Perhaps more than any other horror franchise, Hellraiser seems uniquely suited for re-emergence into a contemporary climate overdosing on narcissism and self-gratification. It’s all too easy to imagine the extradimensional Cenobites rising up into the grotesquely hedonistic, real-world hell on Earth that’s set the conditions for individuals like Jeffrey Epstein, Harvey Weinstein, and Donald Trump to thrive. With this in mind, it feels like an even greater betrayal of Clive Barker’s indelible vision of boundless human depravity that the Hellraiser reboot from director David Bruckner and screenwriters Ben Collins and Luke Piotrowski, the makers of The Night House, is such a toothlessly retrograde enterprise.
In generic slasher mode, this new Hellraiser introduces us to a group of anonymously attractive twentysomethings, all of whom share a swanky apartment and are prone to spouting affected quips as if they were trapped in a 1990s sitcom. Until, that is, they obtain a certain ancient puzzle box and unwittingly unleash the demons within. Cue the feverish hallucinations, which give way to the introduction of Pinhead (Jamie Clayton), who—alongside some other familiar, chain-wielding Cenobites (the Chatterer is still, well, gleefully chattering away)—begin to dispatch the roomies across a series of gruesome but unimaginatively staged set pieces.
Some of the problems that afflict this Hellraiser are ones that also plagued the series throughout its prior 10-film run. The puzzle box itself, conceived in Barker’s The Hellbound Heart novella as an elusive object that would only respond to a pleasure-seeker’s overwhelming desire to access its contents, is once again far too easy to crack. All it takes are a few light touches from the film’s central protagonist, Riley (Odessa A’zion), before the box, which now comes outfitted with a nifty retractable stabbing spike, roars to life. From this point, Riley spends an inordinate amount of time ponderously investigating the box’s beyond-obvious mysteries.
Bruckner does try to give Barker’s invention a new coat of paint by positioning this reboot, like The Night House, as an allegory for unmanaged trauma. Specifically, Riley is a recovering addict and when she relapses right before opening the box, the film initially questions whether the horrors that follow are real or part of some kind of drug-addled hallucination. It’s a potentially intriguing idea but one that isn’t satisfactorily committed to, as Riley’s struggles with addiction promptly fade into the background. And beyond a few derivative moments in which Riley’s friends don’t believe her due to her troubled history, any ambiguity over the veracity of the story’s events is quickly jettisoned to adhere to the demands of the leaden slasher-film plotting.
Despite Pinhead earning his spot in the horror pantheon alongside Jason Voorhees, Freddy Krueger, and Michael Myers, Hellraiser was never really a slasher series, at least not in the traditional sense. Within dreamlike episodes that are closer in spirit to Adrian Lyne’s Jacob’s Ladder than your average Friday the 13th kill-a-thon, Pinhead’s victims are largely doomed to their fate by virtue of their twisted morality and deviant behavior, with the Cenobites simply sealing the deal. But the Cenobites of Bruckner’s Hellraiser attack and kill with little rhyme or reason beyond the need to set up another grisly (though still relatively bloodless) set piece.
What the previous entries in the Hellraiser canon also understood, even when they weren’t rising above Z-grade DTV schlock, was the kink that ran through the veins of Barker’s creation, which was inspired by his time working as a hustler in ’70s-era S&M clubs. But any aspects of perversity have been thoroughly scrubbed clean from this misbegotten reboot, as its idea of debauchery begins and ends with a couple of thoroughly anemic sex scenes between Riley and her boyfriend, Trevor (Drew Starkey). Meanwhile, Barker’s queer sensibility is weakly reflected through Riley’s brother, Matt (Brandon Flynn), and his boyfriend, Colin (Adam Faison), two characters that, beyond a throwaway scene of them faux-tenderly reading poetry to each other while cuddling in bed, are frustratingly kept on the sidelines.
Hellraiser trudges through its interminable two-hour runtime until the remaining protagonists finally confront the wealthy prior owner of the puzzle box, Roland Voight (Goran Visnjic), at his ornate rural mansion. Pinhead and the Cenobites wreak some havoc in this final stretch, yet Bruckner shoots in such a murky aesthetic that it’s sometimes hard to make out, let alone get excited by, the ensuing carnage. By the time Voight spews some more world-building exposition, it’s impossible to see this Hellraiser reboot as anything more than craven brand extension.
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If pinhead was played by a black woman you would have given it a 5/5
It’s played by a transgender person, so the review is quite fair. This version is so bad it’s basically unwatchable.
“two characters that are frustratingly kept on the sidelines” – colin is there till the end and matt died so that the movie could happen. where are these sidelines you speak of sir, unless you were going “do you even brokeback mountain bro” to the script.
c’mon man. for once we atleast got to see barker’s world with an actual budget.
Your takes on this film are mostly based in misunderstandings of the material you watched. The quippy 90s sitcom characterization of the roommates is flat out untrue. Perhaps you totally whiffed on the actual characterizations because the film wasn’t holding your interest well enough to know what was actually going on (which would have been a valid criticism, but you didn’t write that). Then again, it’s your job, so… You also misunderstand exactly how easy it is to fall into depravity in reality (perhaps because you haven’t been there, which, good for you), which makes you entirely misunderstand and misinterpret the ease with which she solves the puzzle box. You wanted more kink, which, ok fine. At least that’s a matter of taste instead of a matter of you wholly misunderstanding the material, like the other two examples I gave. And you really should have worked a bit harder on the structure of your “betrayal of Clive Barker’s vision” sentence. I mean, holy cow, where was the editor on that one?
I have to say I’m not sure we watched the same movie.
“But the Cenobites of Bruckner’s Hellraiser attack and kill with little rhyme or reason beyond the need to set up another grisly (though still relatively bloodless) set piece.” Perhaps you saw the Rated G version. I certainly didn’t.
“Meanwhile, Barker’s queer sensibility is weakly reflected through Riley’s brother, Matt (Brandon Flynn), and his boyfriend, Colin (Adam Faison), two characters that, beyond a throwaway scene of them faux-tenderly reading poetry to each other while cuddling in bed, are frustratingly kept on the sidelines.”
Well, it wasn’t really about them, was it? And if it wasn’t integral to the plot, why add more time to the 2 hour running time? As a gay man, I wasn’t offended. I thought their parts were fine.
Like I said, I don’t think we saw the same movie.