David Bruckner’s “Hellraiser” (2022)

Hellraiser (2022)

Technically sound with a stand out performance from Odessa A’zion let down by a creaky script and poor pacing

Having enjoyed both the original Hellraiser from Clive Barker as well as director David Bruckner’s The Ritual, I went into Hulu’s reimagining with high hopes. The original’s opening act was particularly effective with a Faustian-Hitchcockian plot around the resurrection of a former lover who dabbled in the mysteries of a puzzle box which is linked to a particularly nasty sect from Hell, the Cenobites who are described as "explorers in the further regions of experience" which translates to pushing pain to the extremes.

In Bruckner’s Hellraiser, it doesn’t retread the same story but tells a new tale centred around the puzzle box and the Cenobites from the perspective of recovering addict Riley (a great performance from Odessa A'zion) who finding herself in a bad, real world situation is seduced by what appears to be a solution to her problems. A’zion’s performance carries much of the film going forward through an unevenly paced and often unsurprising script.

The direction is solid and the performances across the board are good. The look overall is solid but some design choices don’t compare well to the original. For example, the Cenobites in the original were a combination of distorted colourless flesh and black leather and in the update, they are essentially just flesh with a pink hue which if anything, makes them feel more vulnerable and less commanding than in the original. That said, the controversy of casting a woman(Jamie Clayton) to play the leader of the Cenobites(often referred to as “Pinhead”) works well as gender really has nothing to do with these otherworldly entities. They’re like gods looking down from their mountain (probabably volcano) and toying with mankind. In addition, I really did miss the music from Coil and in particularly, the gong which signalled the arrival of the Cenobites in the original.

By the time the end of the film rolled around after 2 hours, the fact that I liked the ending grated even more because this should have been better particularly with the talent involved. Thinking of a film like The Ring(Ringu) there’s a real urgency to the pacing and as with Hellraiser(2022), there’s a protagonist desperately trying to research an otherworldly threat. I mentioned the lack of the gong to announce the Cenobites’ arrival; it’s still there but its timing is wrong, it’s muted and doesn’t really work which is probably a good representation of the film as a whole.