Detective Joseph Thorne is your average cop: crooked, abusive,
dishonest...intelligent. Okay well maybe he's not average after all. One day
while snorting coke, he's called to a murder investigation. After pocketing the
money from the dead guy's wallet, Thorne also steals The Lament Configuration
box that's found near the mutilated corpse. He then goes home long enough to
insult his wife and traumatize his daughter before going to a seedy hotel and
getting baked with a hooker. Later on he starts messing around with the
cube. Unlike the earlier movies, hooks and chains don't shoot out of the box
followed by an entrance of Pinhead and Pals. Instead, it starts a series of
almost David Lynch-style nightmarish events. The hooker he was banging ends up
dead and in order to save his own hide Thorne blackmails his partner by making
it look like he killed the hooker! At the same time Thorne starts digging
deeper into where the cube came from. The entire time he's haunted by visions of
demons and everybody around him getting murdered.Despite the fact that Pinhead is only in the movie for like 3 minutes(!!!) total HELLRAISER: INFERNO is an alright film. It's not really a straightforward horror film but more of a tripped out MULLHOLLAND DR. / JACOB'S LADDER-style nightmare (and yes I realize MD wasn't even out when this film was made). If you're looking for a Pinhead-fest then you're going to be disappointed, but if you go into it with an open mind you might actually enjoy it. H:I would've definitely been improved with a larger budget and a shorter runtime, but for what it is it's an entertaining watch. Will I ever watch it again? Not soon, but I don't feel that my time was wasted either. Check it out...or not.
Part 1 - Hellraiser (1987)
Part 2 - Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988)
Part 3 - Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth (1992)
Part 4 - Hellraiser: Bloodline (1996)
Part 6 - Hellraiser: Hellseeker (2002)
Part 7 - Hellraiser: Deader (2005)
Part 8 - Hellraiser: Hellworld (2005)
Part 9 - Hellraiser: Revelations (2011)
Part 10 - Hellraiser: Judgement (2018)
Remake - Hellraiser (2022)
