Hellraiser: Hellworld

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Hellraiser: Hellworld
Directed by	Rick Bota
Produced by	Nick Phillips, Ron Schmidt
Written by	Clive Barker (characters), Joel Soisson (story), Carl V. Dupré
Starring	Stelian Urian, Lance Henriksen, Katheryn Winnick, Anna Tolputt Henry Cavill
Music by	Lars Anderson
Cinematography	Gabriel Kosuth
Distributed by	Buena Vista
Release date(s)	2005
Running time	91 min
Country	USA
Language	English
Preceded by	Hellraiser: Deader
IMDb profile

Hellraiser: Hellworld (also known as Hellraiser VIII: Hellworld), was released on DVD on September 6, 2005. It is the eighth film in the Hellraiser series. It was directed by Rick Bota.

[edit] Plot

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Pinhead returns in the eighth Hellraiser film to terrorize five friends who are Hellraiser fans addicted to an online computer game called Hellworld.

Lance Henriksen plays "the Host". His son Adam had been a fan of all things to do with Hellworld and Lemarchand, who killed himself thinking he was giving his soul to the Cenobites.

The Host, angry at Adam's friends for not preventing his suicide, organises a Hellworld Party for all fans of the macabre, knowing that the five friends will come. He learns all about Lemarchand and Hell and the Cenobite cult surrounding it, so that he can seem genuine and get his revenge.

[edit] Reactions

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This movie did not receive as much of a positive reaction with the fans as Hellraiser: Deader, due to it only featuring the Cenobites in dream sequences, rendering the Cenobites as nothing more than nightmare things that only exist in the demented minds of The Host's victims. Fans also felt offended by the portryal of the Hellworld players in the film, suggesting Hellraiser fans are idiotic and obsessive.

The film also suggested the Hellraiser films were real within the story and that the characters had seen the films and played the Hellworld game. It could be argued that it was simply the game "Hellworld" they had played but that doesn't explain why they are referred to as "Hellraisers", the game features actual quotes from the film spoken by Doug Bradley as Pinhead and why they make references to events in previous films. This confusion and the illogical nature of the plot has caused much of the negative reaction amongst the Hellraiser fan base.

Pinhead and the troupe make a "real" appearance at the end in a slice-up scene when Lance Henriksen opened the Lament Configuration his son had.

Around the time of the film's release to DVD, Clive Barker voiced his intention to kill off Pinhead in a future short story, saying, "I want to give Pinhead a good send-off. I want to do it right. If we are going to get rid of the old guy, let's do it with some style." What was planned as a short story has grown into a 600-page novel that is still being written.

[edit] External links

The Hellraiser Series
Films: Hellraiser \| Hellbound: Hellraiser II \| Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth \| Hellraiser: Bloodline Hellraiser: Inferno \| Hellraiser: Hellseeker \| Hellraiser: Deader \| Hellraiser: Hellworld
Cenobites: Pinhead \| Chatterer \| Female Cenobite
Other topics: Philip Lemarchand \| Lemarchand's box \| Clive Barker \| Doug Bradley \| The Hellbound Heart