Hellraiser (2022) Review

 "I don't know."

-Riley McKendry

Riley McKendry (Odessa A'zion) and her boyfriend, Trevor (Drew Starkey), break into a warehouse and find a puzzle box.  After solving it, Riley begins seeing twisted beings who threaten to take her with them unless she gives them someone else in her place.  When someone close to her goes missing, Riley has to discover the secrets of the puzzle box if she is to have any hope of saving them.

What Works:

Man, is it nice to have a Hellraiser movie that looks this good.  The theatrical movies all came out in the 80's and 90's, and while they have their charm, they definitely feel like they are from the 80's and 90's.  The rest of the series is pretty much straight to video trash and they all feel cheap and ugly.  This Hellraiser simply looks good.  It keeps the tone, but takes Hellraiser into a modern era and you love to see it.  The design of the Cenobites and everything from their dimension feels a lot like the movie The Void.  I'm always up for some cosmic horror.

This is a reboot of the Hellraiser series, not a legacy sequel and not a remake.  It takes some of the ideas of the original series and novella and changes them up, while keeping some of the tone and themes.  It's a great idea and it actually succeeds beyond what the original film did.  I never liked the original Hellraiser much, even though I love the second movie.  I wasn't offended by the changes here.  I embraced them.  They made the story and lore more straightforward, but the conflict was made more interesting.  This is how you do a reboot.

I loved watching the Cenobites interact with the human characters.  Especially their interactions with Nora (Aoife Hinds) and Voight (Goran Višnjić).  That's where the movie gets nice and twisted, as any Hellraiser movie should.  I just wish we had gotten more of it.

Finally, I really like the new Pinhead.  Although the character is not named Pinhead, just the Hell Priest, like in the novella.  Jamie Clayton does a great job and never really emulates Doug Bradley.  She does her own thing, but doesn't get too far away from what made the character so memorable.

What Sucks:

The biggest problem with the movie comes from the main protagonist, Riley.   I believe that a main character either needs to be likable or interesting, if not both.  Riley is neither.  She can be sympathetic at times, but not likable.  She's a recovering addict and her behavior early in the movie is a major drag on her loved ones, which makes it hard to root for her.  That would be fine if there were more to the character to make her more interesting.  She mostly just explains things poorly and says "I don't know," for the whole movie.  The Hellraiser series has had plenty of unlikable leads before, but they revel in being nasty characters, which can make them fun.  At other times, the series has had straightforward final girls as the leads.  As long as they have charisma and intelligence, that's totally fine.  This movie doesn't do either, which leaves us with Riley, who can be annoy to view this movie through.

I wish this movie had gone further in places.  I would have liked to see more of the deaths and tortures at the hands of the Cenobites.  We only get two real scenes of that.  Plus I would have liked more exploration of everything to do with the Cenobites and their lore.  Maybe they are saving that stuff for a sequel, but I wanted more than what we got.

Finally, and this is just a minor thing, but I don't love the designs of the new Cenobites.  I get what they were going for, but I like the classic BDSM look in the previous movies a lot more.  I know they wanted to do their own thing, but the end result just didn't work for me.

Verdict:

Hellraiser (2022) is the 2nd best movie in the series, behind only the 2nd movie.  This is how you reboot a franchise.  It's got neat ideas, but doesn't leave the tone and themes behind.  I wish it had gone further in places, but what we do get is fun and interesting, even if I didn't care for the main protagonist.  This movie has absolutely got it going on.

 8/10: Really Good