Hellbound: Hellraiser II

A seriously underwhelming horror sequel, Hellbound: Hellraiser II picks up shortly after the events of its vastly superior predecessor and follows Ashley Laurence’s Kirsty as she must once again battle Pinhead (Doug Bradley) and the Cenobites after they’re unleashed by a demented physician (Kenneth Cranham’s Phillip Channard). There’s ultimately never a point at which Hellbound: Hellraiser II is able to even partially grab the viewer’s attention, as filmmaker Tony Randel, working from Peter Atkins’ screenplay, delivers a sluggish and pervasively tedious work that suffers from an emphasis on random, overly abstract elements – with the ongoing absence of context paving the way for an impressively gory yet entirely meaningless midsection. The picture’s almost total lack of momentum ensures that one’s ongoing efforts at working up any interest in or sympathy for the central character’s exploits fall hopelessly flat, and it’s clear, too, that the special effects-heavy third act results in a closing stretch that’s nothing short of exhausting (and, it goes without saying, entirely anticlimactic) – which finally does confirm Hellbound: Hellraiser II‘s as an entirely ineffective followup that strips away everything that worked in the comparatively stellar original. (And what’s with the head-scratching lack of screentime for Pinhead?)

* out of ****

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