HELLRAISER (2022), DIRECTED BY DAVID BRUCKNER

I admire a film like Hellraiser (2022) that boldly bends reality and then both trusts and demands that its audience accept displays of the impossible.

A young woman must confront the sadistic, supernatural forces behind an enigmatic puzzle box responsible for her brother's disappearance.

Director: David Bruckner
Staring: Odessa A'zion, Jamie Clayton, Brandon Flynn, Drew Starkey,  Selina Lo
Goran Višnjić
​Story by: Clive Barker, David S. Goyer

The original Hellraiser (1987) was a gamechanger for my imagination. I was probably thirteen, and it popped up on Sci-Fi Channel, and in hindsight it was, A. not appropriate viewing at that age, and B. like my mind had cracked open same as the walls in the film whenever the Cenobites appear.

Our seemingly solid world might only be a thin layer atop others, with reality a stack of paper in which worms chew through page by page.

I’d like to think the horror community as a whole let out a cheer when Clive Barker regained the movie rights to the Hellraiser series. Now we’re supposedly getting a show on HBO, and a new Hellraiser film has released on Hulu. We’ve had ten films previously, and I can’t claim the same devotion as Paula Ashe considering I’ve only watched the good Hellraiser films.

But thankfully I haven’t broken that streak, because David Bruckner’s Hellraiser is the first solid entry the series has seen in decades.*

(*At least from what I understand, and I have no desire to watch eight films of poor reputation to find out; I’ll just take Paula’s word for it, thank you!)

Riley (Odessa A’zion) is a recovering addict looking to make rent money, and through her boyfriend (Drew Starkey) gets her hands on the Lament Configuration without knowing what it is or does. After a loved one vanishes and the box begins to change, she embarks on an investigation into learning its origins in hopes of putting things right.

That’s the simple setup to what becomes both a dive into new Hellraiser lore and a series of murders/sacrifices to the box and the Cenobites it summons from their deathless realm.

You won’t necessarily find the same seamless interplay between the new Hellraiser and the original as you can find in Candyman (2021)’s conversation with Candyman (1992), in which the original film feels part of a larger spectrum.

But Hellraiser (2022) creates that larger spectrum itself, glimpsed in the film’s opening and seen in full between the climax and the very end. There’s a method to its design, helpfully laid out in a discovered notebook midway through the movie, showcasing greater depths of possibility and horror to what the Lament Configuration offers.

Hellbound: Hellraiser II is a terrific movie, and my minor gripe with it is that it presents the Cenobites’ realm as an aspect closer to a Christian hell of penance and personalization torture. This clashes with Hellraiser’s “explorers” and certainly now that I’ve recently read The Hellbound Heart with a better understanding (much as mortals can attempt) for the Order of the Gash. In both book and film, Frank Cotton is a hedonist who lacks the imagination to find greater pleasure in the world. This leads him to seek pleasure outside the world, through the puzzle box the films have named the Lament Configuration, where the same lack of imagination keeps him from realizing until too late that the Cenobites’ definition of pleasure might differ wildly from his own.

But Hellraiser II introduces brilliant ideas, too, and Hellraiser (2002) interweaves many of those and ideas of the original film and book to create its own layer of mythos surrounding the Cenobites, the puzzle box, and the god Leviathan. Gone is any sense that we’ve entered a hell adjacent to existing organized religion or mythos. The new film is the work of people who genuinely understand the uniqueness of Hellraiser, and they expand on it.


This is cosmic horror. The Cenobites are explorers once more, of the body and its limits, of sensations, potential, and even human will, and again their idea of pleasure differs wildly from the human characters facing them.

The Cenobite designs are everything I could want. Gone are the awkwardly gimmicky Cenobites of post-Hellbound sequels, such as Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth’s CD Cenobite or camera Cenobite. Everyone working on the makeup, costumes, and special effects surrounding the new film’s Cenobites has shown understanding that the incredible mutilation is the point, with flesh distorted into impressive art displays. Through this, the Cenobites become not only explorers in sensation, but admirers of aesthetic, though whether that’s their own desire or their god’s is left unsaid.

