The last time we looked into this universe, Freddy Krueger had attempted to misuse the power of the Lament Configuration and the Leviathan with disastrous results. Trapped now within the moment of his death, forever and ever, Freddy Krueger burns for what he's done... but will he remain trapped forever? Let's take a peek into the world once more and ponder the question... What if?
Burning in his final moments again and again and again, his body being torn apart again and again and again finds himself without any of his powers. Having been someone who has inflicted so much death and pain, however, Freddy works to tune it out and trying to reach out into the Dream Realm once more. When this fails, he decides he needs to change tactics.
In the waking world, FBI Agent Elizabeth Marcus has gone deep into trying to understand the Lament Configuration after Bill Freeburg disappeared into a portal created by it. While her superiors think she's gone mad, but one of her superiors has given her leave to research into it. It seems the United States government has some interest in the supernatural. Doing some looking into the history of the box, she learns of its origins and learns of the Cenobites in more detail than her knowing about Hellraiser 1-3 last time.
Heading to Springwood, she meets with Deputy Stubbs to inquire about his encounter with them a year or so previously. He clearly is still not in a good way following his encounter with Freddy and the Cenobites. He makes the mistake of mentioning Freddy, however, putting the thought of him into the mind of Agent Marcus. Freddy, in the bowels of the Labyrinth, hears his name being spoken and feels the idea of him settling into Marcus's mind, which he thinks is all he needs to slip back into the Dream World. Empowered, Freddy grabs the molotov thrown by the parents of Springwood and flings it back out at them, capturing the illusory forms of the three Dream Demons that originally gave him his powers, drawing them into him and resuming his horrifically burned form once more. With his bladed glove materializing on his hand once more, Freddy cuts into the fabric of reality, leaving the Labyrinth behind.
In the Dream World, he pops into the dream of Agent Marcus offering to help her in her job to find the Lament Configuration. When she awakens, Marcus does some more digging into Freddy's history (what little can be found given Springwood's staunch anti-Freddy measures), and learns of Kathrine Krueger... or, rather, Maggie Burnham, the Daughter of Freddy, and decides to pay her a visit. Maggie is still working as a counselor for troubled teenagers, one of them obsessively working on a Rubik's Cube in a little bit of a mislead for later on.
The shelter she's working at this time actually looks like a shelter, unlike the one in Freddy's Dead, and is known as the Island Recovery Center, run by a Doctor John Lemarchand. Yes, that family. Before Marcus and Maggie meet, we do get an aside where he sees that he has a replica of the Lament Configuration in the box and a hint that he may know more than he's letting on about Maggie's true origins.
Marcus interviews Maggie, who does not take the news of Freddy's return very well at all. However, she has no new information on him for Marcus and she does not have any knowledge of the Cenobites or the Lament Configuration. She agrees to help Marcus out, wanting to put an end to Freddy once and for all - for real this time.
At night, Freddy starts going through the kids in the Island Recovery Center, picking off one of them and carving them up with a message for the rest of them: "You're all going to die". Naturally, the kids freak out, but Lemarchand seems completely placid about the news, worrying Maggie in particular. That night, she gets visited in her dreams by Freddy, who promises to get his revenge on her for her traitorous actions that ended up sending him to Hell. As he goes to attack her, however, he suddenly vanishes. As Maggie is left confused, Freddy appears in the dreams of Lemarchand. Freddy attempts to kill him and take his soul, but finds that he is unable to do so. Lemarchand explains that he knows that Freddy was trapped in the Labyrinth and that he is fully aware of the Cenobites and the threat that they pose.
He enlists Freddy's help, knowing that he wants revenge against Pinhead and the rest. LeMarchand, however, leaves out that he plans to destroy the Lament Configuration rather than take its power from the Cenobites and leaves out the way he keeps Freddy from harming him - the Necronomicon Ex Mortis as seen in the Evil Dead trilogy and Ash vs. Evil Dead, which gives him control over the dead... even ghosts such as Freddy.
The next day, Marcus has put out feelers concerning the Lament Configuration, attempting to find it once more. In the Labyrinth, Pinhead has noted the absence of Freddy and realizes that the Dream Demon has escaped them... and does not take well to this. However, without the Lament Configuration open, they cannot access the Earth. This becomes more of a moot point when Freddy is allowed by LeMarchand to possess one of the teenagers (after he's injected with a hypnocil variant) and he sends him out to locate the Box. Given Freddy's previous connection to it, LeMarchand believes that Freddy will be able to locate it no matter where it is on Earth. He is soon proven correct. However, Freddy finds himself unable to touch the Box even in his possessive form.
LeMarchand slips an anonymous tip to the FBI to send to Marcus about the Box, and she goes to retrieve it. With help from Freddy, LeMarchand takes control of it and leaves Marcus drugged up with sedatives in her car, telling Freddy to "go play", which he does gleefully. We are led to believe that one of the patients there, the one previously working hard on a Rubik's cube, is the killer only to have them found with said Rubik's Cube impaled through their mouth by Krueger, among other grizzly things. In her dream, Marcus is visited by the spirit of Bill Freeburg, who attempts to get her out of there... and is reabsorbed into Freddy before they can make their escape, Marcus also being killed by the Springwood Slasher.
