**Slight Spoiler Alert**
I am a fan of the Hellraiser movies, however, some of them are great, some of them are mediocre and then some are just awful. The first two Hellraiser movies are in my opinion great horror movies. I like and enjoy them both. Hellraiser 3: Hell on Earth, and Hellraiser: Bloodline are merely mediocre, but still quite watchable movies. Then we have the Hellraiser movies that are just bad, and unforunately Hellraiser: Deader is just such a movie, it is totally forgettable.
Hellraiser: Deadline starts out strong and intitially I will admit the plot intrigued me. A journalist by the name of Amy Klein, watches a video tape with her boss. The tape shows a group of people, who look like a cult, performing a ritual. One member of the cult, a young woman, lies down on a bed then shoots herself in the head with a revolver, The woman dies, then is brought back to life by a man called Winter. In search of the truth of the story Amy goes to Romania and begins to investigate. She goes to the return address that was on the envelope used to post the video tape. Upon going to the address she finds the "dead" body of a young woman tied with ropes in an upright position with a rope around her neck. She finds the Lament Configuration in the hands of the dead girl and takes it back to her hotel. I think we all know what happens next? Of course we do, she opens the box! In a dream sequence she summons Pinhead. She eventually tracks down Winter, and learns that the Deader cult is in competition with Pinhead, using his realm to reanimate themselves after death. The rest of the movie revolves around Amy trying to make sense of what is happening to her and why she is trapped between the Deaders and the Cenobites.
Hellraiser: Deader is the 7th film in the Hellraiser franchise and by this movie the Hellraiser movies are getting extremely stale. This movie would have been better as a stand alone movie but instead the Cenobites have been inserted into a non Hellraiser movie in order to cynically exploit the franchse in my opinion. Apparently the movie did not start out as a Hellraiser movie and it shows as the Cenobites and Pinhead are almost just a cameo in the movie. The story itself started out strong but by the time we get to the middle portion of the movie the plot has become a confusing mess. To make matter worse Amy keeps having dream sequences, so after a while the dream scenes lose any impact, as we start to assume everything is just a dream.
On a technical level the movie is also very poor. The cinematography is rather bland and fails to make use of filming in Romania to create a more creepy atmosphere. The acting is also very poor, the lead lady is not convincing in her role as an investigative journalst. The best part of the movie is Doug Bradley and his performace as the iconic Pinhead. Unfortunately he has little more than a cameo in the movie and not that many lines but even with his limited on screen time he was still the best part of the movie. The special effects were adequate, there was some blood and gore, but gorehounds will not be satisified as there is limited gore, particularly considering this is a Hellraiser movie.
In conclusion this is a terrible mish mash of a movie, with a confusing plot that doesnt make sense, and left me thinking that Pinhead was simply and cynically added to a movie that was never meant to be a Hellraiser movie.
4 out of 10
Summary: not a good Hellraiser movie, but on the bright side it is still miles better than Hellraiser: Revelations.