Rating: 
Summary: not really hellraiser
Review: it's not really hellraiser, it's more of a detective crime story.
hellraiser is to explain the pleasure of hell, and this film has nothing to do with that at all.
i don't know why pinhead is on the front cover when he only has like a 40 second part in it alltogether.
the film is allright as a crime thriller, but it's poor as hellraiser.
Rating: 
Summary: Too long, too filled with self-loathing, and too obvious
Review: The last movie I saw in the Hellraiser series was "Hellraiser in Space"-Hellraiser: Bloodline. I enjoyed it, mostly because I've never been too attached to the Hellraiser series anyway and the science fiction twist made it interesting. It was especially amusing to see the Cenobites confused by advanced technology (though they catch up fast).
Anyway, although Hellraiser: Bloodline was technically the end to the series, it's obvious we're now in franchise life-support territory. That said, I wasn't expecting much from Hellraiser: Inferno.
The first thing that's surprising about Inferno is that it's a movie that takes itself very seriously. This is not about gore or even physical horror. It's a film noir with a good dash of psychological horror.
Detective Joseph Thorne (Craig Sheffer) is a beetle-browed thug masquerading as a police officer. He sleeps with prostitutes, he snorts drugs, and he frames people who get in his way. He's also a highly effective cop in an underworld gone mad. He has been inexplicably teamed up with Tony Nenonen (Nicholas Turturro), a goody two-shoes partner who is completely clueless.
Thorne has a beautiful wife, Melanie (Noelle Evans) and daughter (Lindsay Taylor, I think). How he ended up with his wife or producing such a sweet child is a mystery. In essence, Thorne's a big jerk and everybody but Thorne knows it. And maybe the writers (Paul Harris Boardman and Scott Derickson).
Eventually, Thorne meets his match in a psychopath known only as The Engineer, who cuts the fingers of a child and leaves them at the scene of various crimes. Thorne becomes obsessed with the fate of this little boy, seeing a reflection of his own family in the tortured child. He's closer to the truth than he realizes.
There are a few other characters, notably Thorne's elderly parents and a police psychologist (James Remar). But in the end, nobody can help poor Detective Thorne...not even himself. Everyone pretty much exists to be gruesomely tortured, so the characters aren't particularly well-developed.
This movie is a lot like Jacob's Ladder, down to the medical practitioner being the symbolic Good Guy. Except Hellraiser is the No Exit version. And the movie ends on a real down note.
The problem is that Thorne's descent into sin isn't really believable. He's already a sleazeball, so it's difficult to feel sympathy for him. Sheffer has such a massive forehead that it seems incapable of conveying much else besides rage and scorn. Unfortunately, the role requires a much wider range of emotions than the actor is able to provide.
The movie's entire premise hinges on a plot twist. Once you figure out the plot twist, it then drags on for another 20 minutes before revealing what we already knew. Sounds great on paper, but it doesn't make for a compelling movie.
And yet, the director (Scott Derrickson) works hard to convey the right mood. Through a lot of green lensing, we know when Thorne is in the underworld. The gore is suitably gruesome, if understated. Derrickson knows that horror is far worse in the mind than on screen and makes a point of providing a ghastly array of sounds, screams, and tortured wails just on the other sides of doors and on videotape to freak out the audience.
Pinhead (Doug Bradley) shows up briefly in a role that can only be described as judge, jury, and executioner. The DVD extras talk about how this is a new role for Pinhead, like it's an Oscar-winning turn for the fictional actor. Newsflash: It ain't.
In the end, Inferno is too long, too filled with self-loathing, and too obvious to really be a great entry in the Hellraiser series. Although it's not a jump-up-and-scream kind of film, Inferno does have its creepy moments.
Rating: 
Summary: great
Review: I was going to review Hellraiser: Inferno but the reviewer M. Nichols took the words right out of my mouth. The "It's A Wonderful Death" reviews says it all. I agree.
Rating:
Summary: Two stars is really being TOO kind!!!!!
Review: What was this? It sure wasn't a "Hellraiser". It was a mediocre cop thriller at best. What was the point of calling it "Hellraiser" because Pinhead only made a couple of cameos, and the cenobites weren't in it at all. I am one of the biggest fans of this franchise, but I was robbed with this installment. I didn't see anything interesting about this man re-living the same day over and over again, and even though I got the whole moral of the story at the end it still BLEW!. They just couldn't leave well enough alone. Just to make money "the powers that be" have to take yet another horror classic, flood the franchise out with pointless and crappy sequels, and expect the loyal fans of the original movie to buy this crap. So, my review to you all that have been extremely lucky not to waste your time like I did. If you really know the rest of the "Hellraiser" films, don't even bother with this one because you won't like it. I know that I sure didn't. No wonder it went straight to video.
Rating:
Summary: another great chapter
Review: The major complaint about the Hellraiser series is that it changes as it goes on and doesn't follow the same tired formula over and over. This sequel is very different from some of the sequels that have come before and that's one of the reasons I like it. It's great how these films keep reinventing the series.
