If you find a strange puzzle box: NO TOUCHY
September 21, 2022 7:17 AM   Subscribe

New Hellraiser movie trailer has come to tear your soul apart. The titular of Pinhead will be played by Jamie Clayton, and is Clive Barker approved.
posted by Kitteh (59 comments total) 8 users marked this as a favorite
 
A couple years ago, I watched EVERY Hellraiser movie. I love them all, even the ones adapted from unrelated scripts, filmed in Eastern Europe on a shoestring, and Doug Bradley only appears for thirty seconds of screen time. But then, I love bad movies. And boy howdy, are there some bad movies in the bunch.

Hellraiser has always been a great horror premise in search of a good movie. Even the first two, which are easily the best, are wonky as heck.

What I'm saying is that Hellraiser isn't some sacred cow that can be "ruined" by a remake. It's kinda the perfect remake fodder, in fact. Good, Bad, or Indifferent - I'm irrationally excited for this upcoming film.
posted by Laura Palmer's Cold Dead Kiss at 7:43 AM on September 21, 2022 [34 favorites]


I had an opportunity to re-read The Hellbound Heart a few weeks ago, and what struck me, reading it for the first time since the late 80s, is that the story's menace was never about the Cenobites, and had nothing to do with a mix of gore and wisecracks, but focused on the horrors of heterosexuality, the boredom, the constriction. Getting what you say you want, as a punishment. I realize the ship has sailed, and the weight of the series and its tie-ins is all towards pretty boxes and clever new ways to express bodily harm, so there's no going back, but I do think it's interesting how quickly the intellectual property turned away from that mundane, middle-class horror, the existential emptiness of it, the critique of boredom lost or maybe pre-incorporated in a dreadful fear of portraying boredom. Anyway, all good wishes to those who want to see attractive and energetic 20-somethings torn to shreds.
posted by mittens at 7:45 AM on September 21, 2022 [21 favorites]


The trailer sort of suggests you can be tricked into solving the puzzle, which was ruled out in HR2. Maybe something else is going on, or events are compressed. Or maybe the canon is reset on that point.
posted by mph at 7:52 AM on September 21, 2022 [1 favorite]


I absolutely love the first movie, like the second, and find the rest of the series unwatchable. My twitter lurking makes it seem like The Youngs really love HR3, so if this new movie is even halfway decent it could blow their minds. My only real reservation about the remake is that I think David Bruckner's other horror outings are pretty lame. That said, I love Hellraiser conceptually and am dying for another halfway decent entry in the franchise, so here's hoping!
posted by cakelite at 8:00 AM on September 21, 2022


Finally! I am so glad someone finally has a chance to realize the true vision of Clive Barker's The Hellbound Heart. Something to replace that watered down version by hack Hollywood director... (checks notes)... Clive Barker.

(which is to say, this whole project strikes me as a bit extraneous)
posted by 3j0hn at 8:04 AM on September 21, 2022 [8 favorites]


Looks like they've redesigned the Lament Configuration as well! I haven't seen all the Hellraiser films, but I've seen at least 5 of them, I think? So I'd say that makes me a fan. I'm in.

My favorite story about the original film is that at the wrap party no one talked to Doug Bradley or even knew who he was because they'd only ever seen him in his full Pinhead make-up.


That said, maybe I'm traumatized by the Anti-SJW crowd, but I'm still waiting for the "purist" fans to complain about casting a trans woman in a role formerly played by a man. I wonder what kind of bullshit they might trot out to explain why the lead Cenobite couldn't be female; will it be as dumb as the "scientific" argument that Ariel couldn't be black because living under water the mermaids wouldn't be exposed to sunlight and thus never have evolved dark skin as an adaptation? I sure hope so, because that's some stupid shit.
posted by Saxon Kane at 8:06 AM on September 21, 2022 [3 favorites]


It's been ages and ages since I read the novella, but I saw a comment that said that in it Pinhead had a female voice, so they could be going back to that. (Hmmm. I wonder if I still have my copy.)
posted by Spike Glee at 8:11 AM on September 21, 2022


It's been ages and ages since I read the novella, but I saw a comment that said that in it Pinhead had a female voice, so they could be going back to that. (Hmmm. I wonder if I still have my copy.

