Hellraiser

My latest watch, I actually watched twice because I wanted to give it a fair shake. In a nutshell, the 2022 'Hellraiser' reboot just does not have enough spark to reignite the fire in the franchise. While I won't say Jamie Clayton did a bad job, her pinhead was more quiet and reserved which really made miss Bradley's deep voice and imposing figure. There was a genuine lack of sex and grit and the majority of the time the cenobites were on screen it was dark to the point of annoyance. This is NOT a movie inspired by grungy BDSM clubs in NYC. The story was okay with a bit of a cliche ending, and it could have used more editing to cut down on the runtime. All and all 'Hellraiser' was basically like digging up a beloved friend, reanimating their corpse, and then sending them back to their job at Wawa. Personally I would never bring someone back from the dead merely for the promise of mediocrity.

At its core, the original Hellraiser (1987) was a story about the darkest, sordid recess of human nature. It was about desire and lust, possession and betrayal and how these powerful, very human feelings can push people on the brink of inhumane horror.

It was - at the same time - also a story of lovecraftian cosmic horror, where the characters face a terror so powerful and behond human comprehension that defeat was inevitable. All things considered, it was a truly nihilistic and dark statement on human nature.

The somewhat-superior-somewhat-inferior sequel - Hellboud: Hellraiser II (1988) - dealt with the consequences of such horror, with the obsession derived from it, with madness and will, with power and seduction.

Both movies had thematic layers and depth and the horror, the cenobites, the lore were just tools and background to tell these deeply nihilistic stories about the horrors that lies in the depths of human nature.

From there on out, the franchise went off the rails, piling up inferior movie after inferior movie. The reason of this debacle is that the producers made the horrible mistake of thinking that the lore (the cenobites, the box/the Lament configuration and so on) were actually the point.

Which brings us to THIS movie. After a brief, shallow and bland characters introduction, the entire focus of the story starts revolving around the box, cenobites and all that stuff, in the same shallow, bland way the characters were presented.

It isn't even interesting from a lore perspective: at least, the otherwise abysmal Hellraiser: Judgement (2018) gave some juicy bits of new, fascinating lore. Here it's just the same ol' same old except it's more incoherent than in previous installments to the point where almost nothing makes sense.

Eventually, the whole movie became a run of the mill slasher, with cenobites chasing empty characters in the woods. There are no themes in sight, nothing is said about human nature , no layers, no depth. Sure, its gory but its lifeless and, what's worse for an Hellraiser installment, its meatless. Flesh-less.

Clayton's performance as the new Hell Priest/Pinhead is interesting and works perfectly fine. It does not compare with Doug Bradley's, but it doesn't have to.

Everything else is just bland and lifeless - which is too bad, considering the other movies in this director's filmography were pretty great, subtle and smart - and there is clearly an attempt at going in the right direction, with lots of practical effects, gorgeus set design and some attention to details: it really smells as if the failing are on the studio/the producers.

I thought I'd give this movie a try. The trailer looked more promising than a Hellraiser movie has in decades, and Clive Barker is involved, though only as a producer. I love the original Hellraiser. I enjoy its theatrical sequels to varying degrees. I've sat through two of the direct-to-DVD sequels and swore never to watch another. This movie makes me feel like I've gone back on that.

The opening prologue is promising enough. Then the movie takes us to our lead characters. Unfortunately, this is where the movie's weaknesses start presenting themselves. When you start a movie like this with characters already in turmoil, there isn't really anywhere to go in terms of putting them through more. They say never to show your top in a performance, because then you've got nowhere to go but down. Maybe these filmmakers didn't realize that starting characters near rock bottom and already at each other's throats is a bad idea too. Remember Kirsty's transformation over the course of the first film? She went from being a happy young adult to a woman fighting for her life in the worst circumstances possible. Well, there'll be none of that here. Riley is a recovering addict and, even if she's sober, her brother second-guesses everything she says. We won't get the destruction of a family dynamic this time because it's already a shambles.

Then the puzzle box comes in. Without getting into specifics, I'll say that the way it works on the Cenobites' victims is totally different now. As to the Cenobites, the code by which they operate is far less respectable. Granted, they weren't the noblest characters before, but they also didn't go around killing innocents just because they could. Here, their role is little more than standard slasher villainy. It's a great reduction in quality to the terrifying, yet elegant manner in which they were presented before. There used to be a grotesque beauty and a logic to how they operated. "Hands do not call us. Desire does." You can forget all about that. Here, they don't care who they take because they've got to take someone. Yay. They're no longer interesting.

As often happens, there's also human villainy afoot. Unfortunately, our human antagonist is given so little time in the movie that his storyline seems largely unrelated to what we've been watching with Riley. His ending is unearned and feels obligatory. We can't get any kind of enjoyment from a story that feels like it's only an outline shoehorned into another plot to give it more material. There's also an aspect of this character's interactions with the Cenobites that is meant to be disturbing, but it's so overexposed that it just gets ridiculous. Part of horror movies is knowing how much to show. This element was given way too much screen time and almost looks like parody after a certain point. When it's first introduced, it works. When you're given time to look at and study it, it falls flat on its face.

At the end of the day, it's not the worst Hellraiser movie I've seen, but it's only marginally better than the direct-to-DVD sequels. The characters aren't interesting and the plot is a betrayal of the basic tenets established in the original films' lore. You're free to do whatever you want in a reboot, but whoever changed the box and the Cenobites seems to have misunderstood what made these movies unique in the horror realm. For that matter, the human characters betray that fact too.

The main thing I got from this movie was a desire to rewatch the originals. I think I will.

College kids get chased around the woods by Cenobites. Cenobites lay siege to those kids in a mansion. It's like the zombie formula, but with Cenobites.

All of which makes the Cenobites feel pretty ineffectual. Never mind that Cenobites getting locked out of a house isn't really in keeping with, you know, opening all those portals from other dimensions in the walls and floor. Maybe it's a magic house, I don't know.

The Hellraiser reboot has decent art direction. It has a budget. There's nothing wrong with the new Pinhead, she's fine. But in terms of story, they phoned it in this time. We're left with a movie that's perfectly acceptable as some time-waster slasher that you forget the moment the credits roll, but that's all. Lamentable, considering the potential.

Hellraiser 2022 is not a bad movie. It is just not what I was hoping for. Honestly, for me, it was lacking great gore. The story was serviceable, as were the characters. Yet, I kept hoping for a film that tapped into the horror of what the Cenobites do to their victims. For me, that is what Hellraiser is supposed to do: go face first into the blood and pain. I wanted to see heads being pulled apart, bodies being skinned alive, bubbling masses of flesh developing into a human form, sexual tension, incest, lust, and the deep exploration of humans addicted to gratifying their desires only to end up in hell being ripped apart. I want a bloody gory Hellraiser!

Also, the movie reminded me of 13 Ghosts in how the house was designed to keep the Cenobites out. You know, rich guy wants to chase after the unknown, figures out how to keep the evil characters trapped, and then goes down in a ball of flames after a plot for people to be bait falters. And it did all of this while keeping the gore to a minimum.