The 4th Hellraiser movie is known as "Bloodline." The focus of this one is giving us some history on the Lament Configuration's time on Earth. We see the past, present, and future as we find out how the puzzle box came to be, and what's going to happen to it. The box is created by a master toymaker as a commission for a man following dark arts. This man Merchant (the name is French so I probably misspelled it) is unaware of the evil intentions for which his creation was ordered.

When he catches wind of his client summoning demons to do his bidding Merchant can't handle the guilt he feels for his part in it. Merchant steps up to be the hero beginning a struggle between his bloodline and the Cenobites that will last for several lifetimes.

From there we follow Merchant's decendants as they are plagued by dreams of things they can't possibly know and drawn into confrontation with the Cenobites. Angelique, the demon summoned in the initial confrontation, believes that the toy maker's offspring may find a way to destroy the doorway to Hell created by the Lament Configuration, and she is determined to kill everyone of the Merchant line before they can succeed.

The struggle culminates in a battle aboard a futuristic space station with the last of the bloodline who believes he has found a way to finally stop the Cenobites once and for all.

I'll be straight forward with you (which is not to imply that I'm usually not). When this story began on the space station I imagined a low-budget, corny, sci fi horror in the vein of "Jason X" (wasn't that the name of the Jason in space movie?). I settled in for a bad movie. This is certainly not the pinnacle of filmmaking, but it's actually pretty good. It's certainly a worthy entry into the Hellraiser series.

While we'll see a couple of the established characters again this is the last time we'll see any real character development for any of the Cenobites or any backstory for the Lament cube's mythos. So enjoy it while you can. The futuristic scenes rely a lot on CGI that isn't all that great. I suppose I've seen worse, but impressive it isn't. That steals a bit of the realism from some of the scenes. Fortunately this kind of stuff doesn't permeate the whole movie. It's mostly at the begging and end. And honestly the end could look worse. There's a moment or two there that are pretty cool even if the graphics aren't photorealistic.

Bruce Ramsay plays all of the male Merchant roles if I'm not mistaken. I didn't initially realize it was the same guy in multiple roles so I guess there's something to be said for him making his characters distinct. There are times when he doesn't do all that well in the futuristic scenes. I thought he lacked in some of the French scenes as well, but that could be more a product of the scenes themselves not feeling authentic rather than his performance specifically.

The multitude of other smaller roles range from decent to not all that great. There's nobody here that's comically bad which can't be said for all the Hellraiser movies. It's a completely new cast, too, with the exception of Doug Bradley who is back once again as Pinhead.

It was the combination of the weak CGI, Bruce's weak delivery as the futuristic Merchant, and the inauthentic feel of the early French scenes that convinced me this was going to be a terrible movie. Fortunately, the story and the quality picks up after this point. There are still some weak moments in the acting and the pacing, there are some corny or underdeveloped scenes, but the overall story picks up enough steam to ultimately be enjoyable.

The concept here is creative. It's like watching an anthology with each of the stories revolving around one of the Merchants and his family. We see how he comes to be involved, how his personal conflict with the Cenobites is resolved, and how the bloodline continues to begin the next conflict while setting up various elements like the Cenobite twins which will come into play more later in the story.

Speaking of those Cenobites they must really be popular because I see them on the covers of other Hellraiser movies despite them never making another appearance. It's a shame, really because these are some of the most memorable Cenobites in the whole series outside of the original group. With the exception of "Inferno" none of the movies after this one utilize the Cenobites other than Pinhead very much, or at least not very effectively.

The pacing may feel slow at first, but it is set up that will pay off later on. Once it picks up it rarely slows down for long. It works well for the most part. It remains intriguing despite the relatively limited horror content compared to some of the earlier movies. There's no skinless escapee from Hell needing blood this time around.

I read that director Kevin Yagher was not happy about some of the edits made behind his back. I can't help but wonder how much better his version of the movie might be considering it's currently pretty decent already. I can understand if the producers wanted more subtlety than the director was providing, but they went and took it too far it seems. A perfect example is the twin Cenobites. They do something to a man which happens off screen. I assume we are supposed to use our imaginations to determine what's happening, but we see so little that it doesn't spark the imagination enough. You want the viewers to fill in the blanks themselves, but that works negatively if too much is blank which is the case here.

Can you see "Bloodline" without seeing the previous 3 movies? Yes. You won't know who Pinhead is, but enough introduction is given to the cube and the Cenobites as demons that you can watch this one by itself. You will appreciate it more if you watch at least the first movie if not the first two.