Hellbound: Hellraiser 2 (unrated version)

HELLBOUND: HELLRAISER 2 (UNRATED VERSION)

The second film in the Hellraiser series is flat-out bad.  The narrative is such a mess that it’s hard to summarize the plot.  The tale begins with a prologue that quickly depicts the origin of Pinhead.  In the present day, the viewer finds Kirsty (shortly after the events of the first film) in a psychiatric hospital.  By coincidence, the head shrink (Doctor Channard) has an interest in (and collection of) the sort of puzzle boxes that summon the Cenobites.  As Kirsty attempts to explain the ordeal she’s just been through, she uses the word “Cenobites” when she refers to the demons.  Did she hear that word in the original movie?  She speaks like someone who has seen the first film, not like someone who lived through only part of the events depicted therein.  Channard acquires the blood-stained mattress on which Julia died and (for no apparent reason) uses the blood of his patients to bring her back (just as Julia helped Frank to regenerate in the first film).

Channard takes a patient in a straightjacket out of the hospital and to his home with the intent of allowing the fellow to self-mutilate with a razor and bleed all over the mattress.  Were there no witnesses to his comings and goings at the hospital?  A fellow named Kyle (one of Channard’s co-workers) witnesses the return of Julia because he’d broken into Channard’s house (again with no clear motivation).  Kyle returns to the hospital and tells Kirsty he believes her story given what he saw at Channard’s house (he observed a collection of puzzle boxes too).  Kirsty wants to use one of the boxes to open a door to hell so that she can rescue her dead father.  She and Kyle go back to the doctor’s house, where Kyle (upstairs) encounters an almost completely regenerated Julia while Kirsty (downstairs) finds a photo of the man who became Pinhead.  She pockets the picture.  Julia kills Kyle and knocks Kirsty out.  Channard returns to the house with Tiffany (a young patient from the hospital who has a savant-like ability to solve puzzles).  Channard gives Tiffany one of the mystical puzzle boxes and observes with Julia from another room as Tiffany summons the Cenobites.  With the doors to hell open, all the remaining main characters set off on assorted adventures in the underworld.  Kirsty searches for her father, Tiffany wanders into a hellish carnival, and Julia leads Channard to a place where he’s turned into a Cenobite.  From this point on, the plot spirals into incomprehensibility.  If you must know what happens next, sit down and watch the film.  I discourage you from doing so: believe me, there are better ways to spend 95 minutes or so.  In his 1988 review of Hellraiser 2, Roger Ebert noted that the project “violates a basic convention of story construction, which suggests that we should get at least a vague idea of where the story began and where it might be headed.  This movie has no plot in a conventional sense.”  The 1996 edition of The BFI Companion to Horror notes that the sequel is “sicker and gorier” than the first movie, which is accurate.  It’s just a shame that the disturbing visuals were not strung together in a way that tells a coherent story.  Avoid.