Your suffering will be legendary, even in hell!
The sequel starts where the first movie ended. Kirsty wakes up in a psychiatric hospital, and there’s something strange about the doctor who’s running the place. He’s interested in the mattress where Julia died, and he’s interested in the occult. And guess who comes back to visit us? Yes, you guessed right.
I have always liked Hellbound: Hellraiser II, but I got a wake-up call when watching it this time. The movie is really slow in the first hour, and it feels so silly at times. And since I’m a big Freddy Krueger fan, I was wondering why I watched a dark version of A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987). Come on, the long sequence in hell felt like a nightmare in A Nightmare on Elm Street! So the sequel doesn’t create the same experience as the first movie did with its small universe and dirty whore house.
The movie is graphic, but Pinhead and his gang get little screen time. And Pinhead shouldn’t have long conversations with people that he’s about to torture and kill.
The scene with the crazy guy and the straight razor is one sick scene! The man cuts his whole body when he sees insects crawling on his body that isn’t real. John Rambo, you can shut your mouth! The torture you experienced in First Blood is like a small nick after watching this sick scene! And it’s not a short scene. Ouch, talk about razor burns! Give that man some aftershave without any alcohol in it!
I’m not going to spoil anything, but we witness a character who is transformed into a Cenobite, and he channels Freddy Kruger too much. Even his voice in one scene sounds like Freddy Kruger. And he has some tentacles with some thin knives that he uses to kill people while looking like an idiot at the same time. Jesus Christ!
Hellbound: Hellraiser II is all over the place when you compare it to the first movie. You notice it breaks some rules that were established in the first movie, and it takes a long time before the movie tells us why a character like Julia can break the rules. Hellbound: Hellraiser II is a rule breaker just so it can expand the mysterious universe. The last scene is also strange as it makes little sense. Man, this movie can give you a headache if you think about the rules it breaks.
There’s also a stupid scene when the movie tries to humanize Pinhead and his gang. Suddenly we see that the fearsome Cenobites from the first movie are a useless group of useless wimps. This scene should never have been made! That messed up the Cenobites characters that were scary and intense.
As I mentioned, the scenes that take place in hell feel like a nightmare from A Nightmare on Elm Street, but it also took me back to the hell sequence in Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey (1991). It’s so cheesy and not scary! Bill & Ted! Do you hear me? Yes, I know that Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey was made three years after Hellbound: Hellraiser II, but I couldn’t stop thinking about Bill & Ted and how much resemblance there was between these two movies and the hell sequence. Jesus wept!
This is the result when a sequel has to top the original by expanding the universe and breaking some rules along the way. It’s a movie you should watch if you enjoyed the first movie, but the silliness ruined a lot of my experience this time around.