If Clive Barker had any idea what's going to become of the new hellraiser movie he'd probably put a bunch of nails in his own head too. Sorry ladies and gentlemen – we have another classic rape of a classic. It’s lost ALL of the mysticism, all of the tension and all of those dark, moody scenes we know from previous ones. Now it’s all there for you to see – gore, blood, nails in the head – all perfectly lit, because that’s apparently what people want. Yuck!

Any tries to establish the characters fail right at the very beginning. I mean come on, 99% of the time the characters behave completely without any logic, and it shows. I’m not making this up people! Whoever wrote that script was probably high and drunk, watching bugs bunny re-runs at 4 a.m.

This is not a hellraiser movie. This is another bunch of uncreative people trying to jump on the back of a popular horror series, but as usual they fail miserably. The plot is nearly non-existent (if you can count two spoiled teens running away from home as a plot), the acting can be compared to the first toy story (and the toys were really made of wood and plastic!), and there’s no tension, no suspense, no horror. Just another teen movie that you’ll forget 5 minutes after watching.

Skip it and go watch previous parts of Hellraiser.

Stephen King is supposedly the master of Horror literature, and that in most cases is proven to be true. Sure he had some really bad books, but he also wrote Misery, Pet Semetary, The Stand, Carrie, Cujo and The Shining. So we can forgive him for slipping up sometimes. Who we cannot forgive are people who try to milk the successful author’s name by making movies out of his short stories and other unreleased things.

Riding the Bullet could’ve been a classic example of that philosophy, but thankfully it didn’t turn out completely bad as I predicted it to be. The story is about an art student that’s obsessed with death (aren’t they all?). His girlfriend dumps him (sort of), his mother’s in a hospital, and he has to hitch a ride to get to that hospital on halloween. The setting seems to be perfect for a good story. Especially when he gets picked up by a being that’s certainly not a human (although it looks like one). They chose the right guy for the role too – David Arquette is a guy that can be confused with some non-human entity (especially for his “Scream” appearances). So yeah it works out. We got a wimpy art student that’s not at all likeable, his alter-egos, some random people and the road at night.

Scary? No, not really. Fun to watch? Sometimes. If you want to see something based on Stephen King see it. If you’re a fan see it. But ask yourself this: If it’s just a short story, and you probably never heard of it, maybe there’s a reason? A steady 3 stars for this one folks.

It’s never easy to review a classic, especially if it’s such a cult classic as this. I remember chucky from my childhood and how scared I was. Watching it again now is not quite as scary but our tolerance threshold has changed too. It’s still a very good movie with a character that became as well known as freddy and jason so not seeing it is not an option for a horror fan. Sure most special effects are pretty crappy, and it has a lot of comedic relief to take the edge of the violence. It does work as a sort of dark-comedy-horror especially since chucky’s remarks are sometimes really funny.

All in all the second and third Chucky films were better imho, but this one started it all so it deserves credit. Sure it’s cheesy at times and not really scary after most recent horrors but it defines a lot of the genre, so go and watch it if you haven’t already. And if you watched it as a kid go watch it again, it’s worth it.