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Looking for horror movies on Tubi, I stumbled upon Hellraiser: Judgement. It’s the 10th installment in the Hellraiser string of movies. The director, Gary J. Tunnicliffe wanted to make a real Hellraiser movie, and I endorse him for that. Personally, I think he succeeded.
It’s a real Hellraiser movie, but the plot isn’t predictably sequencing what anyone expects from a Hellraiser story. Visually it is appropriately gore, and very erotic. The script is streamlined (for the most part) and makes all the sense.
I’m upset with those that rated this movie low because they don’t know what they’re doing. This is a solid horror movie in which everything of its previous installments was updated and with a premise that makes it extremely smart.
Cenobite Pinhead discusses with the Auditor, an emissary of another faction of hell, the Stygian Inquisition, about how the connectivity of the present and the rate at which earthlings sin have rendered the wooden box obsolete. The Auditor confirms Pinhead’s posture and they decide to seek the most degraded souls first.
We are treated to visions of hell from the first scenes. Except for the call to adventure scene of the dummy who’s victimized in the intro of the movie, the whole first twelve minutes are a long sequence in hell.
Paul T. Taylor’s performance as Pinhead made me feel a lot about the character. This Pinhead looked the same of always, but at the same time, I saw him as a little rejuvenated, and a little less pale than before.
Other than the rejuvenated sensation and the less paltry skin, it looked like the Pinhead of always, and it shocked me to learn it was a different actor. Then I found out that actually three different actors, Doug Bradley, Jay Gillespie, and Stephan Smith Collins had played Pinhead before Paul T. Taylor.
I watched this horror movie on Tubi, and (except for the commercials that interrupted in the most charged, best parts) I enjoyed it like I haven’t enjoyed a horror movie in a long time.
It’s very dark and to the point, like the best of the rest in the Hellraiser saga. It made me remember the first and the second in how shocking are the sequences about hell.
I can’t say I didn’t like something from this movie. Everything in it agreed with me when I watched it. From making the titles roll at minute twelve, and using the theme of the dark web as a minor plot device but also as subtext, to pushing the wooden box to the background and only introducing its subplot later in the movie.
Also, the retrofit hellish technology that the Stygian Inquisition uses and their method for judging the damned over-deliver, in my opinion. Finally, the ending. The ending poses a question that no Hellraiser movie has dared to ask before.
This movie ultimately has a message, it’s in the ending. I won’t tell what it is for not spoiling it. I’m just going to say that if you get it, which isn’t that hard, the ending is kind of horrifying. In the ending, the denizens of hell both ask and answer an existential question and you get to see both the actual question an answer.
If you are into hell and demons, you better watch this movie. Don’t expect an arduous trip to hell, though. You already know that in the Hellraiser universe traveling to hell is almost always a shift between planes. In the case of Hellraiser: Judgement, without using the box, the Stygian Inquisition lure their victims with a pragmatic and socially integrated approach.
In this case, the data center to their dark web operation which in fact is an entrance to hell and their center of operations to process the souls of the damned is a house in a dark nook of town, 55 Ludovico Street.
To make the entrance to hell a creepy house might feel as lazy script writing, but if you take on account that the inquisitors are demons, they have the power to open a portal to hell anywhere.
If you rather not have anything to do with the subject of demons and the dark web, that we all know go hand-in-hand, I wouldn’t recommend this movie because it may trigger you up.
Do you know any other good Horror Movies on Tubi?
I loved this movied and I hope to find other horror movies on Tubi as good as this one. What about you? Did Tubi surprise you with a good horror movie? Please let us know in the comments below, thanks.
© Bholenath Valsan 2020-2021 — Review of “Hellraiser: Judgement” – Best Horror Movies on Tubi
