Review of Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988) by Thequietgamer — 01 Aug 2021

I feel like a bunch of random crap happens in this movie for no reason. It's cool that they got a lot of the original cast to come back and that this sequel serves as a direct continuation of the first movie. This initially shows promise, but it isn't long before you realize that the movie is more concerned with visuals over telling a cohesive story. Which is odd because they got Clive Barker to return as the writer. It's cool how it lets us learn more about the Cenobites even if the reveals ultimately make them much less creepy and interesting. The other stuff it tries to do to establish some kind of lore goes by unexplained and just makes no sense.

That's really the problem with the movie as a whole. It's like everyone involved just threw a bunch of stuff at the screen to see what would stick, regardless of whether or not it actually was a good idea or not. There's a lot of unintentional goofiness as a result. It all looks good (for the time) at least. There are a few interesting moments that reminded my why I liked the first movie, which was mostly due to how it felt like a cool mash-up of A Nightmare on Elm Street and Saw, but overall I think Hellraiser II is pretty bad. The only reason I would consider watching another one of these would just be to see what kind of convoluted plot device was used to squeeze another 8 movies out of this series, and I can probably just Google that as opposed to actually watching them.