Hellraiser: Revelations is a 2011 American supernatural horror feature film written by Gary Tunnicliffe and directed by Víctor García (30 Days of Night: Blood Trails; Return to House on Haunted Hill; Mirrors 2).
It is the ninth film in the Hellraiser film series, and the first entry in the series since Hellraiser: Bloodline to be based on an original script, instead of incorporating series antagonist Pinhead into an unrelated horror story.
The film was produced in a matter of weeks due to an obligation on Dimension Films part to release another Hellraiser film or risk losing the rights to the franchise. Due to the quick turnaround time, series star Doug Bradley declined to participate, making this the first entry in the series in which he does not play Pinhead. Instead, Pinhead was played by Stephan Smith Collins.
The film was released in a single theatre in California for a crew screening that was ostensibly open to the public, then released to DVD in October 2011.
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Best friends Steven Craven and Nico Bradley run away from home and travel to Mexico. They film themselves engaging in several days’ worth of drunken partying. The boys later disappear. The Mexican authorities return their belongings to their parents, including a videotape made by Steven that apparently documents their final moments.
A year later, the families of the two missing boys gather for dinner. Tensions rise when Emma, Steven’s sister and Nico’s girlfriend, expresses frustration with their lack of closure. She demands that her mother reveal the contents of Steven’s videotape, which she has been obsessively watching in private.
Later, Emma sneaks a look at the tape, which documents Steven and Nico picking up a girl in a bar. A flashback reveals that Nico casually murdered the girl while having sex in the bar’s restroom, and later threatened to implicate Steven in the killing to force him to continue their “vacation” together…
Reviews:
” …the characters are ill-defined; they’re nothing but weak shadows of the archetypes one would find in a Hellraiser story. It also certainly doesn’t help that Pinhead is so insultingly portrayed (Doug Bradley wanted no part of this) that any time he’s on-screen, you’re either chuckling or slapped into silence by the silliness of it all.” Shock Till You Drop
“Hellraiser: Revelations eventually almost becomes Hellraiser film that feels like it has been rewritten by way of a Brett Easton Ellis novel about the children of privilege taking an anarchic pleasure in attacking the world they come from. All of which makes for something undeniably original and entertaining.” Moria
“At its core, the movie is just a really poorly redone version of the first movie, following most of the same plot points, but beefing up the original Uncle Frank plot into something much larger and less sense-making. The movie was rushed with not any time to re-write or tighten the script or to make it coherent.” Under the Gun
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