Considering its budget and the fact that it was made by the writer of Hellraiser: Revelations, I believe it’s a big compliment classing Hellraiser: Judgment as one of the decent straight-to-video Hellraiser sequels next to Inferno and Deader. It’s another dull police procedural but unlike previous sequels, it expands the Hellraiser mythology, bringing a lot of new ideas to the table.

Brothers Sean and David Carter are detectives tracking a vicious serial killer loose in their city. Joining them is Detective Christine Egerton. Together the trio follow the killer’s blood-soaked trail, unknowingly leading themselves into the bowels of hell itself.

What I Was Expecting

Everything I knew about Judgment going in was trivial. I knew it had detectives, a new actor playing Pinhead and some guy with goggles and scars. I knew the director was the screenwriter for Revelations and, according to snippets of reviews I’d seen, the film was supposed to be decently average.

I wasn’t expecting anything on par with the original of course, I was just hoping it would be better or more entertaining than Revelations and Hellworld.

What I Got

Judgment is for the most part a neo-noir similar to Seven or one of the Saw films but with a much lower budget. It’s not as cliched as Inferno in that none of our main characters are corrupt alcoholic cops. Our cast consists of three detectives who are all, in their own ways, passionate and determined about tracking down the murderer.

There’s not a lot to them, for the first act or so they just serve as surrogates to navigate us through the killer’s clue-ridden path. We learn something interesting about one of them in the second act but the film chooses to focus on the progress of the investigation rather than that character.

While Judgment may fail in story, I believe it makes up for it in its ideas, especially when compared with the last five instalments.

Judgement gives us a totally new angle on the cenobite dimension. We learn that the cenobites are divided into sects, Pinhead and all the other cenobites we’ve seen so far fitting in just one of them. Judgement focuses on a new sect known as the Stygian Inquisition. In a nutshell they are the court to Pinhead’s executioner. The Stygian Inquisition’s bizarre and rather gruesome judiciary process makes for some really engaging sequences. You won’t be bored during these scenes, they are truly fresh contributions to the Hellraiser mythos.

It doesn’t stop there though. The film re-contextualizes a lot of Hellraiser lore, viewing them through a modern and in some cases more critical lens. The Lament Configuration for example we learn has been classed as obsolete by Pinhead and the Stygian Inquisition as humanity has become too infatuated with technology to be seduced by the puzzle box.

I can write about how Judgment expands and subverts the Hellraiser mythos for another five hundred words but doing that would mean getting into spoilers, which I don’t want to do. All I’ll say is that while Hellraiser: Judgment isn’t better than its straight-to-video counterparts in terms of storytelling, it certainly is in terms of ambition.

I give Hellraiser: Judgment a respectable 6 out of 10.

Well, that’s it. Another Halloween gone, another franchise covered. Unlike previous series I’ve covered, the Hellraiser franchise isn’t completely stagnant. Far from it in fact. At the beginning of the month I was aware that a Hellraiser reboot was in development but I couldn’t say I was enthusiastic about its chances, not until there would be some news or a poster at least.

So you can imagine my surprise when the casting of Jaime Clayton as Pinhead made world news. I’m honestly more curious about how the Hellraiser reboot will do financially than critically as this film will be the franchise’s first limelight entry in over 20 years. Since 1996 the series has become even more cult and niche following its last theatrical feature. Can something as sexual and deviant as Hellraiser become a mainstream horror hit in the same vein as The Conjuring and Insidious films? I don’t know but I can’t wait to see.

At one point during my coverage of the franchise, something occurred to me regarding Hellraiser’s artistic legacy. Is the first one all we need? Has that film said all that can be said with the Faustian notions of the cenobites and Lament Configuration? To me Hellbound always felt more like an epilogue to the original film than a fully formed subsequent story. Are all these sequels just pitiful attempts at milking a dead cow? That was my stance until I saw Hellraiser: Deader. My thoughts advanced even further after seeing Hellraiser: Judgment.

No. More can be said with Pinhead and the puzzle box, with the right talent. However this Hellraiser reboot goes, I just hope it has the ambition of Judgment because, in this age of reboots and sequels that simply rehash their predecessors, that’s what we need.

Happy Halloween everyone. Thanks for joining me in this wonderful and icky adventure.