Paul Harris Boardman – Tripping Through Gateways

Opening in Iraq, some soldiers discover a strange cave. Inside they encounter something unnatural. The film then picks up with Ralph Sarchie a few years later. He is giving mouth to mouth to what is revealed to be an infant…unsuccessfully.

Sarchie is a man dealing with facing a very dark world that has tested his faith and left him feeling hopeless and empty. His partner (Community’s Joel McHale) takes a lighter view of life and his wife would like him to open up and be a part of their life.

When Sarchie find himself facing a set of crimes with seemingly impossible to explain aspects, he gets connected to Father Mendoza. The Priest is familiar with one of their suspects, Jane. He becomes Sarchie’s educator in the spiritual world.

Like the Conjuring films, Deliver Us From Evil is based on the stories of a real guy. Ralph Sarchie is now retired, but became a Catholic Demonologist. Not unlike Ed and Lorraine Warren, it is pretty hard not to believe that their stories are a bit…exaggerated. And I have no doubt that Derrickson and screenwriter Paul Harris Boardman take liberties.

Sean Harris makes for a freaky victim of possession and I am a fan of Eric Bana who gives Sarchie a rough and weary edge.McHale brings some comedy, but he also proves himself capable in the drama. Olivia Munn does not get a ton to do, but she has a nice scene with Bana where he pours out his sense of futility about the world…sharing all the thinks he has kept bottle up inside to protect her.

Yeah, the films finale gets a little crazy, but Derrickson knows what he is aiming for (a horror movie with a tale of redemption) and mostly hits the mark with a dramatic and entertaining film.

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.

Tag: Paul Harris Boardman

Cops and Demons (Deliver Us From Evil, 2014)

Sweet Suffering Pt 5 (Hellraiser: Inferno, 2000)