[Cross-posting – this review was originally posted here. Contains some mild spoilers. All photos in this post are from Bloody Disgusting, posted here on Fair Use basis.]
Writing anything about Hellraiser seems almost like an impossible task. Everyone knows it, everyone knows Pinhead, everyone has their own views on the movies they’ve seen; trying to shout your Hellraiser feelings and opinions from the rooftop just seems like a ridiculously stolid affair because, for one, there’s nothing new one could say about it. Yet somehow articles and opinions keep popping up online, and sequels keep being produced. In the case of latter the explanation always is ‘money’. No doubt, something that’s not independent usually is being produced with money in mind, but, if you ask me, I don’t believe it’s ever been just about money. Cenobites are inspirational. As soon as you see any of them on screen along with the person who’s managed to get in touch with those things, they speak to you on some deeper than mundane level. There somehow seem to always be so much to the angles and facets of the situations and characters in Hellraiser-verse that something definitely had been forgotten, or unfairly dismissed in production process, and the world ought to know about it. Because Cenobites are an important deal. Always. With that in mind let’s take a look at the new Hellraiser reboot of 2022.
As a Hellraiser film the new Hulu picture kicks off with a very strong opening, featuring Palestinian actress Hiam Abbass (plays Menaker) as well as actors from the former cold war Yugoslavia: Croatian American Goran Visnjic (plays Voight) and Serb Predrag Bjelac (plays Lorenz). A death scene with Kit Clarke’s Joey as a victim is part of the culmination of the new reboot’s beginning, and absolutely everything in it reassures the viewer that this is not in fact another paltry installment in series of films that have little to nothing in common with the 80’s horror classics: the puzzle box and chains, and hooks are back; the settings for those are first-rate; the sequence of events and their meaning is on par with original Hellraiser – the scene gets set for another great exploit featuring insatiable curiosity, deception and... suffering, of course.
Goran Visnjic as Voight in Hellraiser. Photo courtesy of Spyglass Media Group. © 2022 Spyglass Media Group. All Rights Reserved.
There are some other things that can be noticed right off the bat in the new Hellraiser – the rather winningly done ratio of lights and shades as well as symmetry. A lot of the design is based on symmetry, which looks like a necessary appurtenance to wealth and splendor. So when from Voight camera cuts to our frugal gypsy type of lead protagonist Riley (Odessa A’zion), a lot of things sort of go out of balance (and thus at odds with symmetry); mainly Riley’s living conditions – she is a recovering addict, living in one of the rooms in her brother Matt’s (Brandon Flynn) apartment, where he lives with his partner Colin (Adam Faison) and their roommate Nora (Aoife Hinds). There is also Trevor (Drew Starkey), whom Riley is seeing, but who doesn’t meet Matt’s approval – I think Riley’s brother wants someone better for her since Trevor is someone from a twelve-step program.
Odessa A’zion as Riley in Hellraiser. Photo courtesy of Spyglass Media Group. © 2022 Spyglass Media Group. All Rights Reserved.
Thus far about wholly human characters in the new Hellraiser. Now onto the crux of any Hellraiser film: the Cenobites and everything surrounding their conduct.
Jamie Clayton as Hell Priest in Hellraiser. Photo courtesy of Spyglass Media Group. © 2022 Spyglass Media Group. All Rights Reserved.
If I’d just have to answer ‘pass’ or ‘fail’ regarding my approval of the well known “sadistic extradimensional demonic-like beings” in this Hellraiser reboot, I’d say ‘fail’, and there’s more than one reason for that. First of all, when someone is described as so exquisitely mutilated (another thing, which in my mind at least, should be at odds with symmetry) they can’t distinguish between pleasure and pain anymore, the last thing in my mind is an image of a human anatomy model, sporting some rather cute looking artistic alterations saying, “look, tracheotomy can be made to look like this. What do you think?” I imagine there’d be this student sitting at his or her desk, thinking with increasing worrisomeness in their face, “this just looks really artsy, full of symmetry and all. Wait... Am I really that f.cked up? Am I a sadist?”
