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Hellraiser Deader poster

Hellraiser: Deader (also known as Hellraiser VII: Deader) is a 2005 American slasher horror film and the seventh installment in the Hellraiser series. Directed by Rick Bota, the original script was written by Neal Marshall Stevens. As with Hellraiser: Inferno and Hellraiser: Hellseeker it began as an unrelated spec script, which was subsequently rewritten (by Tim Day) as a Hellraiser film. Like Inferno, series creator Clive Barker did not have even a cursory involvement in the production of Deader.

Deader was filmed on location in Romania in 2002. It saw only a handful of isolated preview screenings in the following years before finally being released straight to video in the United States on June 7, 2005.

Plot[]

Reporter Amy Klein (Kari Wuhrer) is sent to Bucharest at the behest of her boss, Charles (Simon Kunz), to investigate a videotape depicting the ritualistic murder - and subsequent reanimation - of a member of a cult calling themselves "the Deaders". Amy tracks down the return address of the tape and discovers the corpse of its sender, Marla, holding the Lament Configuration. She returns to her hotel and opens the box, triggering an apparent dream in which she summons Pinhead (Doug Bradley). Amy delves into Bucharest's subculture and meets Joey, who warns her about the Deaders and notices that Amy has a 'self destructive thing'.

Amy pursues leads, ultimately tracking down Winter LeMarchand (Paul Rhys), the leader of the cult. Winter, as the descendant of the toymaker who designed the puzzle box, believes he is destined to access the realm of the Cenobites and become their master. Unable to open the box himself, Winter believes that only an individual exhibiting trauma-induced nihilism can open the box. To this end, he founded the Deaders and attracted emotionally vulnerable followers so that he could kill them and reanimate them. Winter does this to Amy, resulting in her experiencing an extended waking dream in which she relives her father's physical and sexual abuse and her subsequent murder of him as a child.

Coming back to the living world, Amy successfully opens the box and summons the Cenobites. Pinhead expresses disdain for Winter and his family, denying that any mortal could ever control the Cenobites. He proceeds to slaughter the Deaders before indicating to Amy that she is now indebted to them by opening the box, saying that her father has been waiting for her in Hell. Rather than be taken, Amy kills herself, resulting in the box closing and sending out an electrical charge that banishes the Cenobites back to Hell and causes the Deaders' compound to explode. Later, Charles, unaware of Amy's whereabouts, assigns a new female journalist to investigate the tape. The film ends with a reporter holding up the puzzle box, which has been recovered from the destroyed compound.

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