HELLBOUND: HELLRAISER II (1988)
I may have only reviewed the fourth film in the series, but I do consider myself a Hellraiser fan. Ironically, I didn't become invested in the mythos until recently. Is that ironic? Probably not. Anyway, my favorite "chapter" has morphed over the years. It used to be the recklessly reproved Hellraiser: Inferno. As I sit before you now, it is Hellbound: Hellraiser II. While I dig the original, it seems smoggy and shapeless, a picture more concerned with its keynote leitmotifs than its characters. Hellbound is still mildly smoggy, but that smog translates to atmosphere. There is a defined structure, a charred skeleton under a cloak of surreal soot.
Well, I'll be a five-striped snub-nosed macaque! That's not a real monkey, and I'm beginning to suspect that half of the first paragraph is amphigory bunk. I think what I'm trying to say is that I like Hellbound more than its predecessor. It's slightly more accessible, and it's easier to sympathize with Kirsty Cotton. We get a heftier dose of the Cenobites, swankier set designs and the villains, irgh. There might be too many villains. Drop Frank and Julia. You don't need them with Dr. Channard floating through windows and fucking shit up. Hats off to director Tony Randel for inoculating Hellbound: Hellraiser II with dread and the willies. Yep, the willies! Those camera angles are legit.
I bet you're glad you pointed your browser to Random Reviews Incorporated. And to think, you hesitated.
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