4k Movie, Streaming, Blu-Ray Disc, and Home Theater Product Reviews & News (2024)

Overview -

4K UHD Review By: Matthew Hartman
Hell returns to earth with Gary J. Tunnicliffe’s Hellraiser: Judgment. The last of the long line of genuinely bad direct-to-video sequels, this film works hard to restore deprived faith in the franchise with a bold and exciting expansion of the lore. Unfortunately, studio/budget issues undermined a lot of the best efforts for an interesting if unrealized final product. Turbine gives the film an excellent 4K Dolby Vision and Atmos upgrade easily outpacing past discs offering tons of extra features.Recommended

Ranking:

When a franchise hits the double-digit mark, it’s either because the films are so great that fans keep coming back like James Bond or because it’s your average once-grand-turned-run-of-the-mill horror series. Franchises like Halloween or Friday the 13thkept getting new entriesbecause the studio didn't want to lose the intellectual property and so they desperately churn out new entries - for better or worse. In the case of Hellraiser, the Weinsteins needed to keep the money coming in and if there’s one thing about fans of this series, we’re gluttons for punishment. After the fourth film Hellraiser: Bloodline flopped like a dead fish at the box office, the series was pushed into the direct-to-video colorectal pipeline for increasingly shitty sequels. They started out well enough with Hellraiser: Inferno, but by the time you got to the online shenanigans of Hellraiser: Hellworld and the woeful "let's crap this out to keep the rights" Hellraiser: Revelations, the series needed a refresh.

And so it came to pass that longtime franchise gore effects maestro Gary J. Tunnicliffe was given the chance to write and helm Hellraiser: Judgment. On this outing with our otherworldly angels of pain, we meet the Auditor (played by Tunnicliff) who works alongside Pinhead (Paul T. Taylor) harvesting souls for hell. These disparate factions of torment will feast on the ghoulish murders of the Perceptor, a serial killer who is dogging local police detectives Sean Carter (Damon Carney), Sean Carter (Randy Wayne), and Egerton (Alexandra Harris) basing his crimes on the Ten Commandments. But as the identity of this killer becomes clearer, Pinhead and the Auditor will learn of more sinister motivations.

If there’s a truth to the Hellraiser films it’s the better the budget, often the better the movie. After the third film, Dimension Films started to get a bit chintzy and the quality suffered alongside the budget constraints. This is the principal sticking point I have for Hellraiser: Judgment. It's not Tunnicliffe’s script or directing style or the slightly anemic police procedural element, but the film can feel very cheap. Ambitious beyond what the pennies could allow, Tunnicliffe still managed to concoct a tenth franchise entry that did something that hadn’t been done since the original four films - expand the universe of the franchise in a way that’s not just cool but exciting.

The Auditor and the Stygian Inquisition faction is such a damned cool and gnarly expansion of the lore that it makes this franchise exciting again. Watching the Auditor catalog a man’s sins with a strange typewriter using blood for ink and skin for paper; it's just such a cool gnarly idea, and then to have his sins judged is even more grotesque. I loved this idea that there are various orders of Hell, but they’re actively in competition with each other. And then what I love most was where there is Hell, there is also Heaven, and God actually has a finger in all of the demonic machinations.

If there’s a plot gripe I have it’s the police procedural angle. Apologies for any vagueness but any real discussion would lead to spoilers. Given this film’s swift runtime, it just doesn’t have enough room to fully develop and properly dovetail into the Pinhead/Auditor plotlines. I heard some folks out there didn’t like the “10 Commandments” angle for a serial killer’s motivations. In the universe of Hellraiser that actually makes sense to me. But again, the very swift 82-minute runtime forces this thread to be compressed and tightened to the point it feels undercooked.

But a lot of my gripes for this film could be cast off as production limitations rather than an issue with the script or talent. In case you can’t remember six or seven years ago, Dimension Film’s parent company the Weinstein Company wasn’t exactly in good shape. Thanks to a certain individual's mounting personal legal issues, this film was given barebones cash, rushed through production, and then held on a shelf delaying post-production and release for quite a long time. Through it all, Tunnicliffe did the best he could at every turn. Hellraiser: Judgmentis truly the work of a guy who has been with the franchise for decades and he gave it his best shot with very, very little budget to work with.

So yeah, if you haven’t guessed by now, I’m something of a Hellraiser apologist. As I wrote in the Quartet of Torment 4K UHDreview, just from the box art I was fascinated by these films at an early age. I was a big fan in my teens and stuck through it for one increasingly bad sequel after another. By the time Revelations hit, I had littl faith lefet that anything good could come from the series. I’d lost all belief that the big-budget Barker-backed remake/reboot would ever happen. Lo and behold, Gary Tunnicliffe found that last ember of imagination and reignited my curiosity in the series in ways I hadn't experienced in the series for years. I kind of hope there’s a way to revisit the character of the Auditor and the different factions within Hell and see that expanded further in another film. Even after the impressive 2022 reboot, I think there’s plenty of room for these characters to coexist in bloody peace and visceral harmony.

Vital Disc Stats: The 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray

Germany’s Turbine Medien rips the skin off our backs to deliverHellraiser:Judgment on a three-disc 4K UHD + Blu-ray SteelBook set. The 4K is pressed on a BD66 disc with a Region Free BD50 disc offering the film in 1080p with another Region Free BD50 disc reserved for bonus features. All discs are housed nicely in a stylish SteelBook with slick reflective accents. The SteelBook comes in one of four very slick slipcase options. NOTE: All images are sourced from the included Blu-ray, when we can we'll try to source images from the 4K disc and if possible a video sample.

