*spoiler* comments on the ending(s)
As I was watching this movie, I'm thinking about how terrible it is in regards to the use of cenobites and the hellraiser mythology etc etc.
Then when it turns out they were all drugged (not going to go into timelines for drugging plot holes or discussions on how the Host got each of their unconscious bodies out of the house and buried them while the party was going on) and everything is explained as the characters hallucinations - that worked for me. It wasn't really that Pinhead hacked that guys head off with a hatchet for example - the cenobites encounters were all imagined events in the kids heads.
Fine...ok - my problem with the movie is generally voided. In hindsight now I don't have a problem with that.
It would have been fine if the movie ended with the explanation - the two kids that are still alive are left buried and trapped - thats pretty horrifying. The transition between her hallucination of the host with the shovel and the actual rescue of the police was a cool shot. The kids being saved was the second logical ending point - yay happy ending - too bad the Host got away.
Then they show a scene with the Host and the Lament Configuration. He accidentally (I guess) solves it and the Cenobites appear and cut him up. Decent gore scene. But it really felt tacked on - like they figured that hellraiser fans would be disappointed that the Cenobites never really were in the movie (only hallucinations) so they decided to have one scene where the "real" cenobites show up. It also gives us a scene where the host gets whats coming to him so we feel better as an audience that the "bad guy" didn't get away with what he did.
I can see for those reasons why THAT scene was in there. Although the cenobites are more about the suffering that just instantaneously killing those that open the box...
THEN - they tacked on the fourth ending - the driving scene at the end, where the Host appears in the backseat of their SUV. What the ****! I see absolutely no reason for that scene whatsoever. The first logical ending would have been great - the second one probably ideal - the third one to satiate hellraiser fans and gorehounds alike. But the fourth and final ending scene of the movie was simultaneously cliched and unneccessary and made NO sense.
Your thoughts appreciated.