Review of Hellraiser: Deader (2005) by Bradens584 — 19 Dec 2020

I’m a bit of a Hellraiser fan. So when I heard that a possible sequel starring Ashley Laurence’s Kirsty had been scrapped and replaced with this, I was geared to hate this movie. It was directed by Rick Bota and written by Tim Day, the duo behind the awful piece of trash that is Hellraiser: Hellseeker.

But when I sat down to watch Hellraiser: Deader, a strange thing happened, I started to enjoy myself. It isn’t great, but it does exactly what it sets out to do, it’s scary. It has legitimately frightening scenes and concepts that make it worth the watch.

Kari Wuhrer, who plays the main character, journalist Amy Klien, is a talented actress with good charisma. But almost everyone else is horrible. The cinematography had the signature Rick Bota/Gary Tunnicliffe flair, which I found annoying in Hellseeker, but I actually found it a bit less so in this one.

It kind of fits in with the entire movie feeling surrealist and outlandishly strange. There are really three things that sink this film. The first, and least significant, is the title. Deader? Really? The cult in the movie is called ‘the Deaders’, but still; it sounds really stupid.

The second is the writing; aggressively bad. The third is the fact this is a Hellraiser movie. Like Inferno before it, there’s extremely little Cenobite appearances. But, in Inferno, when they do show up, they’re damn good.

But Deader manages to make Doug Bradley bad. How? That was a feat even Hellseeker couldn’t pull off.