Kirsty (Ashley Laurence), who confronted Pinhead (Doug Bradley) and his demonic Cenobites in the first two Hellraiser film, returns briefly, now with a husband, Trevor (Dean Winters), only to disappear when the car they are in plunges into a river. The police suspect Trevor of killing his wife, and Trevor has no idea what happened, particularly when reality starts sliding away.
Quick Review: Yet another film that has the Hellraiser name, but little else. This is the same movie as Hellraiser: Inferno, but with a less unpleasant lead. Ashley Laurence is back as Kirsty to try and convince fans that this is the old Hellraiser again, but it’s just marketing. There’s nothing new here, nothing of interest. Being slightly better than the previous sequel is hardly impressive.
What we get is a series of events, where some kind of violence or demonic activity occurs, only for Trevor to wake, finding it was all a dream, or a hallucination. Sometimes we have him waking up after he has already awoken. Wow, dreams within dreams, is there a cheaper film trick? This means nothing that happens has any relevance. All these non-events are supposed to be deep, showing us that Trevor isn’t a nice guy, which we already know.
No series has faller farther. Hellraiser was an innovative, twisted bit of filmmaking that stands up today as one of the great horror films. With the return of Kirsty there was the opportunity to make something that could be entertaining at least on a nostalgic level. But even that was tossed away.
The other films in the series are: Hellraiser, Hellbound: Hellraiser II, Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth, Hellraiser: Bloodline, Hellraiser: Inferno, Hellraiser: Deader, Hellraiser: Hellworld.