Less heaven, more hell

PAIN, for most normal people, is precisely that – pain. But for a minority group of humans, pain sensory signals are interpreted by their brain as being pleasurable.

For most of early film history, this facet of storytelling was unexplored, particularly in horror films, until 1987.

After publishing The Hellbound Heart in 1986, author Clive Barker would then write and direct an adaptation of his own novel the following year titled Hellraiser, a film that would introduce the demonic Cenobites and its leader, the Priest/Pinhead into pop culture.

Hellraiser came in the same time period that birthed many classic horror film icons such as A Nightmare on Elm Street’s Freddy Krueger, Friday the 13th’s Jason Voorhees and Halloween’s Michael Myers, but Hellraiser’s villains were not like their blood-soaked peers.

Pinhead and the Cenobites not only looked and behaved differently, they also followed rules that differentiated them from the mindless slashers of other films.

Though they dealt out torture and death, the demons did so with an understanding that these were not based in pain, but pleasure, and there had to an arbitrary sense of consent and intent.

Unlike Krueger, Voorhees or Myers who showed up at random and slaughtered indiscriminately, the Cenobites had to be summoned using a puzzle box called the Lament Configuration by someone willing to push the boundaries of pain and pleasure.

As Pinhead says in Hellraiser’s sequel, Hellbound: Hellraiser II: “It is not hands that call us. It is desire”.

Sadly, subsequent films in the franchise became progressively worse, pandering to cheap shock and horror, but now, with enough desire, the franchise has been rebooted with a much higher budget and cinematic vision in the recently released Hellraiser.

Horror pitfalls

David Bruckner’s Hellraiser is a breath of fresh air into an old corpse. In certain aspects, the film is an upgrade, but in others, it is a downgrade, like the story.

Hellraiser is centered around recovering drug addict Riley McKendry (Odessa A’zion), who steals the Lament Configuration puzzle box with the help of her boyfriend Trevor (Drew Starkey) from Roland Voight (Goran Višnjić), a wealthy businessman and occult collector.

Due to the bad decision-making nature of drug addicts, McKendry having her hands on such a dangerous, Hell-summoning device inadvertently causes the bodies to pile up in very terrible, extremely graphic, R-rated ways.

The film’s story – its thematic backbone of addiction – is fine, but the script-writing is terrible, and slides between being juvenile and cheap.

For one, the Cenobites are written as any other cheap horror villain. They will kill anyone, even if the person never summoned them. If Person A forces or tricks Person B into using the Lament Configuration puzzle box, the Cenobites will come for Person B, who never had the intent or desire to summon the demons.

The film also has tropes that plague lesser horror films. Characters sometimes make terrible decisions that seem out of place. It’s juvenile writing when it comes to horror.

However, beyond its weak writing and somewhat weaker acting, Hellraiser excels in everything else.

Not all bad

Adhering closer to the source material, Hellraiser explores and displays more of the puzzle box and how it functions, as each attempt at “solving it” not only physically changes the design, but has specific lore implications.

However, like filmmakers’ previous two films – The Ritual and Night House – the director and his writers are not bothered with explaining everything in the film. There is no handholding in regards to why certain things are the way they are.

Bruckner understands that good horror is “show, don’t tell”.

Designs for the Cenobites also receive an upgrade. The old S&M leather outfits are removed, and the costume and makeup artists are able to flex their creativity by showing fuller designs for the mangled, flesh-stripped, hellish demons.

The most noticeable change in appearance is Pinhead. In the original franchise, the leader of the Cenobites was played by male actors, and despite the androgynous nature of the demons, Pinhead had a male-shaped head and masculine voice.

In Bruckner’s film, Pinhead is played by trans actress Jamie Clayton, while most of the other Cenobites are also played by women.

Disregarding its writing, which all of modern horror seems to suffer from, Hellraiser – though only slightly above average – is still better than most horror films out at the moment due Bruckner’s direction and visual style.

To quote Pinhead, Bruckner’s Hellraiser will be “demons to some, angels to others”.

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