Spike Glee, I think I recall the same thing from the novella? Pinhead is never identified as such but IIRC, whatever head Cenobite shows up is cited as having a husky female voice.
posted by Kitteh at 8:20 AM on September 21, 2022


Going back a few wee years now, a couple of mefites did a podcast about the other Hellraiser films.

Just in case anyone needs to do a watchthrough to get up to speed.
posted by Wrinkled Stumpskin at 8:29 AM on September 21, 2022 [2 favorites]


@otherhappyplace:
my ultimate artistic inspiration is reading about Clive Barker telling the studio for Hellraiser he "absolutely knew how to make a movie" then ran to the library to get "every book on film" in the library but they only had 2 and 1 was checked out so he read 1 book.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:35 AM on September 21, 2022 [37 favorites]


That said, maybe I'm traumatized by the Anti-SJW crowd, but I'm still waiting for the "purist" fans to complain about casting a trans woman in a role formerly played by a man.

I've seen a bit of this. But most of the more serious horror fans know Barker as a queer, kinky person and are well aware that Pinhead is canonically androgynous. No one should be surprised that Barker thinks Clayton is a great choice.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:41 AM on September 21, 2022 [12 favorites]


Hellraiser has always been a great horror premise in search of a good movie.

Exactly. And I don't particularly expect this outing to change that.

That said, Bradley snarling, "Do I look like someone who cares what God thinks?" was a great moment.
posted by praemunire at 8:47 AM on September 21, 2022 [5 favorites]


no tricks?
posted by glonous keming at 9:12 AM on September 21, 2022 [1 favorite]


so excited to see Jamie Clayton as Pinhead. here's hoping they pull off a good movie.
posted by kokaku at 9:27 AM on September 21, 2022 [1 favorite]


I just want to say that "NO TOUCHY" is delighting me thoroughly. I'm constantly hissing at my husband to put down weird things in stores etc, saying "Do you want to get Hellraisers? This is how you get Hellraisers."

Also I am delighted for Jamie Clayton. I don't know if I have the stomach anymore for this kind of film, especially a modern version of this kind of film, but I am glad to see trans actors getting to, you know, just do acting.
posted by Lyn Never at 9:30 AM on September 21, 2022 [10 favorites]


Just in case anyone needs to do a watchthrough to get up to speed.

Point of clarification: No one really needs to watch any of the previous Hellraiser movies in preparation for this new one. The only entries in the series that had any semblance of continuity were 1-4; all the others are self-contained stories. Nothing happened in Inferno that you need to know about before going into Hellworld, etc. According to director David Bruckner, the new one is a "re-imagining" and not "strict canon," so it will probably not be picking up any story threads from at least the last six movies. The newly designed Cenobites seem to bear that out, even with what little we've seen so far they have a distinctive look separate from the ones in the ten previous franchise entries. So tl;dr no one should feel obligated to watch all of the previous Hellraiser movies before jumping into this one.

(I'm mostly just trying to keep anybody I can from watching Revelations. If I can help steer one person away from that unmitigated disaster of studio contractual obligation, I will have done at least one useful thing on this Earth.)
posted by tomorrowromance at 9:31 AM on September 21, 2022 [5 favorites]


I have always found the Box to be a uniquely compelling proposition, because I must admit I would find it extremely difficult to not fiddle with it. Not for the "let me unlock new realities of pleasure" thing, but rather a weird desperate need to figure out how the dang mechanism works.

...knowing it was a supernatural nightmare waiting to unfold, I would probably still find myself looking at it, thinking "OK, I must understand the mechanism. Let me see the gearing! Just a few manipulations, nothing too far, just a couple of twists!" If I possessed it, I'd probably have to cast it into a block of clear epoxy just to make sure I don't find myself trying to solve it on a random Sunday morning.
posted by aramaic at 9:45 AM on September 21, 2022 [8 favorites]


I was curious, and it turns out the if you look at a list of Hellraiser films on Letterboxed https://letterboxd.com/films/in/hellraiser-collection/by/release-earliest/size/large/ they are basically in the same order if you sort them by Release Date and by Average Rating (with a few flips in position in the newest, lowest rated films). But maybe this one will buck the trend!