Jamie Clayton gives a wonderful performance as the Priest. Her conversations with characters ascend beyond Scary Movie Monster and take on the tone of someone who really wants you to understand her point of view while also being patient and cryptic. Her unsettling calm never wavers, and she’s all the more intimidating and entrancing for it.

This is a very different character from Douglas Bradley’s Pinhead while no less majestic. In the original film, there’s an almost fairy tale logic to the scene where Kirsty (Ashley Laurence) offers a deal to the monster, and the monster actually listens.

Here, the Priest desires such arrangements. The depravity human beings might sink to when eager to save themselves or a loved one intrigues her, and she has a catlike level of curiosity when observing the characters and hearing them out.

My only significant gripe about the new movie is the near-slasher feel of the first half, wherein the box’s progression is linked to the Cenobites’ present kill count. While likely the restraint shown early on is meant to build anticipation for the Cenobites’ reveals, on first viewing it feels like perfunctory, like the narrative needs to get people out of the way despite the early deaths being important to the plot and in one case to the characters. My feelings on that, and other elements of the movie, might change on later views, and I’ll definitely be coming back. Any gripes aside, this is a mesmerizing film in script, sight, and sound.

In the spirit of the Cenobites, I’m going to indulge on sound here: Christopher Young’s score to Hellraiser (1987) is one of my all-time favorites. It’s the only film score where I bought the original way back, and then later bought the 30th Anniversary remaster. That’s not a “music to write to” thing; I genuinely enjoy listening to it. It is grandiose, alluring, distressing, and unlike any other movie music of the time. Hellbound only expands on this, and I’d forgotten most of its gorgeous score until recently rewatching the movie.

In scoring Hellraiser (2022), Ben Lovett beautifully weaves in several of Young’s themes throughout the film. Some of them are subtle renditions of previous music, some even feel like sound effects playing a monophonic version of other themes, but by midway through, the new film has taken on those themes to make them its own, and by late we’re in full-blown “this is the sound of Hellraiser” territory. Time will tell if I fall in love with this score as much as I have for the first two films, but musical cohesion is significant to a film series, and Lovett’s devotion and attention to detail keep the new film feeling it’s part of a legacy.

Devotees to the original first two films might complain that the new one can’t capture the look and feel of Hellraiser (1987) or Hellbound: Hellraiser II, but that’s more an admission (brag?) at having not seen the other sequels (there are ten films in the original series). It’s been over thirty years, and movies don’t look the way they used to, special effects have changed, even gore effects will not be as chunky as they were in the ‘80s. We’re not getting that delicious labyrinth matte painting again, my loves.

Still, Hellraiser (2022) carries its own look and feel. The colors take on an otherworldly turquoise at times, bringing out the Cenobites’ dark eyes and accentuating the red of their flesh distortions. For the significance of their practical effects, the special effects make their own mark. Where walls once shifted to light and corridor in the original film, now anything can open to the Cenobites. There’s a scene involving the back of a van turning into a corridor-like liminal space that both looks wonderful and shows the filmmakers’ willingness to get wild with possibilities, which I personally adore. Too many movies these days show less a fear of their darker elements and more a fear that the audience might laugh at them, or dismiss them.
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In the end, I admire a film like Hellraiser (2022) that boldly bends reality and then both trusts and demands that its audience accept displays of the impossible.

Hailey Piper

Hailey Piper is the Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Queen of Teeth, No Gods for Drowning, The Worm and His Kings, Unfortunate Elements of My Anatomy, and other books of dark fiction. She is an active member of the Horror Writers Association, with dozens of short stories appearing in Pseudopod, Vastarien, Cosmic Horror Monthly, and other publications. She lives with her wife in Maryland, where they conduct only the coolest occult rituals. Find Hailey at www.haileypiper.com or on Twitter via @HaileyPiperSays.

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