--Julia Cotton, Hellbound: Hellraiser II
The Hellraiser series, or at least its core ideas and initial story, occupies a mostly empty space in the broader horror genre. It takes elements of cosmic horror, which emphasizes abstract metaphysics and existentialism over mere macabre imagery, and gives them the more sexuality-oriented context of erotic horror, particularly exploring the potential overlap between sexual pleasure and pain. Hellbound: Hellraiser II gives a nod to the source material's title (The Hellbound Heart is the name of the original work), and it does occasionally do a great job with its horror worldbuilding. It also happens to be marked by very limited general characterization and a failure to fully embrace its erotic cosmic horror. Despite not even any of the Saw films coming close to Hellbound's unique degree of extreme violence, the latter manages to do little more than almost rely on its graphic scenes to make up for the forfeited depth.
Production Values
It is very clear to anyone who has watched Hellbound and modern movies that Hellraiser II does not have digital effects that in any way look familiar to what can be done today. The flashes of blue energy associated with the Lament Configuration, the Cenobites, and Leviathan look especially outdated, in contrast with the (unsurprisingly) enduring practical effects for the Lament Configuration itself. Some shots of the labyrinthine hell of the Cenobites even appears to just show a still image of an overview perspective of the realm. It is actually the gore, and there is some extreme gore in Hellbound, that is the best of the effects.
The characters unfortunately do not even fare as well as the practical effects do. In a huge missed opportunity, there is very little character development even for Kristy, the protagonist, although the resurrected Julia does have enough lines and scenes (and the right kind of lines and scenes) to establish some sort of spiritual-sexual motivation. Pinhead himself has only a handful of scenes. When it comes to the actual performances, Clare Higgins plainly makes the most of her role as Julia, doing more with her character than anyone else--even more than Doug Bradley does with Pinhead, though he is a squandered character here more due to the writing instead of Bradley himself.
Story
Some spoilers are below.
Kirsty, having survived the events of the first Hellraiser and outlived her father, is placed in a mental hospital. A fascinated doctor brings a psychosis patient to a mattress upon which a Cenobite-related murder occured (an item which had been brought to the hospital), which leads to the release of Julia when the patient cuts himself almost to death. Julia uses him as a gatherer of victims so she can murder more people to regain her skin. A fellow patient of Kirsty named Tiffany who has shown talent for solving manual puzzles unwittingly summons Cenobites by solving the Lament Configuration, opening a rift to hell and allowing Kirsty to enter the labyrinth therein.
Intellectual Content
There are two main ways to make erotic horror or erotic cosmic horror in particular. In one approach, something about the atmosphere or characters must be made at least sensual enough so that viewers who do not find them sexy can in a less direct sense understand why others might find them sexy, with the sexiness distracting some characters from malevolence or impending helplessness. In the other approach, a hedonistic yielding to sexual desires must be associated with destruction or dehumanization, or creatures and environments need to be designed to incorporate genitalia-like structures with the intention of making the human body, something neutral or pleasurable, actually seem grotesque when juxtaposed with these unnatural settings. Hellraiser II tries both at times without leaping into the arms of the more abstract side erotic horror has the potential for. In fact, had I not read about the franchise lore, it would have been almost impossible to tell to what extent the erotic and cosmic horror elements were supposed to be mixed together.
Conclusion
I have not seen the later movies in the series at this time, so I have not been able to verify if the reports of an alleged drop in quality is true. It is certainly true that Hellbound could have had far more substance with both its characters and themes. An older film does not have its quality stand on whether its effects still look new or realistic decades later. What its quality does stand on, like the quality of all movies, is its depth, thematic and tonal coherence, and performances. Hellbound offers glimpses of the more consistent greatness it could have reached if more effort was put not into its effects, but into its characterization and philosophical exploration of pleasure, pain, and sexuality. The philosophical nature of the three and the storytelling opportunities opened up with Clive Barker's The Hellbound Heart deserve better.
Content:
1. Violence: Very explicit images of corpses and torment are regular. One scene shows a man, perceiving himself to have open wounds infested with bugs, repeatedly cuts at his body and releases a lot of blood before a cenobite appears. Some characters are shown as flayed humans who can still move around.
2. Profanity: Words like "bitch" and "shit" are used.
3. Nudity: A woman is shown naked in a way so that her breasts are briefly visible.
No comments:
Post a Comment