It's important to note that the writers decided to take the series in a new direction with Inferno. The problem is that the direction they chose is far enough removed from the heart and soul of Hellraiser - from the very things that made it great - to be nothing short of off-putting and disappointing. It's a near impossibility to view this film without doing so through the lens of the straight-to-video format in which it was released. This film takes a budgetary back seat to its four predecessors and it shows painfully. It's very evidently a film script that the studio couldn't otherwise sell and, seizing on the opportunity, Miramax wrote in the Lament Configuration and, subsequently, Pinhead and slapped the Hellraiser moniker on it. A frequent statement fans of this film have used is that it must be viewed out of context of the Hellraiser series and entirely separate from the four films that came before it. When viewing it through that lens, Inferno becomes nothing short of a TV-movie-style production with some non-TV-appropriate profanities strewn throughout. The movie is bland, the acting is subpar and the plot is disappointing to say the absolute least. For a film that was promoted and released as a Hellraiser film with Pinhead on the cover, it's nonsensical to expect the viewer to enter into the film viewing it as anything but a Hellraiser sequel and, in that regard, it's not the worst movie ever made (and probably not even the worst Hellraiser sequel) but it definitely delivers an unhealthily large portion of boredom. Hellraiser: Inferno is an absolute pass. Not good.

A shady police detective (Craig Sheffer) becomes embroiled in a strange world of murder, sadism and madness after being assigned a murder investigation against a madman known only as "The Engineer".

So, the story is that parts five through eight of Hellraiser were actually other films that had the script tweaked in order to make them part of the franchise, under the idea that more people would rent or buy the movie if it had Pinhead in it. Well, that last part is certainly true: many Hellraiser fans rented or bought this film and were gravely disappointed.

The problem is that this is actually a decent movie... except the Hellraiser parts. A corrupt cop tracking a serial killer, while going mad and being taunted by the killer? That always works. But why would Pinhead involve himself in this? It makes no sense with the character or the story as we know it. Remove the chains and Pinhead, and you have a good story that actually makes some level of sense.

So, now what about the franchise? Is it screwed? Do we ignore this and other films or do we just say it got worse as it went? Horror franchises going downhill is pretty standard, but by accepting this one into the mix, we are muddling the mythology. Why did they do this?