“Hellraiser: Inferno” is the first direct-to-video instalment in the “Hellraiser” franchise and it’s one of the worst ones. It was never originally intended to be a “Hellraiser” film and it’s just disastrous. What we have here is a poor man’s version of “Se7en” or “Silence of the Lambs” with “Hellraiser” elements needlessly thrown into it.

Detective Joseph Thorne (Craig Sheffer “Nightbreed”, “A River Runs Through It”) leads a life of questionable moral integrity. After discovering a puzzle box, he pursues an elusive serial killer, known as the ‘Engineer’. With the fingers of a child found at every crime scene, the race is on to find the child before he is murdered.

Craig Sheffer is absolutely atrocious as Detective Thorne. This character is really unlikeable and bland. Sheffer also whispers a lot so it’s really hard to hear what is going on a lot of the time. Pinhead (Doug Bradley “Hellraiser”, “Hellbound: Hellraiser II”) appears for maybe two minutes in the entire movie. This is probably the least amount of screen time he gets in the whole franchise. It’s ridiculous as he features prominently in the film’s marketing. The other characters are just terrible too but it’s the Thorne character that is just abysmal.

This is like “Se7en”, “The Bone Collector” and a ton of other movies but with some really forced “Hellraiser” stuff. It would have been incredibly bad without it but with the “Hellraiser” parts, it just becomes a total mess. Most of the “Hellraiser” sequels are bad but this is one of the worst ones (although I think “Hellraiser: Judgement” is still the worst one to date). This is just a horrendous movie with bad special effects, stupid twists, a pathetic ending and horrific acting. Please do yourself a favour and avoid this movie because it’s a real pain to sit through.