Ranking:

By the time Hellraiser: Judgment got punched out to Blu-ray here in the States, the disc felt like something of an afterthought by Lionsgate. While it had a couple of features and solid audio, the transfer was severely compressed limiting the visual impact. To that point, this film had to use a lot of editing trickery with CGI and other effects to heighten the mood and atmosphere to punch up the visual and try to move past the trappings of a small-budget feature film.

Now on 4K UHD, Turbine has done a hell of a job working with writer/director/star Gary J. Tunnicliffe to give this film the visual heft it’s long deserved on disc. Given the constraints of the original digital medium, it does appear that some sort of up-rez process was employed, I don’t know the whats or the hows specifically (or even the "if" for that matter), but it looks terrific offering a significant boost in detail clarity. If that really is the case and some sort of processing work was done, it was handled with extreme care. Details really pop for this release offering far more clarity for the makeup work and gore. We see a lot more of the layering and the depth of the cuts and lacerations in the Auditor’s face. Likewise, the work for our new Pinhead enjoys the same sort of texturing. Fine lines, facial features, and clothing patterns all look impressive.

The Dolby Vision grade is judiciously applied offering highlights and accents to the unique color schemes of the different hellish realms without blowing up the show. The yellow/brown/black tones of the Auditor’s lair are more nuanced and by extension more creepy. There’s actual depth to the image now! When I first saw the film I would have sworn they shot a lot of that in front of a green screen or something for how flat the image looked. Colors in the “normal” world are natural, well saturated, for healthy human skin tones. Red obviously gets a lot of play time. Black levels and shadows are much stronger than before and there are some lovely spectral highlights to enjoy as well. Given the limitations of the production, it might not be as lavish or intricate visually as the first four films, but compared to what we had before (which I'd barely give it a 3/5rating on Blu-ray), this edition of Hellraiser: Judgment is the obvious clear winner.

Ranking:

Slipping our fingers around the puzzle box, fans will now be tortured by an excellent Dolby Atmos audio mix. We still have an impressive DTS-HD MA 5.1 track too, but I have to tip the hat for Atmos. Dialog feels clearer and more present than before. The soundscape feels more active allowing for the strict confines of the Auditor’s lair to pick up that additional claustrophobic quality. In contrast, we have the human world that feels bigger and more expansive letting the height channels set the stage for a larger more atmospheric sound presence. Height channels mostly help expand the imaging of the mix, but there are a few fun gnarly and squishy pin-point specific uses I enjoyed the hell out of. All around a solid mix. Worth noting, German is the default audio option so you’ll have to switch that around in the main menu but that shouldn’t be an issue.

Ranking:

This release also comes packed in with some very good extra features to feast upon after the main show is over. The top of the pack goes to two terrific audio commentaries. The first is a very informative and I’ll say rather cheeky track with writer/director/star Gary J. Tunnicliffe. The next is a bit more active and fun as it again features Tunnicliffe this time joined by Pinhead actor Paul T. Taylor, and Damon Carney. It’s a lively fun discussion of the film, making it as a group effort. Then we have a nice assortment of making-of bits, interviews, deleted scenes, trailers, and Tunnicliffe’s Hellraiser short film No More Souls to devour. The making-of documentary is particularly well produced, clocking in at about 45 minutes it covers all ground from pre-production on up. The Tunnicliffe interview is particularly illuminating regarding Hellraiser: Revelations and how that puttered out.

• Audio Commentary featuring Gary J. Tunnicliffe
• Audio Commentary featuring Gary J. Tunnicliffe with Paul T. Taylor and Damon Carney.
• Judgment Day: The Making of Hellraiser Judgment (HD 44:08)
• Interviews:
• Meet the Auditor Gary J. Tunnicliffe (HD 48:34)
• Chatter Talks - Mike Regan (HD 24:35)
• Uncut Scenes:
• Skinning (HD 5:46)
• Crime Scene (HD 3:06)
• Pigs (HD 2:03)
• Deleted Scenes:
• Pub (HD 2:34)
• Church (HD 3:34)
• Outtakes (HD 4:23)
• No More Souls (HD 6:00)
• Audio Commentary featuring Gary J. Tunnicliffe
• Making of No More Souls (SD 7:23)
• Trailers:
• US Trailer (HD 1:55)
• German Trailer (HD 1:57)
• Kickstarter Trailer (HD 2:50)
• Hellraiser German Trailer (HD 1:33)

If you’ve made it through elevenHellraiser films, you know well enough they’re not all winners. After the second film, the quality track was a bit of a rollercoaster. After the first direct-to-video sequel Hellraiser:Inferno (which I’d love to see a 4K of), the franchise steadily declined as it precariously careened towards the inevitable reboot. But before that solid 2022 reboot, we got one last Hellraiser film that had enough tricks and ideas left to be impressive. Hampered by studio issues and budget, it may not have been a fully realized vision, but at least Writer/Director Gary Tunnicliffe had a vision for this film. Now on 4K UHD from Turbine, we can experience the film with new glory thanks to an impressive Dolby Vision transfer offering a sharper, clearer image than before. Capped with an excellent Atmos mix and a few hours of very informative extras, we’ve got another disc to add to the collection. Cap it off with lovely SteelBook artwork, all I’ve got left to say is - Recommended

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