Aaaand … it’s dead. There’s an unbearable sense of desperation here as it opens on a bunch of modern teens fully aware of the Lament Configuration and the Cenobites etc and playing an online game based on all we’ve learned about Clive Barker’s world. I expect to be seeing the same thing later in the week when I finally watch Halloween: Resurrection. It’s absolutely the worst, most insulting sequel set-up. I’m sure I’m not yet an old expired curmudgeon … seriously, do the kids of today actually like this stuff, or is it the more likely scenario: curmudgeonly executives making the movie they think these kids want to see?

Then there’s the new betrayal of something I’d come to consider an unspoken rule of the series – Pinhead wielding the hatchet! It’s just wrong, that’s not his role. Someone has mistaken him for the stalk and slash villains he’s so often mucked in with. He’s a presence, not an action. And I know that the ending makes all of this kind of speculation redundant – and it’s a good ending, I’ll admit, the best thing in the movie – but still, you don’t use a horror icon of this magnitude like this, even if it’s ultimately “not” him. It really reflects worst on Doug Bradley, though I still kind of admire him in the same way as Robert Englund for keeping that character in his hands, script be damned.

All that said (god is that becoming my catchphrase?) ... it made me really laugh out loud once (“Well maybe you shouldn’t’ve blown me off!” and the look that follows that line), Lance Henriksen’s always fun, and it’s slick as any of the recent teen horrors. It actually surprises me this one didn’t make the big screen, to be honest. But it’s still a big falling down from 18 years previously.

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