Rating:
Summary: Fifth Outstanding Entry In A Row
Review: The "Hellraiser" series achieves a rare and difficult distinction with "Inferno", delivering the 5th consecutive entry in a series to be outstanding. Generally, in a long-running franchise - even the best ones - it's to be expected that there'll be chapters that just don't measure up to the best. It would eventually happen in the Hellraiser series itself - "Hellseeker" being a decent movie but not on par with the first 5. Those first five, however, are of a universally excellent quality that ranks as possibly the best straight run of franchise entries of all time. Part of it may be achieved by the Barker effect; it seems it's very hard to do a bad Clive Barker movie - even on one where he's not directly involved - working on one just seems to bring out the best in everyone involved from the performers to the directors to the score composers, and on.
"Inferno" does not follow "Hellraiser: Bloodline" directly. Not to give anything away on that movie, but its box description does bill it as an anthology, with segments happening in the past, roughly the present, and the future. "Inferno" doesn't follow the ending segment, instead returning to the modern time frame; in fact it's difficult to pinpoint exactly where chronologically it takes place, which isn't a minus but adds to the timeless feel of the mythos. The movie begins as a story of a police investigation into a homicide, with Craig Sheffer turning in the best performance of his career as a heartless, totally amoral detective and Nicolas Turturro outstanding as his considerably more likable partner. The investigation leads to a search for a mysterious figure called 'The Engineer', who apparantly scares the meanest and baddest of Denver's underworld out of their wits, and the emergence of surreal, mind-bending weirdness that challenges reality.
The effects are outstanding, and ghastly new Cennobites are intoduced (awesome special effects). Longtime Hellraiser fans are in for a treat with the apparant return of a briefly seen Cennobite who hasn't made an appearance in a while, and Pinhead is at the peak of his sinister grandeur. It's been widely complained about the relative lack of screen time for the icon - and no, Pinhead doesn't appear as often as he does in some of the other entries. After taking on a more and more direct onscreen prescence in the last 2 non-anthology entries, "Hellbound" and "Hell On Earth", it's time for a reversal and to let the Cennobite prescence be felt and dreaded instead of constantly seen. Personally, I think it was a good move; "Hellraiser III" went about as far as you can with the direct, bloody onslaught of the Cennobites and made a classic movie, the change in direction in "Inferno" allows for a different kind of movie and very fresh, original, and equally horrifying movie. The actual appearances of The Prince Of Pain come as darkest epiphanies, awesome shreddings of human perceptions of reality and a terrifying look at the darkest corners of being.
And "Inferno" is also a rumination on the nature of evil. It's hard to elaborate without giving too much away, but in all the enigmas and open-to-interpretation angles, there seems to be a theme that killers don't just kill their victims, they kill the intended version of themselves, that God, or nature, or fate, or whatever one would call it, intended to exist before the individual's choice of evil was made. That probably sounds very nonsensical and confusing, but when you see the movie you may have a different idea of what I mean. Or maybe not; you could get a very different take on the meaning. This movie has apparantly been perceived in a number of ways, and it's good to once in a while have a movie that can be that way. I know this isn't the most popular horror movie out there, but I give it my personal vote as one of the most underrated, under-appreciated movies ever made. I'd even say it's one of the best, period.
A metaphysical horror masterpiece combining the psychological and the violent like few movies have ever attempted. Extremely recommended.
Rating:
Summary: The worst of the Hellraiser movies
Review: This my friends is quite a let down. I'am a huge Hellraiser fan, infact I consider the Hellraiser films to be the best horror movies on the market. I even have a tattoo of pinhead on my arm!
But the truth is that Inferno was a huge disappointment. It was almost as if the director had a super limited budget, and Doug Bradley only had 2 days to be on the set. You barely get to see pinhead! I don't know if anyone else noticed, but in the first Hellraiser pinhead has a cool powerful and deep voice.
Over time it seems to get higher and more raspy. I personally liked his voice in the first Hellraiser a lot better than his voice now.
All and all this movie is a Hellraiser movie, but it could have been much much better.
Parts 1-4 are great, try those out if you haven't seen them.
Rating:
Summary: A true gem, if you can get over the lack of Pinhead.
Review: I really love this movie! True, it has little/nothing to do with the Hellraiser universe. It probably should have been a stand-alone title; but if that was the case, I doubt it would have caught my attention on the shelf of the local Blockbuster Video.Hellraiser: Inferno has some wonderful acting (in my opinion), an interesting story, good gore effects, some truly disturbing images, a good message (without being too preachy), characters that the audience cares about, and that's all I can think of right now. Oh yeah, the cinematography during the last 15 minutes (when Joseph is in his personal hell, or what have you) is gorgeous and inventive. And two things that make the movie GREAT: 1) Dialogue that sounds natural. The polar opposite of this would be found in The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones, and the Matrix movies. 2) Characters that are real. Each character in Inferno possesses good and bad qualities, in other words, a personality. Joseph Thorne did some bad deeds in his life, but you could still see his humanity. If it was another movie, he would wear black all the time, beat his wife, ignore his children, etc. I would have no problem giving this movie a rating of 9/10 or even 10/10.
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