…In a Hand Basket
Review of Hellraiser (2022, Hulu)
I hate reviews of horror movies written by critics who admit up front that they are not fans of the genre (I’m looking at you, ghost of Gene Siskel). Yet here I am, doing exactly that. So let me add my full-disclosure disclaimer that I am not a horror fan, particularly, and then explain why I think I am still qualified to discuss a horror movie’s worth — in this case, the new Hellraiser reboot — and not have actual horror fans immediately dismiss my comments as irrelevant.
First, I am a big fan of horror-adjacent genres, particularly science fiction and fantasy, and there is a significant enough overlap between the genres to give us all a common set of texts, fandom-wise.
Second, I spent the 1990s managing a comic book store and the general vibe and esprit de corps of the culture there very much included horror. I eventually moved on from comic books to film (both in fandom and professionally as a filmmaker) and I can talk at a fairly high level about horror filmmaking history and techniques with the most ardent fans of the genre.
Finally, I married a true horror fan, and I happen to be in the house with her, so I see a lot of horror movies despite not being a true fan myself, at heart.
But don’t get me wrong. I get horror. I see the appeal. Yes, it’s partly about being scared, at least in the beginning, but horror fans stop being scared by horror movies pretty quickly in the arc of their fandom, so there’s a lot more to it than that.
I think a love of horror is about movies that are visceral and somehow transgressive, but that actually say something interesting or funny or creepy about the human condition. I don’t mean to get all intellectual about a genre whose greatest practitioners were no more (sometimes far less) intellectual about their art than filmmakers in other genres, but if you define “art” as being a production that gives the audience a new or deeper understanding about what it means to be a human living on Earth (which is as good a definition of “art” as any, by my lights), then I might argue that horror is the film genre in which it’s easiest to achieve that goal.
Horror, after all, deals with some pretty primal shit in humans. It’s about survival; it’s about people being simultaneously both predator and prey; it’s about fight or flight. So even a schlocky, low budget horror movie that has laugh-out-loud-bad gore effects, can tap into these deep, primal feelings and move us — maybe not profoundly, but in the modern media landscape, finding content that moves us at all is pretty special.
I would argue that a film like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (Tobe Hooper, 1974) gets at some deeper human-condition questions than any movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Don’t get me wrong, I like the MCU. I’m entertained by those films and they are made by extremely talented craftspeople and artists, but I don’t know how well any of them jibe with my aforementioned definition of art.
Having said all that, let’s talk about this new Hellraiser movie, because I actually do think it satisfies my definition for “art,” I just think it doesn’t really use the horror aspects of the story to do it.
The new film, directed by David Bruckner, is not a remake of Clive Barker’s 1987 classic, nor is it a sequel. “Reboot” is probably the descriptor that applies best. The story is completely different from Barker’s film, though it is ostensibly also based on his novella, “The Hellbound Heart,” about which, Wikipedia says this:
The story features a hedonist criminal acquiring a mystical puzzle box, the Lemarchand Configuration, which can be used to summon the Cenobites, demonic beings who do not distinguish between pain and pleasure. He escapes the Cenobites and, with help, resorts to murder to restore himself to full life.
Barker’s film more or less adhered to this basic plot and introduced the world to “Pinhead,” the lead “Cenobite” from hell, who became a horror icon and was featured in all of Hellraiser’s many sequels.
The reboot jettisons the plot of the original but retains its basic premise — there’s a puzzle box and if you solve the puzzle, demons from hell show up and torture you forever. In the original film, the box is a hard-to-find rarity, sought by occult enthusiasts and S&M deviants who are seeking a next-level experience in terms of transgressive pain/sex/ecstasy. The box is a gateway to hell, yes, but it also offers a gift, of sorts, to those of a particular kinky bent. The Cenobites who arrive and administer this “gift” look like BDSMers turned up to eleven. They are clad in a combination of leather and torn flesh and have clearly had some extreme (read: supernatural) body modifications.
Bruckner’s reboot, by contrast, implies a deviant sexuality is at least partly involved in the motivations of the film’s villain, who possesses a puzzle box and lures young witless victims to open it in front of him, but beyond this, the film is fairly light on the pain/pleasure dichotomy that so riddled the original. Barker’s film was nothing if not horny.
The main character in the reboot is a recovering addict who (apparently) stumbles onto a puzzle box unwittingly. Things start to get demonic when she accidentally solves the box (at least the first of several steps in a solution) and mistakenly condemns her brother to the Cenobites’ tortures.
The rules for how exactly the box works, when and why the Cenobites show up, and what the ultimate purpose of the box is, are all quite different from Barker’s film, and not all that internally consistent, so things get a little murky in that area.
Halfway through the movie there had been three Cenobite kills and they were all mostly off-screen. That’s when I knew this film was not going to be lauded by fans of the franchise.
Where are the chains ripping flesh, I asked myself. Where are the skinless wretches seeking fresh blood to make them whole again? Is Bruckner going for a PG-13 rating from the MPAA?
Bruckner’s prior directing credits are horror films — good ones, according to my wife — so this is his genre, but it sure seemed to me like this reboot fundamentally missed what was compelling and cool about the original and the way it explored themes of sex, pleasure, pain, dominance and submission.
One thing Brucker does understand was what makes Pinhead so compelling. The lead Cenobite in the reboot is played by a trans-woman (Jamie Clayton) and she is almost as effective as Doug Bradley’s original take on the character. I only say “almost” because the costuming, while compelling from a production design perspective, lacks the edgy BDSM flavor of the original, and verges at times on looking like she’s walking around in a rubber suit.
The film has a couple of interesting visual ideas — the way the Cenobites collect a victim from a moving van is pretty nifty, for example —but the horror is all fairly tepid.
The film’s depiction of addiction seems like it’s informed by some real life experience, and this is where I think it missed a creative opportunity. The main character is a recovering addict and that aspect is played realistically (and star Odessa A’zion does a good job selling it), but I think the film could have done a lot more linking the puzzle box to themes of addiction. Maybe the filmmakers thought it was too obvious? It’s right there — puzzle box seekers are driven to find and open the box by their addiction to transcendent experiences of the flesh and “sweet, sweet suffering.” It’s a compulsion that ruins lives, etc.
But Hellraiser doesn’t use addiction as a subtext, really. It’s just there to make our protagonist have some personal demons to overcome along with the literal ones.
It’s too bad. I think there’s a really outstanding Hellraiser reboot that was just missed here. If it was just a bit more creative in the depictions of what the Cenobites actually do to people, if it plumbed the addiction themes a bit more thoughtfully, if the rules about how the box works and why the Cenobites do what they do were just a little more clear and thought through, I think this could have revitalized one of the more interesting horror franchises from the 80s.
Does this film meet the definition of “art” that I proffered at the beginning of this review? Yes, I think the things this film has to say about addiction and the relationships of addicts to their families and loved ones will resonate with some viewers, and perhaps make us consider that aspect of the human condition. I only wish that juicy stuff had anything at all to do with the horror elements of the movie.
Fans of the franchise should definitely see the film, just be prepared to be let down (again). As for everyone else, well, as Pinhead says to Kirsty in the original film, this isn’t for your eyes.
