So...this is IT for all the major hellraiser fans...finally taking the series to a new direction....I disagree it does(i apologize for cursing,but it sounds better this way).
The movie is about a MMORPG game called hellworld,which is based on the previous hellraiser movies. The game annually has a party,where people are invited viá the game. Only the best players are invited. The movie follows a group of people who are invited. Their friend died 2 years before,and the death apparently had something to do with the game. Anyways they party in the house after meeting ''the host'' played by Lance Henriksen. Apparently the ''leviathan house'' where the party is,is owned by him. Eventually they start dying one by one in REGULAR deaths. Thats right. REGULAR. No chains ripping through human flesh. No piano wires to cut people up. No nothing special really. The directing on this one works well,and it has decent actors. The story is also clever and good. So whats the problem? IT ISN'T A HELLRAISER MOVIE! OK,the thing is that miramax couldn't bother to make a decent script for the 2 latest hellraisers(hellworld and deader),so instead they took some old script they hadnt filmed yet,put cenobites to it and voilá,they had a new hellraiser script. In deader this worked,but the thing is deader was very,very different from hellworld. Were as deader went for a thriller/horror approach in the movie,hellworld is nothing but a basic slasher. It might work with some other franchise,but not with hellraiser. What mostly bothered me in the movie was that pinhead,although getting shown little enough to keep him scary,does most of the dirty work himself,but the thing is he doesn't use the regular chains and stuff. No,he uses a hatchet and a stake. He uses the hatchet with his hand. See the problem? The pinhead we all know doesn't kill people with hatchets,and especially doesn't handle them himself. Then the other cenobites include only 2 actual cenobites. The other two are victims of murders in the ''leaviathan house''. These two are a zombie looking man,and a woman with her throat open(not like in hellraiser or hellraiser II,this one is worse). The 2 actual cenobites include that annoying chatterer wannabe(in the ending of the movie he has a neat toy though),and the guy whos has a black cloth on his eyes and mouth(any help on which movie this guy is from?). The musical score is very meaningless,it doesn't bring any tension or badness in the movie. It might as well not be there.
Overall if you are a hardcore fan of the hellraiser movies,don't watch this. You'll just be mad afterwards. BUT if you're a slasher fan,then definitely see this one. You'll like it. Scoring: Hardcore Hellraiser fans:21/100 Other people:80/100