Hellraiser: Revelations tells the tale of Steven and his friend Nico who decide to take a trip out of town looking to get away from the monotony of suburban life. Bad things happen and they eventually find themselves in possession of the box. Ya know the famous Hellraiser box, that's more than a box. It has the power to summon sado-masochistic demons called cenobites. Well the cenobites have they're way with the poor two and they disappear. The families of the lost two are having a get together one night when Steven miraculously turns up at the door, though as the movie will prove there is more to his appearance than meets the eye.

It's Hellraiser again, by my count this would make it number 9 in the franchise and possibly the last in the line up before the remake hits the screens. The trailer that showed up for this earlier in the year looked terrible, i mean shockingly bad and not only that, they replaced Pinhead with another actor (Stephan Smith Collins) so my expectations of this movie were low to say the least.

So is Revelations any good? Hmm kinda, it's certainly a better movie than the trailer would allude to but still it has problems. Firstly the new Pinhead is nowhere near as good an actor as the original performed by Doug Bradley, i mean nowhere even close. Doug really made that part his own and seeing a new face as Pinhead feels unnatural to me. Perhaps the bar was so high nobody could ever top Doug, so i won't go too harshly on Stephan Collins but this is one element of Revelations you may want to be aware of.

The actors are all relative unknowns, I can't remember seeing any of their faces previously in any other movie but regardless the acting quality is very good. The fear, dread and downright anger is all brought across superbly by the cast and indeed helps the movie quite a bit.

The gore level in Revelations is also quite high and very convincing in it's nastiness, especially considering that this movie was made on a modest $300,000 it's impressive indeed. There's more than a couple of wince worthy moments to be found and the movies general atmosphere is really well crafted. Plenty of fleshy parts being ripped off or nailed on, its makes for a great and gruesome watch indeed.

The movie's storyline moves along a decent pace and even though a lot of it's details are fleshed out (pardon the pun) retrospectively it never seems to be get boring. Indeed this may well be the best Hellraiser since number 2, definitely since number 3 in this reviewer's humble opinion anyways. Shame they never had Doug on board but such is life. As it stands i'm gonna recommend Hellraiser: Revelations but just remember this is a number 9, best not expect too much.

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