Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on the new internet machine.
If memory serves, I saw Hellbound: Hellraiser II (which I’m going to call Hellraiser II from this point forward) before I saw Hellraiser. This wasn’t by design. I think I walked into my living room when a college roommate had just started watching this first sequel (there are 10 total Hellraiser movies with the tenth released in 2018! Who knew?) and I sat down and watched it, too. It’s plenty gory, far more extreme in that respect than the original film. And because it doesn’t have to do a great deal of world building, it gives us a lot more of what we’re hoping for in a film from this series.
Hellraiser II picks up pretty much immediately after the conclusion of the first film, although we do get a little prequel of British military officer Elliott Spencer (Doug Bradley) opening the Lament Configuration and becoming the Cenobite Pinhead. From there, we jump back to the film’s present with survivor Kirsty Cotton (Ashley Laurence) in a mental institution because of her wild stories of the dead returning, skinless humans, and monsters from another dimension. Her boyfriend from the first movie will not appear in this sequel—somehow he’s managed to escape dealing with puzzle boxes and Cenobites.
