41
Metascore
13 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 70IGNIGNHellbound is gorier, larger, and more accessible than the first. It rehashes the original at the outset so people can grasp it whether or not they'd seen the first and as a result is an easier film to enjoy.
- This follow-up is faster and campier than its mostly somber predecessor, but the basic grim tenets of British horror author Clive Barker's supernatural worldview are still intact: a universe with a senseless hell but no heaven, without a god but with plenty of demons, without real good but oozing evil to spare.
- 50TV Guide MagazineTV Guide MagazineThe obsessive lust that drives Higgins to horrific extremes in Hellraiser was almost enough to carry that film, but Hellbound has no such straw to cling to, and the film collapses into a bloody mess of bravura set pieces that never add up to a satisfying whole.
- 50Washington PostRichard HarringtonWashington PostRichard HarringtonThe effects are generally good, and those Cenobites are definitely not the kind of folks you'd have over on New Year's Eve. Still, it's odd that the most intriguing, and threatening, items in the film are those darn puzzle boxes.
- 50Slant MagazineEric HendersonSlant MagazineEric HendersonThe sequel’s cure proves infinitely bloodier than the original’s disease, and its over-the-top depictions of brimstone and flesh are so loopy and unmoored, you’d swear the place where nobody dared to go suddenly became Xanadu.
- 42The A.V. ClubKeith PhippsThe A.V. ClubKeith PhippsOffering memorable imagery and little more, it eventually devolves into distasteful gore for its own sake. It's far less compelling than its no less bloody but far more intelligent inspiration.
- 40The New York TimesCaryn JamesThe New York TimesCaryn JamesThough the script for Hellbound is related to the Barker story, the film drops its plot whenever a fake-looking monster walks on the screen. Ogling strange creatures is the film's true reason for being.
- 12Chicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertChicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertHellbound: Hellraiser II is like some kind of avant-garde film strip in which there is no beginning, no middle, no end, but simply a series of gruesome images that can be watched in any order.