Hellraiser 2022 review: Pinhead returns on Hulu, but only cuts skin deep

Making one of the better Hellraiser movies isn’t all that difficult, to be completely honest. Any franchise with more than three or four entries is bound to be uneven, but Hellraiser’s drop-off is particularly sharp, going from a sequel that improves on the original (Hellbound: Hellraiser II) to two movies that aren’t GoodThese are exactly the same, but they’re quite entertaining to see (Hellraiser III, Hell on EarthAnd Hellraiser: BloodlineThe series has been remade many times via direct-to-video. It’s now starting to feel like a joke where the audience is suffering more than the characters. And yet, for nearly 35 years, fans have remained devoted to 1987’s Hellraiser and Clive Barker’s diabolical vision.

David Bruckner is one such fan. That’s clear watching his new reboot of Hellraiser, which doesn’t go back to the source material, exactly, but does remain loyal to its spirit. Dirtbags, queers and addicts are the heroes in this direct-to-Hulu movie. This movie has a serious tone and is mature, which is a refreshing change from the teen-centric films like The Scream (2022) Bodies Bodies Bodies. The occult art deco production design blows the original’s puzzle box up to awesome architectural size. Cenobites are a stunning combination of terror and wonder, softly spoken and glowing under pale moonlight. Chains… Oh yes! They fly in all directions and tear apart human bodies like milk bags.

Still, Bruckner’s priorities, and those of screenwriters Ben Collins and Luke Piotrowski (Night HouseHowever, they are quite different. The 2022 film has an omnivorous sexuality which feels just right. Hellraiser — we see both gay and straight couples naked in bed together, and there’s more male nudity than female — this version is less kinky than Barker’s sadomasochistic original. In that film, the promise of an eternity spent on the knife’s edge between pleasure and pain held a perverse fascination. Here, it’s an unequivocal evil, with no appeal for anyone except for the Cenobite leader, billed here as The Priest (Jamie Clayton), and her minions. Even Hellraiser’s depraved billionaire (and there simply must be a depraved billionaire) regrets his adventures “in the further regions of experience.”

Photo: Spyglass Media Group/Hulu

Bruckner, along with his company, continue to tell franchise stories. This film fleshes out the world of the Cenobites in new and comprehensive ways, laying out exactly how the Lament Configuration (i.e., the puzzle that summons the Cenobites) works and the seven steps a penitent must go through in order to request, as the film puts it, “an audience with God.” Each of these steps requires a human sacrifice, and HellraiserIt buys time by having the protagonist do this and then deliberately extending the times between bloody acts. It’s here that the film starts to lose focus.

Hellraiser opens with a title card that reads “Belgrade, Serbia,” which replaces Morocco as the global capital of taboo delights. There, the Lament Configuration is purchased and brought back to Voight (Goran Višnjić), the decadent billionaire referenced above, who promptly sacrifices a young man to it and summons the god Leviathan. Six years later, the box is still sitting in an abandoned shipping container at a warehouse. Then 20-something degenerates Riley (Odessa A’zion) and Trevor (Drew Starkey) “liberate” it while searching for valuables they can sell for quick cash.

Although they met at 12-step meetings, Riley becomes addicted to the idea of simply handling the box. Here, Bruckner’s film reaches for a more realistic tone, placing the Hellraiser universe in something that more closely resembles our world than anything in Barker’s original. The subsequent argument between Riley and her more responsible brother Matt (Brandon Flynn) similarly grounds the film in down-to-earth conflicts and settings — until the arrival of the Cenobites turns a public park into a surreal nightmare, and Matt inexplicably vanishes.

Overwhelmed by guilt and grief, Riley goes out searching for clues about the puzzle box she suspects might have caused Matt’s disappearance, briefly launching the film into a procedural plot it should have followed through to the end. Instead, it shifts focus once Riley breaks into Voight’s Massachusetts mansion, with Matt’s boyfriend Colin (Adam Faison) and their roommate Nora (Aoife Hinds) following close behind. There, Hellraiser pivots from a mystery into a siege film, as the group barricades themselves inside Voight’s palatial home while the Cenobites gather outside.

Photo: Spyglass Media Group/Hulu

This is the highlight of the movie. Hellraiser’s two biggest weaknesses: the characters and the length. The film earns most of its two-hour running time, but Riley bringing the rest of the gang up to speed on what the hell those things are and what they want burdens Bruckner’s reimagining with a few too many dialogue scenes during an already slow stretch of the film. Apart from Riley’s brother and addiction to alcohol and pills, little is known about Riley. We know even less about her friends — a moment of silence, please, for poor Nora, who has no distinguishable character traits except for being “the roommate.” That makes it difficult to engage with the drama between the characters, about which even the film’s writers seem indifferent.

Cenobite, perhaps fittingly, is the film’s most compelling character. Of the five actors who have put their mark on the infernal bureaucrat colloquially known as Pinhead, Jamie Clayton is the only one besides Doug Bradley to really embrace “Pinhead” as a character. Clayton’s version is breathier and more feminine than Bradley’s authoritative priest figure; she’s more of a holy mystic than a pope-king. Clayton’s Pinhead is black and stares at humans asking for mercy before her, with the cold curiosity and alien scientist look. Then she patiently waits for them with an elegant posture and gently folded hands. Clayton’s Pinhead is a different, quieter type of frightening, which makes the voluminous dialogue she delivers in the film (far more than Bradley in the 1987 movie) rather ironic.

Cenobite was designed in HellraiserExcellent all round, taking advantage advances in prosthetics that allow for the use of scrap black leather fetish equipment in favour of suits made of their own flayed hide. Familiar characteristics are exaggerated — the female Cenobite’s throat folds have never looked so vaginal — and new designs evoke the horror of iron lungs, cleft hands, and human taxidermy. The film is bloody and intense when it needs to be, at one point following a pin through a character’s throat and out the other side. The sets are the film’s most innovative horror feature. They shift and clank like pieces from the Lament Configuration, when the Cenobites approach.

Hellraiser 2022 is easily the most outstanding Hellraiser film, despite the fact that it has a low rating. It’s the best one since Hellbound: Hellraiser II,It might be even the best film in the series, after the first. It has some great, grotesque visuals, which makes it a real shame that this film isn’t getting a theatrical release. And it accomplishes what many fans (including this one) wanted for the series, which was to pull it out of the creative purgatory where it’s been stuck for a couple of decades now. The only thing to fret about at this point are the points where Barker’s kinky edge has been sanded down for a more sex-averse era, and his enigmatic storytelling scrapped in favor of exposition that’s more legible, but less compelling. It is worth it.

HellraiserThe release date is HuluOctober 7.