4/5 Stronger then the last few Hellraiser Movies
  by R. Stringini (Addison, IL United States)
I went in to this movie with really low expectations. I had not been to happy with the last few Hellraiser films, mainly because they didn't feel like Hellraiser movies at all. Well, this one still feels distant from the core Hellraiser material, but it's nowhere near as far out as parts five and six.

Actually, once Pinhead and the other cenobites show up, it makes sense. He isn't in the movie much, and focus is more on the lead actress just trying to understand what she had gotten herself in to. It works for the most part.

I was surprised at how gritty this movie was as well. The violence is intense, and there is a good deal of nudity (mostly female, but a bit of male). The sexual edge that was present in the original Hellraiser is back.

Die hard Hellraiser fans will probably hate this movie. It is way more pulpy in feel. It is grittier than Inferno and Hellseeker, but it still lacks the down to earth feel of the first movie, or the fairy tale horror of the second. Still, it works, and delivers in the disturbing imagery, hardcore gore, dark sexuality, and all while keeping some decent acting and a fairly strong script. Not bad at all.

4/5 Very Dark, Very Disturbing Hellraiser Chapter
  by Stephen B. O'Blenis (Nova Scotia, Canada)
The grittiest and bleakest of the "Hellraiser" saga - in everything from the kind of lighting used to the frequent usage of newspaper/'real-life' type horrors - drug addiction, decaying city slums, suicide, etc. - this is a new feel for the series, and it's a step back up from the good-but-not-great "Hellseeker", although not on level with any of the first five movies.

A newspaper reporter (Kari Wuhrer) who specializes in reporting on - or sensationalizing, depending on your point of view - the above type of happening, receives a videotape purporting to show the suicide and apparant resurrection of a member of a cult called the 'Deaders' and is dispatched by her paper to Romania to investigate. It feels kind of good to take the Hellraiser mythos to Romania, home of Transylvania and thus of Dracula and assorted other movie monsters; though one immediately noticeable flaw is how few people in the movie speak Romanian. I know Europe has a higher multilingual rate than North America, but still...you hear maybe fifteen words of Romanian from bit players and everybody else uses fluent English exclusively. There are no horror movies that I know of filmed in this language and this would have been a great opportunity to give Romanian fans one that's about half in their language (with subtitles of course), half in English. Anyway...

The mood gets darker and bleaker as things move into the rundown sections of Romania, not 'horror-dark' but 'mega-gloomy/nihilistic-dark' and it's a credit to the film's makers that it doesn't veer into the territory of being downright depressing, but avoids that trap and uses the bleakness to its advantage (I feel that 'bleak' is one of the hardest atmospheres to use effectively in a movie). The Deader cult is in possession of one of the puzzle boxes, and a plus of the movie is that it actually touches on something mentioned in the very first movie that's never been followed up on until now. The box can, most fans will probably remember, be manipulated into Configurations other than Lament, and can apparantly open doors to a number of realities, not all of them nearly so hellish as that which we've seen. In the first movie Pinhead said that in some cultures they (the Cennobites) are perceived as angels, in other demons. Okay, we've certainly seen the demonic side of things but precious little that anybody would think of as 'angelic'. "Hellraiser: Deader" only runs along the surface of this new ground, but it is an opening. This whole line of other realms/other perceptions is something I'd like to see explored further somewhere down the line. If a user opens a different configuration, do the Cennobites emerge less hostile and 'nicer'? Or are there cults or cultures out there that consider the Cennobites in the form we've seen them to be angels? (What the heck would their demons be like?!?) Are there configurations that will summon forth beings other than Cennobites? If you watch the origin of the boxes in "Bloodline" the answer to that last one would seem to be no, but then again if you look at things from a different angle, perhaps it could be. A passage was built that opens into, apparantly, Hell - could the passage also function - unintentionally? or as a defence backup? You have to watch "Bloodline" and decide for yourself I guess - as a door to and from other places (or times)? And you have to look at what the maker knew and what he didn't know about his assignment. There's a wealth of material here to explore if one chooses to take it up.

Which has little directly to do with "Deader", except to note that it's gotten the ball rolling in these new directions. And while it's done it, it's offered some new ways to look at things (subjectively; it hinted at possible new interpretations without actually contradicting anything from before) and it's carved itself out a nice niche in the Hellraiser mythos as a distinctly grim, and very worthy, chapter in the series.

