The new Hellraiser is a fascinating entry into the modern horror canon. I liked large parts of it, and I would absolutely like to see more Hellraisers from this team, but it left me unsettled in way I was not expecting. But I’ll get to that in a few paragraphs.
First, a few facts: the new take on the Hellraiser series isn’t an adaptation of Clive Barker’s 1986 novella The Hellbound Heart, but Barker is on board as a producer. The script was written by Ben Collins and Luke Piotrowski (the pair who wrote The Night House) from a story by David Goyer. It was directed by their fellow Night House alum David Bruckner, who also directed The Ritual. I mention this first, because this group knows their way around a horror movie, but also because those two films are very much part of the current wave of horror that’s actually about grief. (See also: Mike Flanagan’s whole flippin‘ career.) And that’s both an interesting addition to Hellraiser, and, maybe, a problem.
The first thing I wrote down as Hellraiser’s credits rolled was: “Do we need grief in every horror?” (For context, I watched The Midnight Club this weekend, and caught up on The Night House, The Empty Man, The Changeling, and Doctor Sleep over the last few days. It could just be that I have grief on the brain.) But first let me say that Hellraiser is fun and scary, and the cast is excellent. Jamie Clayton is fantastic as The Priest, smaller and more sinewy than Doug Bradley’s take on our beloved Pinhead. She’s implacable, and even more eerie? She feels even less likely to care about a human’s objection to becoming pulled pork. The rest of Cenobite crew is beautiful and frightening. And the humans are great, especially Odessa A’zion as the immediately compelling Riley, who has to throw a lot of emotion at the camera while covered in various levels of blood, tears, and snot.
The Hellraiser of 1987 was gross and squicky and grotesquely erotic. It put the “fluid” in genderfluid. Plotwise, it was a pitch-dark fairytale—Bland Dad marries Wicked Woman, Wicked Woman subjugates Wholesome Daughter, Bland Dad’s Evil Hedonist Brother comes back from the dead to run away with Wicked Stepmother, Wholesome Daughter fucks around with a puzzle box and accidentally calls the Cenobites onto our plane, Cenobites wreak havoc, Wholesome Daughter barely gets away—and isn’t so wholesome anymore.
The new take on Hellraiser is fascinating to me because it takes the bones of this story—person unwittingly fucks around with a puzzle box and calls the Cenobites—and infuses it with real grief and emotional depth. And what’s fascinating about that is that it doesn’t always work for me.
In honor of the sacred month of October, the Criterion Channel is hosting a whole festival’s worth of 80s horror films. I’ve had time to watch a few of them, and it just reminds me of the particular tone of a lot of that decade’s horror. Sometimes what you need for your story is over-the-top, gross-out, gooey body horror. Blood that looks like melted crayon. Bones and teeth bursting through skin. Eroticism where you least expect and don’t want to admit it.
The new Hellraiser doesn’t do that so much.
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It gives us Riley, who’s in recovery, and in a relationship with a guy named Trevor who seems to be trying to indulge his own habits while encouraging her to stay straight. Riley lives with her brother Matt, her brother’s boyfriend Colin, and their friend Nora. It’s implied that Matt had some substance issues of his own at one point, and he tends to treat Riley like he’s a cross between her big brother and her parole officer. Through a series of hijinks the five of them get entangled in a plot to call the Cenobites. Now I guess your mileage may vary, but I was instantly concerned for the group. All of the actors were great, I am always immediately ride or die for any character wrestling with addiction, especially when they’re in a film that acknowledges how good a relapse can feel, until it doesn’t. Matt and Colin are an adorable couple, Nora’s fun and deadpan, Trevor actually seems to want more than a fling from Riley. I’m rooting for all of them!
And that’s the problem! If I’m rooting for them how the hell can I root for the Cenobites to tear them apart? And this is the uncomfortable uncanny valley created by this reboot. One thing ’80s horror, especially Hellraiser, understood was that sometimes you want to watch a monster help a human explore the outer limits of sensation—i.e., rip the skin off of them so the makeup effects designers can explore the outer limits of fake blood and tendons. You want to watch nasty little people get their comeuppance. This is what the old Hellraiser excelled at—Bland Dad was bland as fuck! Who cares if he dies? Wicked Stepmother deserved what she got! Evil Uncle Frank deserved what he got with extra sour cream and guacamole. You could enjoy watching them all get eviscerated with very little guilt or worry for your own personal moral standing. You could root for Wholesome daughter while still being amused at her shock when she has to deal with the Cenobites. This poor innocent fawn has never even been to a decent leather bar—she has no point of reference for the universe of Clive Barker. But you could also root for her to ultimately get away, which, spoiler alert, she does! Everyone wins, and you don’t feel like you need a shower afterwards.
(At least I didn’t. YMMV.)
But this one! This one made me care about these five hapless mortals, so when the Cenobites start menacing them I found myself in the annoying position of not wanting to see flesh flayed from bone. (Mostly.) So as you can imagine this made for a weird viewing experience.
Everything with Debauched Rich Person Voigt and his assistant, Extremely Morally Compromised Serena, was great because they’re both awful. Serena could insist she was just doing her job all she wanted, but like find a new job. And Voigt is a gross rich man who non-consensually sacrifices sex workers to make deals with the Cenobite, so fuck him. When the Cenobites came for those I could lean into the body horror with no problem—honestly I wanted more. I really dug the giant clockwork gear that’s stuck through Voigt’s thorax, and I would’ve loved more close-up shots to really appreciate the practical effects. The shot we did get were a fine burst of classic Clive Barker squickiness. Which again, leads us to my critique. A few people on Twitter summed it up well by pointing out that this movie just isn’t wet enough. Clive Barker stories are supposed to be dripping with goo and viscera! A chorus of snapping tendons! Fountains of metaphorically-significant-but-also-real blood!
This Hellraiser is telling a different story. This story is about addiction, compulsion, loyalty, and consequences. It’s about sorrow that follows you through your life. It’s about reaching out to powers beyond you and not even knowing, exactly, what you want to ask for. It’s about making impossible choices. And it’s good! It really is, and I think a new generation of horror fans will dig it. I just wanted to feel a little slimier once it was over.
