Studio: Hulu
Director: David Bruckner
Writer: Ben Collins, Luke Piotrowski, David S. Goyer
Producer: David S. Goyer, Keith Levine, Clive Barker, Marc Toberoff
Stars: Odessa A’zion, Jamie Clayton, Adam Faison, Drew Starkey, Brandon Flynn, Aoife Hinds, Jason Liles, Yinka Olorunnife, Goran Visnjic, Hiam Abbass
Review Score:
Summary:
A puzzle box capable of opening a portal to another world leads a troubled young woman into a macabre mystery to find her missing brother.
Review:
A bit like the puzzle box featured in its stories, diverse hands have touched the Hellraiser film franchise since Clive Barker’s original movie debuted in 1987. The series has quite literally been all over the place, with the property passing down, also quite literally, from creator to creator as the films tried “found footage” tricks, sent Pinhead to outer space, transposed the configuration’s curse to a chintzy computer game, and introduced cenobites with camcorders and CDs embedded in their skulls. Even John Carpenter and Barker himself once considered a crossover with Michael Myers. Hellraiser might be only one killer shark away from Amityville in the “I have no shame, yet I must movie” department.
On one hand, the fiction’s design made every one of these weird fantasies possible. On the other, Hellraiser became so convoluted by paltry budgets and desperate ideas that by the time the number of entries hit double digits, it became harder than ever to define what Hellraiser even was anymore, or what it should be.
That question was on my mind going into Hulu’s updated iteration of “Hellraiser.” After so many dismal direct-to-DVD rush jobs, what should fans expect at this point? And what would happen once Hellraiser finally escaped from its Dimension dungeon to be resurrected under the eye of a competent creative team with access to a more generous checkbook?
Ideally, any movie, particularly a soft reboot like this one, ought to mainly be measured on independent merits. But it’s unrealistic to expect everyone to completely disregard five decades of films, comics, books, games, and more. Like it or not, no matter how clean anyone wipes their mental slate, it’s practically impossible to go into a Hellraiser movie without any preconceived notions whatsoever. Your grandmother has probably never seen a Hellraiser before, but I’d bet she still might recognize Pinhead.
What I’m getting at is I think director David Bruckner and co-writers Ben Collins and Luke Piotrowski started with similar notions. And their answer to the question of what is Hellraiser now was to get back to Barker’s basics of sadism, sensuality, death, and desire. “Cowardly” is too strong of a term, but their tamer take on Hellraiser is certainly reticent to really thrust its hooked chains into those themes. The compromise they come up with is a risk-averse reset that has the telltale Hellraiser tone while being a formula-friendly thriller that caters to casual viewers.
“Hellraiser’s” push-pull between R-rated horror and PG-13 plainness is personified by its pedestrian heroine. Our introduction to Riley involves her being briefly bent over by her boyfriend, which ends up as the only sex act in the movie. Not since I was twelve has T&A mattered to me. I merely mention sex because S&M has previously been a core component of cenobite design and taboo physical pleasures have usually been plot points, too. To see a Hellraiser otherwise include only two shirtless men talking in bed and a “Why is this here?” cutaway of another man showering feels like “Hellraiser” fumbled a fundamental ball on the goal line of exploring lustful indulgence. Or, to a use a contemporary term, “Hellraiser” should be a lot “thirstier” than it is. Even the new cenobites are very clean and symmetrical, lacking the raw grotesqueness of grimier predecessors.
It’s more problematic that the only other things we learn about Riley are that she’s a recovering drug addict prone to selfish relapses and unfairly exploding anger on her concerned brother Matt. That recipe makes Riley difficult to root for. At least her character can be described with clear traits, which is more than can be said for poor roommate Nora and Matt’s boyfriend Colin, with whom it’s 50/50 if they perhaps had something personally significant to do in a previous draft of the script or if they were intentionally written to only wear targets on their interchangeable backs.
Part of me wishes I waited to review “Hellraiser” until after time reveals how and where it settles into the franchise’s bigger picture. Academic insights may be more likely to come after it spawns further films, when it’s also less likely to bear the baggage of 35 years of a clouded cinematic history.
Coming at it quickly immediately after watching the movie, “Hellraiser” mostly plays as a middling mystery movie. Hamstrung by the types of tropes that studio notes always insist upon, the movie kicks off with a prologue meant to give us something macabre since it’ll be another half-hour until a similar scene occurs, except this sequence reveals too much too soon. “Hellraiser” trips into the same trap by giving away a villainous reveal too early, rendering suspense that’s supposed to come from the story almost entirely useless.
While watching the film, I thought its predictability amounted to a straightforward movie that was more or less “fine,” even though I couldn’t consciously pinpoint what it was actually “about.” Obsession, I guess? It appears that Bruckner and company meant to manufacture a “get the job done” film, a simple yet effective one that would placate old fans, welcome new ones, and please the Powers That Be who are in positions to greenlight additional projects. They get that job done, resetting the franchise with fresh additions to the mythology that can build less burdened bridges to new sequels. Honestly though, the franchise contains so many flops that being a slightly above average horror movie means it’s outstanding as far as Hellraiser films go.
Review Score: 60
Everyone else who has no problem with a fright flick that feels like “Lizzie McGuire” decided to get dark with a PG-13 Halloween special should do just fine.