reveal.
In the same way that the name “John Merchant” sounds comically aloof next to his ancestor “Phillip LeMarchand”, so too does this sequel lose all the gravitas of the franchise. You could say the same for the previous one, but that one was competently made and more fun, providing at least some of the expected pleasures from a sleazy b-movie. This one does have a set of boobish twins, but not in the way you’d hope!
I wonder what brand of chain Pinhead uses. Who’s his chain vendor?
One Battle After Another glowers at me from multiple available streaming services as I shamefully slide yet another shitty horror sequel into my PlayStation. Along the way to my horror trash PhD, I’ve seen some very bad movies, but Hellraiser: Bloodline feels specifically embarrassing. It’s no wonder that it was Alan Smithee’d; you can almost pinpoint the moment around the hour mark when the vibe shifts from “let’s make a great movie” to “let’s just finish this fucking turd”. And then it desperately crawls to an 84-minute feature length WITH credits.
This is a shame because the movie actually holds some really potent ideas and a decent start. More than other franchises, the “__________ in space” of it all actually intrigues me, and the time-hopping triptych structure could have been fun and/or epic. Adam Scott as an 18th century French sadist? Sign me up! Nevertheless, it doesn’t just “fall short” of these aspirations, it doesn’t even get fucking close.
Great ideas mean nothing if the writing, directing, editing, special effects, and acting all suck. Stylistically, it’s all over the place. There’s poor directorial vision: a jittery framerate thing, then a Dutch angle, then very basic blocking, then an out-of-focus shot, then another shot that’s blatantly reused. Later on, the amateur editing makes it exhausting to watch. There’s zero sense of momentum or act structure, and the characters constantly change so you can never connect with any of them.
The gore and make-up effects are okay-at-best. The unfortunate thing about the Pinhead make-up is that whenever he moves his mouth, it deflates a lot of the impact. It looks cheap and not “painful”, which is the precise point. Then there’s a practically-made dog-monster that is genuinely humiliating for a studio-made film of this caliber. I think that dog-monster, when viewed on film in the dailies, is probably what triggered the director’s existential meltdown.
As far as positives go, Doug Bradley does a pretty great job. The principal villainess is also well-cast and she gives a solid performance. I love me some K’nex representation in our LEGO-pilled world. There’s a fun reveal at the very end of film, but it’s preceded by a laughably bad attempt at a reveal.
In the same way that the name “John Merchant” sounds comically aloof next to his ancestor “Phillip LeMarchand”, so too does this sequel lose all the gravitas of the franchise. You could say the same for the previous one, but that one was competently made and more fun, providing at least some of the expected pleasures from a sleazy b-movie. This one does have a set of boobish twins, but not in the way you’d hope!
