This was the one random Hellraiser sequel that I remembered watching not too long ago because I was curious about Kari Wuhrer in it. I also remember actually enjoying the entry quite a lot, even watching it out of context with the rest of the films in the series. This has been both a good and a bad thing about Hellraiser, because many of the entries can stand on their own as pretty good horror films, but at the same time, there is not a lot of connective tissue between them all.
Deader is the story of immersive investigative journalist Amy Klein, who travels to Romania after her paper receives a disturbing videotape in the mail. She starts to look into the Deaders, a strange group of people lead by a man named Winter who has found a way to bring people back from the dead. In turn, this has earned him the ire of Pinhead and the Cenobites for entering into their realm, and Amy is caught in the middle as the one person with the power to stop both of them.
A great thing about the Hellraiser sequels so far is that they have not dropped down in quality. Here we are with entry number seven, and the film is stylistically and visually very well put together. With really only one hiccup involving CGI bugs, the effects work are spot on and fit in with what we have come to love from Hellraiser. The grittiness of the setting in Romania, and the decrepit buildings, dark dungeons, and oddly converted subway cars is also reminiscent of previous films, as is the dark tone of the film. Hellraiser has not yet entered the campy, meta territory and I think that really works best with the stories that have so far been told in each entry.
Amy Klein seems like a bit of a loner with a dark past who uses the shocking stories she works on to maybe punish herself, or see how deep she is really willing to take herself. Is she suicidal, in a way? Perhaps at the beginning, but I think she gets a nice character arc throughout the course of Deader. She’s a sympathetic, likable character – a real tough girl with a relatable vulnerability. Black and white flashback scenes hint at her childhood abuse that still haunts her, and the symbolism of the knife in the chest (although I’m not for sure that she actually stabbed her father when she was a child – was that real or her redemption at the end?) is worked in nicely with the story.
Surprisingly, I once again didn’t mind all that much that Pinhead and the other Cenobites are not featured characters. Pinhead and the whole Hellraiser world is a metaphor for the hell and suffering that humans are either put through or put themselves through. When Pinhead kills all the Deaders at the end of the film, he’s basically scoffing at their stupidity, saying, “Oh, you thought this world was hell? Let me show you what you think you’re after, and you’ll see that you had it much better off before.” It has become more about what Pinhead represents rather than Pinhead himself, and that’s great. The fact that Doug Bradley came back each time, except for part nine, to play Pinhead keeps the character’s mystique and power alive – when he shows up, you can still feel the fear he brings, even if it is only for a few key scenes.
The blood and gore is pretty minimal, but again, not a problem. When Amy is becoming a Deader, she has this huge knife wound in her chest, which is introduced in a great scene with Wuhrer in the bathroom discovering it. After that, she has to walk around Romania with a gaping and bleeding wound that she keeps trying to hide, which thankfully does not come off as comical when it really could have. Winter gets a nice death at the end much like Frank in the first film when he is skewered by a dozen hooks and then ripped apart, and the other Deaders get a hook and chain that plows through all of their bodies at the same time.
I honestly can’t find too much that I really don’t like about Deader. The story works, the acting is good, and aside from a couple of scene transitions that don’t make sense but you just have to chalk them up to being in the freaky dream/reality world of Hellraiser, it’s a nice entry. It works as a stand-alone and it works in the franchise, or at least what the franchise has become with Inferno and Hellseeker. I like it.