Sweet Suffering Pt 5 (Hellraiser: Inferno, 2000)

Helmed by director Scott Derrickson (The Exorcism of Emily Rose, Sinister and Marvel’s Doctor Strange), in some ways, the Hellraiser: Inferno is both a departure and return to the ideas of the first film.

Homicide Detective Joseph Thorne is investigating a serial killer, but he is also dealing with his own vices, drawing him further and further away from his wife and daughter.

After finding the Lament Configuration puzzlebox at the scene of a crime involving one of Thorne’s informants, people in his life start to turn up mutilated.  Add to this hallucinations of strange bondage geared demons, Thorne finds the lines of reality becoming blurred.

I referenced that this film is both a departure and return to the early films of the franchise. The focus is unique, Inferno is about Thorne and his corrupt nature. The Cenobites seem almost incidental. And, in a way, they are. Inferno was a screenplay that Dimension films owned that was outside the franchise. It was not a Hellraiser film. The studio decided to turn it into a Hellraiser movie, thus requiring a script rewrite that added in Pinhead and his cenobites.  This actually works in the films favor, as Pinhead is back into his role as an impartial executor of someone else’s rules.

Bradley gives the role of Pinhead that other worldly regal ton, making this one of the better films of the post 2000 entries.