Mark Reviews Movies: HELLRAISER (2022)

Hellraiser, 20th Century Studios

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Review by Mark Dujsik | October 6, 2022

The problem with the Hellraiser series (well, at least the four movies that were released theatrically, before the franchise went direct-to-video for several more) is that the movies started paying attention to the least interesting characters. Okay, there are multiple problems with these movies, but that seems to be the foundational one.

Back in the day of those original movies, the filmmakers seemed to realize that issue, too. How else does one explain how the first movie, a supernatural neo-noir of sorts about a cheating wife and her undead lover, became more about the mythology of some apathetic interdimensional demons, only for those demonic figures to become vicious killers by the end of that initial run of stories?

As dreamt up in writer/director Clive Barker's original movie (as well as the short story that spawned the whole franchise), the Cenobites, as those creepy entities are known, are a passive presence, inflicting punishment on those whose curiosity for devilish things gets the better of them. They're plot devices, not characters, and they're definitely not murderous slashers like some of their contemporary horror-movie villains.

In a way, director David Bruckner's Hellraiser, a reboot of the series, understands the fundamental nature of the Cenobites, in that they're mostly in the backdrop and not out to kill here. Once again, they're summoned to our plane of existence by a mysterious puzzle box, which tempts the curious with promises of supernatural rewards for solving it, but as one would expect (or as you already know from the previous installments), those rewards aren't what one would hope to receive. A hedonist looking to experience physical sensations unlike any other, for example, gets an eternity of torture. Be careful what you wish for and all that.

Ben Collins and Luke Piotrowski's screenplay gets that part right on the surface, at least. The movie opens with a prologue, set several years before the story proper, in which a wealthy man named Voight (Goran Visnjic) obtains the puzzle box, lures an unaware guy to complete the puzzle, and seemingly takes his reward for offering up a sacrifice, who's nabbed by a slew of chains with hooks at the end, to the Cenobites in his stead. From the start, it's clear those demons are a means to an end and a representation of the cost of a greedy soul, and that's promising.

The rest of the story, though, feels like an excuse to dig into this new and updated mythology of the Cenobites, instead of just following through on the idea of them as the punishment for people who reach too far for pleasure, knowledge, or power. Our protagonist is Riley (Odessa A'zion), a recovering addict who obtains the puzzle box after falling off the wagon and joining her boyfriend Trevor (Drew Starkey) in burgling a rich man's shipping container.

As a result, she's kicked out the apartment rented by her brother Matt (Brandon Flynn), his boyfriend Colin (Adam Faison), and their roommate Nora (Aoife Hinds). Playing around with the box, Riley solves it, but her brother, regretting his decision to send her out on the streets, is the one who cuts himself on a retractable blade, making him the sacrifice for the Cenobites. Riley starts researching the mysterious item's history in an attempt to find out how to save her brother from the horrific entities, led by the Priest (Jamie Clayton), the familiar pin-headed one.

The Cenobites may have their proper place in this plot, occasionally—and then with increased frequency—showing up to tear into and rip apart flesh as people keep manipulating the box, but they and the mythology surrounding them are the focal point of everything that happens. The human characters may be in the foreground, but they solely exist to stare at computer screens and papers explaining the lore of these creatures, to keep playing with the puzzle (One of the rewards is resurrection, and with Matt missing and presumably damned, it's a motive to keep solving the box, at least), and to evade the doom presented by the Cenobites. The whole affair quickly falls into a routine, and the Cenobites, while looking particularly nasty and intimidating in their new looks (when we actually get a good look at them), remain as uninteresting as their nature as plot devices suggests.

Bruckner does create some tension within the formula, and the movie's grim but slick look extends to a couple of neat visual tricks. The arrival of the Cenobites, for example, has spaces shifting like the puzzle box, with walls rotating and floors collapsing, and creates a kind of tunnel vision for the soon-to-be victims, leading to a couple of neat shots in which the interior of a van seems to stretch in a disorienting way.

None of this really changes that the plot is akin to a scavenger hunt for exposition, the characters don't have much to do, and the Cenobites are little more than monsters with an indifferent attitude. Superficially, Hellraiser fixes some of the problems that sank other sequels in this series, but too many of the central ones remain.

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