One local actor is about to give us all nightmares. Paul T. Taylor, who has appeared on stages all over Dallas-Fort Worth, along with a handful of movies and TV shows, has been cast as Pinhead in the upcoming movie Hellraiser: Judgment.
The 10th installment in the gory film franchise, created by horror master Clive Barker, was announced suddenly in mid-February. The news came this past weekend via Bloody Disgusting that Taylor was taking over the lead role.
Taylor is a classically trained actor who has racked up accolades in everything from Mr. Burns: A Post-electric Play at Fort Worth's Stage West to The Hot Mikado at Dallas' Theatre Three to Miracle on 34th Street at Dallas Children's Theater.
Now he's donning the movie monster's acupuncture-gone-wrong look after the previous Pinhead from 2011's Hellraiser: Revelations, Stephan Smith Collins, declined to reprise his role. Doug Bradley played the role in the first eight films.
Director Gary Tunnicliffe previously teased the casting of a new Pinhead with a post identifying the actor as “a classically trained stage and film actor who brings a great physical presence and more than a hint of Peter Cushing and Ralph Fiennes.”
Anyone who saw Taylor as the titular and terrifying Mr. Burns at Stage West will have no problem imagining him as the villain.
A Dallas actor will play Pinhead in the next installment in the Hellraiser movie franchise.
Photo courtesy of New World Pictures
A Dallas actor will play Pinhead in the next installment in the Hellraiser movie franchise.
The opening scenes of the new drama Dreams are bracing, fictional sequences that call to mind real-life scenarios. In them, a young Mexican man named Fernando (Isaac Hernández) goes through a somewhat harrowing journey from the back of a semi truck in South Texas all the way to San Francisco. It’s a familiar immigrant story that seems to set the stage for a film with something interesting to say.
It turns out, however, that Fernando has not made the long and arduous trek for a job. Instead, it’s to be with Jennifer McCarthy (Jessica Chastain), a rich woman who helps lead a foundation dedicated to multiple things, including funding dance academies. Fernando, a talented dancer, and Jennifer have been in an off-and-on affair for years, with Jennifer wanting to keep their relationship a secret.
Although both are drawn to each other in an inexplicable, lustful way, their bond is tenuous, with each of them dissatisfied for different reasons. Fernando clearly sacrifices much more of himself than Jennifer, who wants for nothing except maybe more affection from her father, Michael (Marshall Bell), and brother, Jake (Rupert Friend).
Writer/director Michel Franco seems to try to inject tension into Fernando and Jennifer’s relationship from the start, an attempt that is only halfway successful. It’s clear from the way they greet each other - not to mention a steamy sex scene shortly thereafter - that they have known each other for a good length of time. Franco is able to get across this familiarity with an economy of scenes, and the intensity of their bond holds for a while.
But as the film progresses and both of them grow disenchanted with their arrangement, Franco starts taking the story in some odd directions. The biggest issue is that it’s never clear at what point in time the story is taking place. Fernando ends up making multiple trips back and forth across the border, with Jennifer doing the same at one point, and Franco’s use of flashbacks muddies the waters, wrong-footing the audience when he should be trying to draw them further into Fernando and Jennifer’s complications.
Revelations in the final act make the story even more confusing, as both main characters start saying and doing harsh things that seem to come out of nowhere. That would be all well and good if Franco actually committed to their changes of heart, but he keeps things wishy-washy for most of the final 15 minutes, resulting in an ending that makes little sense for either character.
Despite the story issues, both Chastain and Hernández give compelling performances. Chastain has been a little under the radar since winning an Oscar for The Eyes of Tammy Faye, but she keeps this character interesting longer than it should have been. Hernández has limited credits and appears to have been cast for his dancing ability, but he goes toe-to-toe with Chastain on more than one occasion and acquits himself well.
Dreams had all of the ideas to explore a more in-depth story about the complicated immigration policies between Mexico and the U.S., or how wealthy people take advantage of those less fortunate. But Franco never finds the right footing, settling instead for a titillating and somewhat mystifying relationship story that feels half-baked.
