HELLRAISER: JUDGMENT (2018) Review
Oh. My. God. It’s, er… it’s… um… this is… I don’t… I mean, like… er… I, um… did I… did I actually kinda, er, like this one? Look, it's garbage, no doubt, but it maybe isn’t actually terrible garbage. The thing about Gary J. Tunnicliffe’s 2018 offering, Hellraiser: Judgment, is that it genuinely does feel like an expansion of the universe set out in Clive Barker’s original 1987 nightmarish vision of Hell. In fact, Judgment is arguably the first movie to really bother to attempt to build onto the ideas present in the original since 1988’s Hellbound: Hellraiser II. The sad part, then, is that it simply comes far too late in the line of terrible, offensive sequels for it to work well, meaning that the sudden introduction of a brand new religious faction within the Hell dimension the Cenobites call home feels entirely random and almost out of place. It’s all very interesting — and deliciously grotesque and macabre — but it’s just kinda too late now. The series has gagged its way beyond the realms of Barker’s classic and into a big ol’ trough of puke. Had this been Hellraiser III, then perhaps the whole franchise would’ve felt more consistent and in keeping with one another, but it isn’t… it’s Hellraiser 10, and FUCK ME have there been some depressingly low points on the journey to get here! What we really needed, and what the film would’ve really benefited from, is for Judgment to be positioned as a sort of alt-timeline sequel in the vein of Blumhouse’s 2018 requel, Halloween. Well, that… and Doug Bradley as Pinhead.
While there’s no denying that incoming Pinhead Paul T. Taylor is a far, far better candidate to take over the role from Bradley than the previous movies’ Stephan Smith Collins — who looks more like that baby doll’s head with mechanical spider’s legs from Toy Story than he does a commanding, terrifying Hell Priest — the fact still remains that without Bradley’s presence, the character feels somehow lacking. I actually sorta quite enjoyed the way this movie handles the character, he feels menacing while remaining in control, and has an air of authority to him that adds interesting layers to the political and religious goings-on of the different factions of what I guess is the afterlife, but Taylor simply can’t match the power or prestige that Bradley always brought to the role. It’s a problem that the film can’t really do anything about, to be honest with you, and I’m reluctant to really blame anyone because Taylor is okay. He just isn’t Doug Bradley, and that kinda sucks.
Still, the effects work is pretty decent — makes sense, given Tunnicliffe’s background as the effects artist for the series since Hickox’s Hell on Earth — and some of the imagery is genuinely inventive and grim. I did very much enjoy (weird word… ‘enjoy’ isn’t right, but there was no doubt some morbid curiosity going on) watching the kind of twisted trial and judgment (hey! That’s the name of the movie!) carried out on sinners by the Stygian Inquisition, and that the film deliberately doesn’t simply repeat the sort of things we’ve seen played out over and over again in the many, many rubbish sequels preceding this one was a welcome surprise. It is perhaps this facet of the film that gave me the most, and is arguably why I came away from it less disappointed than with prior entries into the franchise. This one actually does feel like a Hellraiser movie, and when you’ve been basically rubbing salt in your eyes for five movies in a row, it makes all the difference! That this is the last movie of this timeline before the reboot is somewhat irritating, really… like, finally you guys figured out how to move this franchise forward in a way that has potential, and… nope! We’re done!
What really drags the film down and prevents it from being all good, in my opinion at least, is the so-called human drama. I can forgive the various budgetary restrictions — the film was made on a budget of $350,000, which is hella impressive when you consider that a lot of the gloopy, grim practical effects actually work rather well! — when it comes to films like this because, look, I appreciate the inventiveness and skill it takes to pull anything together when you simply don’t have the money. A lot of interesting potential characters, including several new members of the Stygian Inquisition, were cut due to budgetary restraints, but what they left in for the most part worked! It is in that aforementioned human drama, then, that it all sort of starts to fall apart. I don’t know why people seem to think that what Hellraiser really needs is a dose of neo-noir, but once again here we’re lumbered with an uninteresting and predictable detective story that just feels pointless and distracting. One of the things that made Barker’s original so great is that it felt like all of this was happening just down the road. The weird melodrama of 1987’s Hellraiser is one of my favorite parts of the film, and I legitimately find it sad that it is missing from basically every follow-up. Instead of a strange, heightend kitchen-sink drama, what we’re lumbered with here is a boring-as-hell serial killer mystery and some lazy adultery subplot. It’s all very, very bland.
Reportedly, Tunnicliffe wanted Judgement to get back to what he saw Hellraiser as being about and wanted it to be a ‘true’ Hellraiser sequel. I think, for the most part, it’s fair to say he succeeds in that. If the aim really was to drag the franchise back to its roots, then Judgment is a success, albeit one hampered by circumstantial issues — the lack of Bradley, the budgetary restrictions, meddling rights holders, etc. — and a script that desperately needed input from someone who could make the human elements more… well, human. This feels weird to say because I’m at the end of this run now and the journey through it has been a horrible slog, but I sort of wish there was more of this. Not of anything that comes before — bar the original and Hellbound, obvs! — but of this specifically. I’d have been interested to see what else Tunnicliffe could’ve brought to the series if given more creative freedom and more money to properly realize what he envisioned. Judgment isn’t a film I’d recommend to anyone outside of Hellraiser fans, but if you’ve made your way through the original, its sequel, Hell on Earth, and Bloodlines, it wouldn’t hurt to jump ahead to this one and call it a day. I’m gonna do it! Fuck it! I’m going for it. This gets a positive review! 3/5.
