Review: Hellraiser (2022)
The original Hellraiser universe stretched to an interminable ten entries, long after there was any meat left to pick off of the carcass. Could the 2022 reboot tap into any of the early film magic?
Faithful readers of 31 for 31 will recall that I kicked off a series run of the original Hellraiser franchise a few years ago. Initially, it was going swimmingly - I found something to enjoy about the first five entries into the film series. The fifth movie, however, signalled an unfortunate direction for the property, where unrelated horror scripts were co-opted by the franchise and painted with a thin Hellraiser veneer. That turn, coinciding with what I consider to be the worst era for American horror cinema since the advent of film, the early 2000s, made completing the series a rough proposition for me. There are simply too many promising horror films for me to ever watch, much less review for this site, to waste another several hours on movies that I am destined to dislike and more importantly destined to have nothing else interesting to say about. So I tapped out, for both of our sakes. Yet, there was one final glimpse into the eldritch world of the Cenobites that I planned to make, the 2022 reboot that comes a mere four years after the final movie of the original series.
Would I be crazy to declare that this is the best Hellraiser movie? I have wrestled with that idea since I first watched the film earlier this year, but having since seen it a second time I am more confident in that statement. I think it depends on how much credit you give for inventiveness. Clive Barker's original is really good, but it is also quite unique in concept and structure. Almost every character is a villain, and it can be tough to determine which villian is the chief antagonist, and which ones are actually the protagonists, and the couple of genuinely good characters are largely relegated to the sidelines. It upends the normal horror framework, and Barker is just crazy enough and talented enough to make it work. Hellraiser (2022) is a reboot, and so naturally does not display the same level of originality as Barker's film, but it does deliver on the promise of Barker's universe better than any of the other films in that setting.
I've always been a bit confused by the Cenobites' role in the series, but this film brings fresh clarity to their function in the story without really deviating from how they have historically been portrayed. The Cenobites, here led by a distaff version of Pinhead, are cosmic entities who serve a god of suffering. They talk a good game about experience-seeking and the duality between pleasure and pain, but they are basically the pure distillation of evil, existing only to torture those who would dare to come across them by their own volition or not. They are not the villains of this universe, however. The villains are inevitably the people who summon the Cenobites, deliberately sacrificing innocents and putting countless others in the path of unfathomable anguish in order to cash in on the false promises of the Cenobite god, Leviathan. Pinhead and her ilk are the delivery mechanism for the horror and carnage, but that is their very nature. It's the asshole who buys into their sales pitch that deserves our ire, and is the one who must ultimately be defeated in order to set things right. In this film, like many of the others, that asshole is a rich and callous pleasure-seeker who already has access to every worldly experience. While this is a reboot of the franchise, it does not seek to replicate the plot of the first Hellraiser, opting to tell a fresh story while re-establishing the framework of Leviathan, the Cenobites, and the Lamentation Configuration (i.e. the famous puzzle box that acts as a portal into the hell dimension). Our protagonists involve a recovering drug addict, her protective brother, and their circle of friends, including a new boyfriend who is also in recovery. It is a solid group of characters, and unlike Barker's film, I was never confused if I should be rooting for them or not. As I stated above, the plot lays the familiar elements out better than ever before. I expect someone new to the property to be able follow as the mystery unfolds, and walk away with the same understanding as myself, a person for whom this is the eighth Hellraiser film I've taken in.
I recommend this one for any horror fan. Do you love the Hellraiser universe? The reboot will not disappoint you. Have you never seen Hellraiser before? This is probably the best entry point. Do you, like me, have some affinity for the Hellraiser world but always harbored the idea that it has never fully met its potential? Then you will be heartened by this movie's faithfulness to the horror of the concept combined with the enhanced readability of the plot mechanics. It works as a standalone horror film as well as a loving tribute to Barker's original vision. Go watch it if you aren't too squeamish.
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