Symmetry of the number 2 is an ever present feature of Gen Z Cenobite scare, and, to be honest, it all looks less like being a scare and more like something that looks a bit different to us. But not in a serious horror film way. Looking at The Masque, one may wonder if a long long time ago some particularly curious stormtrooper somewhere in a galaxy far away ended up having an encounter with Cenobites, who, of course, first thought they’d have their usual way with him, but then the Priest said, “hold your horses, my elegant unappeasable comrades; we already have quite a few “experiments” here. This one is going to be representing one of us in a 2022 horror film, let’s just make a nice, suave Etsy figure out of him! For the lulz, hahaha.”
Vukasin Jovanovic as The Masque in Hellraiser. Photo courtesy of Spyglass Media Group. © 2022 Spyglass Media Group. All Rights Reserved.
Here's a music video with young Sarah Brightman singing "I Lost My Heart to a Starship Trooper" in case you, my dear reader, have already become disinterested in my review at this point:
Cenobites to me always looked like that point, to which, consciously or unconsciously, one gets when either gambles with a dangerous stuff or just ends up facing unavoidable problem, or choice that’s extremely ugly, and there’s no easy way out. The new Hulu Hellraiser is still a story with some ugly choices being made, but with one major difference: the Priest (Jamie Clayton) paints the Cenobite kind as maniacs and serial killers rather than ones fulfilling “you called, we came” condition. All of a sudden the magnificent and self sufficient beings from another dimension acquire some very human-like flaws and passions as part of a vile affiliate marketing game of deception. Paraphrasing David from Prometheus: “Not so supernatural after all...” (Although I must admit, I saw something rather fascinating in the situation where Riley had a choice to end her bf as well as in the ardour the Priest manages to increase as the game is on.)
Deception is, in my opinion, just about the only thing that makes this Hellraiser reboot an equal to the original movie of 1987. This gets particularly detectable when watching the new flick for the second time. Early on in the film the scene in Matt’s apartment, where the vibe among the actors is a strikingly easy one, real and natural; the first faint signs of deception can be noticed. Deception had been built in in such a wonderful way, it is like that love interest you never knew was there, and then it just suddenly strikes at you, and makes you realize they were there all along, plotting to get to you. Trevor’s part is particularly excellent; the performance of Drew Starkey is definitely my favorite one in this movie – it’s a guy who’s intellect is working 24/7, and the verbal expressions coupled with body language at times reflect not just that, but also accompanying doubts and possible inner conflicts. All in all, an important, clever and skillful part of Hellraiser.
On a final note I would like to mention Cenobites once again. I would like to remind everyone that those are supposed to be beings everyone is having a difficult time to even look at. The type of sensations they ought to offer are ones that are not offered by any mortal soul thus something as simple as a needle through someone’s neck really isn’t their league. Also, they wouldn’t move like robots because they aren’t ones. The only aspect I liked about them in the new film was Priest’s confrontational and somewhat static appearance. In fact, some moments with static Cenobites were indeed enjoyable, reminding the spectator here of reapers in Supernatural series gathering for the Apocalypse, and the animal hedges in The Shining. But, I think, if you indeed want a bona fide terrifying Cenobite then the process of transformation and mutilation should be reoccuring, perhaps reacting to the puzzle box’s changing configurations. Imagine if Riley herself was a drug dealer, and Hell Priest’s (or some other Cenobite’s) visual form upon appearing to the protagonist depended on the destructive and bad effects her trade produces in the world. What if Riley as an offering had to face those beings as some sort of one’s shadow archetype?
Cenobites are inspirational. Their power lies in looking the opposite of any sort of pleasing, in being dangerous, not funny and extremely risky to accepted norms and boundaries. That's where the real hype is.
Peer Ynt
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