Hellraiser: Hellseeker brings back Kirsty. Are you fucking kidding me? Ya know, I thought I was done having to spell that name so stupidly. Dean Winters is in this, he played Dennis in 30 Rock. That’s all the positives I have to say. This better be an improvement over Inferno. Please be an improvement and give Doug Bradley more to work with.
Hellraiser: Hellseeker is the first of three films that Rick Bota directed.
Start Film
Too many female names in the opening credit. I really hope there’s lots of crying and whining. There he is. Dean’s character’s name is Trevor, and there’s stupid ass, Kirsty. They get making out while driving, swerves, loses control, ends up in a river. The car is sinking. He actually tells her to calm down. Fuck that, one of my biggest fears right there. That’s why Mothman Prophecies freaks me out. Trevor escapes but the door closes and Kirsty can’t escape. This beginning is fantastic. Trevor, you can only scream “no” so many times underwater.
He wakes up in the hospital and this blond lady knows him. He asks her where Kirsty is and she sedates him. He wakes up and is having his head being operated on. The doctor is going to put pins in his exposed brain and helping him remember. Then he wakes up and the blond lady is named Allison. Allison thinks that they should run some tests given his headaches, memory loss, and head trauma. The doctor comes in and doesn’t want him getting hooked on painkillers and wants to discharge him. For the 5th time, Trevor asks where Kirsty is. And then Detective Lange appears and wants to know the same thing. I have a favorite character in this film now. I have seen him in quite a few things.
Trevor offers to take him back to the scene and walk Lange through it, but they did that a month ago. Trevor doesn’t recall. Reports suggest that the doors were open when the car was pulled out of the river. I’m enjoying the generic rock music. He asks this big bald badass looking dude to turn down his boombox. Not happening and he turns it up louder.
Kirsty is prettier now, she ages really well. Trevor’s coworker made a Hills Have Eyes reference. I approve. Per the coworker, 65% of all headaches are caused by low blood sugar. I doubt that is my situation. He goes to the vending machine and his sexy boss, Gwen, is very aggressive. She is going down. Alllllright. Gwen is my second favorite character as a bossy bitch. I also like the coworker. The characters are so much better than they were in Inferno. The coworker’s name is Bret and his real-life name is Trevor. And then Trevor gets back to his cubicle to see his little tryst with Gwen playing on his screen repeatedly. Then he gets a call from Det. Lange. The investigators are suggesting that there are no skid marks and that this accident may have been intentional.
Why haven’t we seen the puzzle box yet? Trevor sees a creepy dude in the building next to his. Then Trevor starts gagging and spitting out a lot of water and having a damn seizure. Was that a fish that just out of his mouth? Looked like one of those things from Dreamcatcher. Then he wakes up fine. Tawny shows up to show him a tattoo on her lower stomach. She’s a delightful little tramp. Wait, is that okay to say in 2020? She was definitely a skank. Not sure if she was a slut. I think tramp works.
Trevor is watching old video footage of him giving Kirsty a 5-year anniversary gift, the puzzle box. It’s about time. There’s a knock at the door and guess who’s there. Nobody…..wait, nope it is Gwen and she is already down to her bra. I really like her. She asks where “it” is. She is stepping on his balls. Ohhh, she meant the video camera. She is getting into and he tells her to get up. FAIL. He can say goodbye to that promotion. Double FAIL. Somehow the camera is live recording them sitting there but Trevor can see his hand waving in front of the camera. Gwen in the video is assaulted by two Cenobites. He wakes up in his office. Bret hooks him up with a girl named Sage that will help out Trevor.
He visits Sage and she does acupuncture. She tells him to look into his soul. This better not be the exact same plot twist as Inferno. The creepy dude is giving Trevor a musical puzzle box made by a Frenchman named L’Merchant. Pinhead is coming into the acupuncture room and he took out one of his pins. He jams it through the back of Trevor’s neck. He wakes up and Sage asks him if he’s alright. Detective Givens, Lange’s partner, calls Trevor.
Now it is being ruled a homicide. Givens asks how much Kirsty was worth. She had a big inheritance. He mentioned Uncle Frank! Yay. Givens is a real hardass. Trevor apparently liked to record things with Kirsty too much. He looks across to the building where the one dude was that was creepy. Now we get a sexy topless chick. And then the Tramp stops by. She wants to borrow something. She wants him. How many chicks was he getting? He says no, but she takes off her pants. Wear matching bra and panties, Tramp. She wants to be tied up. She is really nice to look at. He gives it to her. But then he is kissing a Cenobite and he wakes up in bed, alone and his palms are bloody. Is this his own personal hell? He comes out to find Tramp tied up and bloody in his apartment. Pinhead appears in the mirror and says “All problems solved” and there is no more blood on his hands, literally and perhaps figuratively because Tramp is no longer there.