Maggie, meanwhile, discovers that LeMarchand has the Box and demands an explanation. He tells her of his family's origins and how the Lament Configuration first came to be because of one of his ancestors, telling her that it is his destiny to destroy it. He also tells her that he knows about the truth of her origin as the daughter of Freddy Krueger, and that keeping her around paid off in spades when Freddy finally did return. All of this, everything he has done, has been but a means to an end. He proceeds to render her unconscious, locking her in a room of the Center with just the Box with her.
With Freddy continuing to kill his way through the kids at the Center in preparation for the fight, LeMarchand keeps Maggie in that room for days until starvation and isolation finally make her crack and she solves the Box. It opens, and Pinhead comes out with his entourage - this time Abigor and Atkins, Atkins in particular looking for a little payback after what Freddy did to him last time. When it seems that they're going to attack the starving, half-crazed Maggie, Pinhead stops them. With a finger, he points toward the opaque glass separating the room from the one that LeMarchand has been observing the events through.
"The box. You opened it...we came..."
LeMarchand reveals himself and declares his intentions to destroy the Cenobites and the Lament Configuration once and for all. With the push of a button, the walls of Maggie's cell retract to reveal walls behind them, all of them decorated with crucifixes, Stars of David, and other religious imagery. Pinhead looks temporarily amused before snapping his fingers and causing all the iconography to explode, crumbling to the ground in pieces.
"Even the faithful hold no sway over us, you will fare far worse..."
However, LeMarchand has prepared for this and has already opened the Necronomicon Ex Mortis, beginning to read from its pages. Atkins and Abigor find themselves in great pain, their human selves being yanked out from their Cenobite forms in an incredibly gory display. Despite this, Pinhead has no humanity left in him after the events of Hellraiser II, and thus the spell has no effect on him. He conjures chains that run LeMarchand through multiple times, pulling him apart much like Frank Cotton in the original movie. As Atkins and Abigor return to their original forms with their humanity reabsorbed, Pinhead begins to approach the fallen Necronomicon Ex Mortis, wondering how a man like LeMarchand could have gotten his hands on such a thing. Before he can pick it up, however, it is drawn across the room and into the hand of Atkins.
"Looks like you forgot your library card, bitch!"
Yes, Freddy has slipped into Atkins' human side as he was being reabsorbed, and he uses his control to tear the Cenobite's body apart. However, since he's learned from the previous encounter, he just allows that power to go to waste for the time being. Fully emerging from the body, Freddy adjusts his fedora and gets ready for a fight. His captured souls allow him to handily take care of Abigor before turning his attentions onto Pinhead. The two square off, mano a mano, in the cell while Maggie grabs the Box and attempts to leave the place. Neither seems all too interested in her as she stumbles over and lands on the Necronomicon Ex Mortis, blood from her hand dripping onto the page.
A gaping maw of a portal materializes in the room where Freddy and Pinhead fight, both taking notice and trying to hold on. Pinhead declares this to be something the Labyrinth hasn't seen in millennia... and his power cannot stand against it. Freddy tries a little more desperately to stay there, clawing his way toward Maggie and slashing at her leg but otherwise is unable to get a hold of anything solid and is pulled into the portal. Now faced with an angry Pinhead, Maggie puts the Lament Configuration back into its closed formation and with one last, desperate act, throws it into the portal. There is a crackling of electricity, an explosion... and Maggie retains consciousness just long enough to see the portal seal shut. It's over.
Later, she wakes up in the hospital and is told someone has come to see her. Maggie is confused, more so when none other than Ashley Williams comes to her bedside, minus the chainsaw hand. He asks her about the Necronomicon, and tells her that things are most certainly not groovy. On his belt is the head of a certain murderous doll, who winks for the camera and laughs before Ash smacks his mouth with the palm of his gauntleted hand, earning him a yelp of pain and many, many swear words.
In the Labyrinth once more, with two of his trusted cohorts lost to him, Pinhead finds himself with the Necronomicon and picks it up, beginning to leaf through the ancient tome. Elsewhere, Freddy finds himself in the bowels of Hell once more and decides that he may need to follow LeMarchand's example and recruit a little help to take down Pinhead... noting a few individuals who might be useful to his cause...
...and that's where we're leaving this one for this October. Will we be coming back to this one? Definitely! There's a lot of potential here, especially with the smorgasbord of references that were just dropped and how this was even more sequel bait-y than Part 1 was! Freddy enlisting an army of slasher film villains, Pinhead starting his own Sumerian book club, and now Ash Williams and even the role that Brad Dourif is sadly shackled to seemingly for eternity thrown into the mix. The only way that this could get more insane is if I somehow managed to fit Puppet Master into it.
...note to self, watch Puppet Master at some point in the future.
Next time, we'll peak back into the world where Sam Winchester had killed the Yellow-Eyed Demon in the Season 1 finale of Supernatural.
Be there!
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