5/5 I love HELLRAISER!!!!!
  by Juscelino Liberato De Aquino (MANAUS, AMAZONAS ,BRAZIL)
In my opinion, this is the best horror series ever made. It's dark, witty and sure delves into the human mind, psyche and investigates the grotesqueries of human nature. Everybody knows we are born evil and the series show that not only are we born evil, we also become more and more evil when we do not limit ourselves to an ordinary life.HELLRAISER 1 portrays the life of a depraved individual and how it affects his relatives.HELLRAISER 2 is about a mundane brain surgeon who believes death is the 4th dimension and spares no expense to see what there is beyond this so-called real world.HELLRAISER 3 is about a demon who is free to roam the earth and wreak havoc.HELLRAISER 4 is about the eternal battle between good VS evil that plagues a cursed family through generations because they made the box that opens the gates of hell.From pts. 1 through 4 there's gore galore,graphic violence and plenty of taboo subjects, such as bondage - S&M.HELLRAISER 5 is about a corrupt police officer who seeks the ENGINEER - a faceless serial killer from HELL.HELLRAISER 6 is about troubled Kristy (the cute girl from HELLRAISER 1)and her braindamaged husband who are involved in a riddle.HELLRAISER 7 (this one) is about a sect who worships the DEVIL (aka LEVIATHAN - the LORD OF THE LABYRINTH) and a journalist who investigates mysterious and bizarre incidents.HELLRAISER 8 is about the INTERNET,which is used by the devil to seduce and kill whoever visits HELLWORLD - the website.From pts.5 through 8 , gore is minimal,so is graphic violence.The atmosphere ,though, is still dark, and all HELLRAISER elements are present here - HUMAN BEINGS ARE ABLE TO DO ANYTHING TO PLEASE THEMSELVES.Parts 1, 5,6,7 & 8 are like the HELLRAISER graphic novels published a decade ago. The CENOBITES are not the stars of the show - they just happen to be there and enrich the stories.There are different CENOBITES for different occasions.Parts 2, 3 & 4 are more centered (but not that much - except part 3)on PINHEAD,and once again NEW DIFFERENT CENOBITES turn up,because like one of the HELLRAISER comic books stated,different CENOBITES are required for different types of jobs.All CENOBITES are bizarre metal, leather & flesh reconfigurations.I like other horror series out there, but none is as visually rich,enigmatic and captivating as HELLRAISER - it's like a puzzle that offers different answers .PINHEAD is forever, so is this series, regardless of what some wannabe critics and pseudo intellectuals or frustrated script writers & lousy movie directors say. I already bought from AMAZON parts 7 & 8 and I am drooling for more ... HELLRAISER !!!!!!

4/5 One of the best in the series.
  by Kircher (Los Angeles, ca)
Hellraiser: Deader continues to take the franchise in the direction that Hellseeker did, with a darker tale of morality that Clive Barker had intended for the series. Strong story, strong visuals, strong cast. One of the best horror movies to come out this year.

The scare filled plot is full of twists and turns while continuing to expand on Barker's mythology with some nice inside winks to longtime fans.

True Hellraiser fans will put this in their top three along with Hellraiser and Hellbound followed closely by Hellseeker.

Fans of the cheesier Hellraiser 3 & 4 may be dissappointed in less Pinhead, but less definitely is more in this latest installment given 3 out of four stars from Fangoria Magazine.

3/5 Hellraiser: Deader (Denser? Duller?)
  by M. Nichols (West Chester, OH United States)
I had such high hopes for the HELLRAISER franchise after INFERNO and HELLSEEKER. Sure, they were virtually the same film, but they were a fresh turn from the mess of the two films that preceded them. HELLRAISER: DEADER, the seventh film in the series, doesn't necessarily stray from the recent formula but doesn't do anything to improve the series and, even worse, drags it down with an incomprehensible story.

Who are the Deaders? Well, they kill themselves and come back to life. How? Why? and even better, how or why does this relate to the Hellraiser mythology? I've watched the film twice and I still can't tell you. Somehow arch-antagonist and head-Deader Winter (played by Paul Rhys) found a loophole in the Lament Configuration but little effort is made to explain why an escape from Hell is a good reason to kill yourself in the first place. The real story is that a screenplay called DEADER was floating around unproduced, purchased and crafted into a HELLRAISER film. And it shows. All Cenobite appearances and references feel pasted in and leave the viewer with a disjointed horror amalgam that never quite gels.

That said, DEADER has its moments (the corpse in the bathroom, for one) and Bota maintains a great sense of dread via his claustrophobic framing, lighting and Eastern European locations. Finally, Kari Wuhrer is a delight as a Hellraiser heroine and this viewer is sorry to see she won't be carrying the torch beyond this film (especially since Kirsty apparently won't be back, either).

All in all, a sloppy patchwork of a film and a serious backward misstep for a series that had just started moving forward again.