Against all odds, I am still liking these movies, even as we move into the dreaded “direct to video” segment of the catalog.
Freddy Krueger is my horror movie soul mate. He was the first horror icon to capture my imagination, he was the first one to give me nightmares, and the first real horror movie I ever rented was a Nightmare on Elm Street film. The reality is, however, that his filmography is a mess. There are two classics, two entries that are enjoyable enough (one that’s actually decent, one that’s so bad its kinda fun), and one complete outlier that is more interesting to read about online than it is to actually watch. The remaining four Freddy movies are utterly atrocious. As a batting average, that’s… actually, it’s not that bad. Baseball is a weird sport. The point is, the Nightmare films have colored my expectation of all horror franchises. When I started my journey into the Hellraiser series, I certainly imagined some seriously diminishing returns. What I didn’t expect was to be on the fifth entry and still enjoying myself so much. I don’t think Inferno is a great movie, but I legitimately like it. There is something about the Cenobite mythology that makes it a great backdrop for many different story settings, and each new creator can just pile on details and backstory without the whole enterprise collapsing underneath the weight of it all. With Freddy, or Jason Voorhees, or Michael Meyers, the continuity is tied to a specific individual, so the constant retconning and addition of new twists inevitably clutters up what started out as a simple premise. Clive Barker’s Hellraiser universe has a central figure in Pinhead, but he’s just part of a complex web of stories that theoretically span across all known time and space, as well as other dimensions. The possibilities are endless.
With Inferno, the filmmakers set out to make a David Lynchian film noir that just happens to be a Hellraiser property. In fact, its unsurprising to learn after watching the movie that the original script was not intended for the Hellraiser series at all, but rather retrofitted with the grim trappings of Barker’s invention. This is a pretty common practice in horror, and I usually wouldn’t be a fan, but as I mentioned, this backdrop is so malleable that you can stick almost any kind of story into it and it won’t feel like a stretch. Film noir actually fits the themes of the horror franchise like a glove. Our protagonist is a corrupt cop, barely enough of a hero to be considered an anti-hero. His malfunctioning moral compass works just well enough that he will not stand for child dismemberment, as he discovers a string of serial murders that each involve a child’s finger hidden on the scene. He finds himself attempting to solve a mystery involving some cool new Cenobites, a mysterious figure called “the Engineer”, and a conspiracy that pulls his immediate family into the direct path of danger. The film explores sin and guilt and punishment, as you might expect of the property about a Hell dimension, and does a good job weaving in the pre-existing script into the new surroundings.
Hey, I’m not sure that you would like this movie, even if you’re reading a horror blog like this. The acting is decent, but hardly great, it has pretty low production values, and I seem to generally be the high man on my ratings of these films. I had a blast with it, though, and not in the same way that I appreciated the camp and creativity and mythology-building of Bloodlines. I actually think the movie succeeds on its own terms, maybe the first Hellraiser since the original that is focused enough to achieve what it sets out to do. That said, I hope it does not signal a new direction for the franchise. This feels like a one-off genre experiment, not the beginning of a sustainable storyline. Regardless of what comes, I am literally more excited to dive into the sixth entry of the franchise than I was heading into the third one. What a delightful surprise in this, my tenth consecutive year reviewing horror for the site.
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