While the noir voiceover elements are forced, everything else that mixes noir and surrealism with the edgy, visceral police procedural is well done. This is like if Seven and Lost Highway met a Hellraiser movie. There are many frightening moments and there is a decent blend of special effects compared to what is left to the imagination. The mystery reveal is satisfying and the ending is even more smart. What does bring this movie down is the lack of Pinhead, probably the least we have seen in these movies. The pacing, especially compared to the others is a little more sluggish though the slower burn leads to a satisfying reveal. While the movie is shot well, and you can see flashes of what Scott Derrickson would become, the production values and set designs are very bland and direct to video looking.
The film starts off with some computer screen saver looking credits, though I did enjoy the violins mixed with the human voice in Walter Werzowa's score. It sounded like a satanic panic movie from the 1970s. The film starts with Detective Joseph Thorne's (Craig Sheffer) first narrative voiceover talking about his life becoming a puzzle. Him and his partner, Detective Nenonen (Nicholas Turturro) go to investigate a dead body around a satanic pentagram. Thorne says he knew the person, as it was a man he and his friends bullied in high school. Thorne finds drugs in a book and uses a sleight of hand trick to conceal them and take them for himself.
While in the evidence room he also steals the man's money and a mysterious puzzle box he had with him. We of course know this is the Lament configuration. He goes home but then leaves and tells us in a voiceover that he does believe in marriage and monogamy, but that indulging in vices such as cheating and doing drugs keeps him from coming back. While getting high and having sex with prostitute, he opens the box and wakes up the next in the bathroom. He eventually gets a harrowing phone call from the prostitute as she is killed. Soon more bodies follow and Thorne either knows them all or was investigating them. The killer always leaves behind a child's finger implying that he is cutting one off with each murder. Will Joseph catch the killer or is something else going on?
Spoiler Section
There are some great special effects moments in this. While you don't see it fully, when Thorne has that first nightmare the effect of his head splitting is cool. The ice-breaking effects on his wife and daughter later are great. The dead body of his snitch or informant with his back all cut up is great too. While the locations in this movie look particularly bland and almost nothing is memorable, the actual filmmaking is great.. I like the fade to white and then fade to red during the cocaine sequence because it almost represents a change in the film to when he goes into hell. There some really good blurry camera effects and dolly zooms during the scene at the end in the hospital wing. I like how this movie sometimes doesn't spell everything out for you. With the prostitute for example you see his reaction to seeing her body, then the film cuts. Later you see her when they investigate but you never actually see what happened to her. The way the kill with Nenonen is filmed is great as well as it reminds me of something out of Hitchcock movie where you see him looking across the building with the telescope.
There are many things this movie does that other movies would also do. While I don't believe this film is influential in any way there are many things it does that movies after it did. The idea of a killer using videotapes and them investigating them reminded me of Saw. The workaholic, cheating father who neglects his family and has a daughter is also similar to Saw. The whole thing with the cowboy in the woods is very similar to Mulholland Drive. The way this movie goes into a circle merging reality with some sort of alternate life or subconscious is also out of a David Lynch movie.
I really like how this movie goes about Thorne's characerization. Throughout the film everyone who dies is someone he has wronged. He becomes more sympathetic as the movie goes on. As it goes on the targets become more and more personal to him. At the end you find out that the child he has been chasing is really him, representing his own innocence, and the killer is also the version of him that has been corrupted. The victims being anyone he has hurt, wronged, or neglected with his immoral actions.
Hellraiser 5 and 6 specifically represent a change in Pinhead's philosophy. In this movie he acts as a moral policeman of sorts bringing a lesson to Thorne that leads to his own hell. While the other movies showed Pinhead just killing people outright perhaps this is an expansion on what happens to people in their own hell. This is still representative of the merging of pleasure and pain because Thorne gets the thrill and a purpose for going after this killer, trying to save a child. His pain is knowing he caused all of it and because he opened the box he can't take it back. I was blown away by the ending the first time I saw this. I thought being trapped in a time loop where they can't save anyone they care about was a great idea for a personal hell.
Rating: 6.5/10
Trivia: Though places report this was a different movie that eventually turned into a Hellraiser film, Scott Derrickson has said on Twitter that was the idea he pitched for the movie to the Weinsteins.
No comments:
Post a Comment