He knocks on Tramp’s door and she is alive. This huge dude named Tawny is all possessive. No way is he pulling that kind of ass without a lot of money and or a huge package. Trevor gets a call from Lange. I feel like I just keep going in circles. He gets a call from a detective. Something with work, something with a girl, weird flashbacks, Kirsty, rinse, and repeat. Lange asks about his relationship with Gwen. Bret is also there and makes a motion to remain quiet. Trevor denies anything with Gwen. He sees a guy in the office making a box. We see that Trevor buys the puzzle box and he tells him that the price will be far greater. I hope Lange doesn’t get got.
Trevor visits Allison. He tells her that he misses his wife. Trevor asks Bret what he told the police. He said that he didn’t tell them anything that they didn’t already know. Lange is there at the office. He has the puzzle box. There was blood found on it that matched blood from the car seat. Givens is going to bring him in on charges very soon. Now Bret needs to talk. Bret quit today. Bret mentions the inheritance from Kirsty. Trevor cuts his hand. He calls Allison, but she isn’t there. Time visit Sage.
She says that his soul is causing his headaches. She tells him that he has to give him completely. Sage mounts him. I like her and the red bra is nice. Her bra and panties match. She grabs an ice pick. Trevor ends up in an ambulance. Apparently, he was on the bus and collapsed, so no to the Sage scene? He sees the original doctor and he has no idea who Allison is. He gets an older nurse who says the same shit as Allison. He visits Allison’s room and finds a janitor who is smoking. There’s Allison. The janitor is watching Trevor talk to himself. Hahaha. Trevor should be committed, right? Back to the bus.
Kirsty knew about Gwen and the others. Trevor visits the shop where he bought the puzzle box. Pinhead is now talking to him. He asks Trevor if it is so difficult to face his own demons and then he can’t run from his past. He gets out and then Bret is out there and puts a gun to Trevor’s head. He talks about the plan to kill Kirsty and split the money. It was to look like a suicide. He is pissed that Trevor did it all on his own. Bret would rather spend his time in hell than in prison. Bret just kills himself.
He goes to visit Sage and she has a knife in her head. Not good. Someone is trying to enter the room. Trevor tries to pull the knife out of her head. There’s Lange and a bunch of officers. He’s read his Miranda rights. Lange gives him an opportunity to explain himself but Trevor doesn’t talk. Trevor sees an officer beating someone. They found what they think is Kirsty’s body in the river. Now Givens enters the room as Lange leaves. Aww, it appears that Tramp got killed too. There is crazy shit happening at the station.
Lange takes him down so many flights of stairs, like the levels of Hell. Lange and Givens are the same person or being, I guess. Trevor ends up in the morgue. This is the type of film that you can’t write about in a stream of consciousness. Too many things that aren’t even real. Pinhead appears and says that we’ve reached the end and it’s time for Trevor to atone. He tries talking back to Pinhead and gets hooked and chained. Haha.
Pinhead used Trevor to get to Kirsty. She opened the box and he wanted Kirsty. She offers him five souls in exchange for her soul. In the car, she reveals that she made a better deal than he did. She shot him in the head as they were driving. She actually escaped the vehicle. Trevor didn’t. He lifts the sheet at the morgue and sees his dead body and realizes that he is the fifth soul. Kirsty says that he shot himself while they were driving. It was the same gun used for the other murders. They pulled the weird thing from his throat. Allison is there and she talks to Trevor like a normal person. The main doctor is really the coroner, as is Allison. Lange asks Kirsty about the puzzle box that they found in the car, and she says it was her anniversary gift. He says that he was going to turn it into evidence but he offers for her to take it home and keep it.
End Film
Did Hellraiser just become a series of morality plays? I’m not mad, but the past 2 have seemed that way. I actually liked this one a lot. Probably my second or third favorite of the franchise. I liked this and Hellraiser III about the same but for very, very different reasons. I thought the acting was fine, actually, I thought everything about this was fine. Yes, you can tell that it was a lower budget, but I don’t think that really took much away from this film. I also really enjoyed the build-up to the twist of Kirsty collecting souls. I see that this is not well-liked by fans or critics. I’m going to have to disagree with them.
Rating: 5.7 – I have no complaints about this other than having to see more of Kirsty. But this version of Kirsty was my favorite. She’s the Nancy Thompson of this franchise and seems to improve every time. I’m not saying to go out and buy Hellraiser: Hellseeker, necessarily, but watch it if you get the opportunity, uncensored. Boobs are still fun to look at. Terrible name for the film though.
All the pictures used in this blog are for review purposes. They are the property of:
Miramax
Dimension Films (presents)
Neo Art & Logic (in association with)
Cold Day Ltd.
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