For those interested, the first two films are available on Amazon Prime streaming, the middle films are stuck on Cinemax, and the later films are available on some of those free streaming services. https://www.justwatch.com/us/search?q=hellraiser
posted by 3j0hn at 10:01 AM on September 21, 2022 [1 favorite]


The latter Hellraiser sequels were sharted out onto the direct-to-video market by Dimension Films to cash in on the name. One of them wasn't even originally supposed to be a Hellraiser movie. The new movie is the first time Clive Barker has been involved in a producing or even consulting capacity since 1996. If anyone reading this has never seen any of these movies, I really can't stress enough how pointless most of the sequels are unless you really enjoy torturing yourself with shitty movies. The original Hellraiser isn't for anyone (like any good horror), but it's a delightfully specific and weird creation by one of the most multitalented visionaries the horror genre has ever seen. Check it out!
posted by cakelite at 10:17 AM on September 21, 2022 [3 favorites]


Dare we hope for a reunion episode of We Have Such Films To Show You?
posted by paper chromatographologist at 10:49 AM on September 21, 2022 [5 favorites]


Clive Barker [hasn't] been involved in a producing or even consulting capacity since 1996
The films were definitely on a downhill slide even with Barker involved, but I can definitely see how this would mark an end point for him:
Hellraiser: Bloodline (1996) Directed by Alan Smithee
:yikes emoji:
posted by 3j0hn at 11:11 AM on September 21, 2022 [6 favorites]


Hellraiser: Bloodline (1996) Directed by Alan Smithee

Heh. I saw that movie in the theater, having only very recently learned about that whole Alan Smithee thing, and when that credit popped up I braced myself for what I imagined was going to be a decidedly awful viewing experience. But it ended up being much worse than that: it was merely mediocre.
posted by Atom Eyes at 11:26 AM on September 21, 2022 [6 favorites]


If I remember correctly, Pinhead (who is never called Pinhead by Barker, who I guess hates the name) has the “breathy voice of a girl” or something similar. So scarified monster-priest with a high breathy voice — it tracks with all the other subversions in the story.
posted by GenjiandProust at 11:30 AM on September 21, 2022


Of course, aramaic, the idea of a block of lucite to capture it in is fantastic, as we all know that the lucite would chip, crack, and warp over time. It could even be its own vignette, all the things the (temporary) owner of the box would do to try to keep it from being used, and how each one (vaguely like the cursed Monkey with Cymbals toy from the Stephen King story) would fail, and the box would come back, free of any locks or seals.
posted by Ghidorah at 11:51 AM on September 21, 2022 [1 favorite]


Ahh, my favorite series of horror movies. Back again. I will give this one a watch, purely for nostalgia reasons if nothing else. Though that being said, my consumption of any horror-related media has gone WAY down with a pre-schooler in the house. Mr. Objects and I were watching the most recent Dr. Strange movie and towards the end (you know, when it starts getting REALLY weird), we noticed that she had made it downstairs. I have never hit pause so fast in my life.
posted by sharp pointy objects at 12:00 PM on September 21, 2022 [1 favorite]


I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this new film will have a cross-over with Rick & Morty.
posted by Saxon Kane at 12:09 PM on September 21, 2022 [3 favorites]


Wait, wasn't the lament configuration box that we see in the films just a physical example of the puzzle? I thought that the will/need to solve the puzzle was the thing that gets the party started and you could get the same outcome with a piece of paper and pencil. Or am I making that up?
posted by Eddie Mars at 12:39 PM on September 21, 2022


No, you have it right. The famous puzzle box, created by Philip LeMarchand in the 18th century, is just one of an infinite number of potential Lament Configurations. Cenobites are creatures of Order, and when chaos is turned to order in just the right way, with just the right degree of obsession, it will attract their attention, regardless of the form that it takes. Indeed, a Lament Configuration can be anything that can be solved, from the concrete to the abstract: a building whose halls must be traversed in a certain pattern, a knotted string, a crossword puzzle, an equation.
posted by Faint of Butt at 1:48 PM on September 21, 2022 [14 favorites]


Hang on, I gotta delete the NYT Games app.
posted by Etrigan at 1:51 PM on September 21, 2022 [21 favorites]


Part of the appeal of the first two movies was that the Cenobites only took those with obsessive appetites, and were themselves once human beings who indulged past the point of point of mortal limits. If you were a particularly awful libertine who proved your capacity for pain and pleasure through a few centuries of being ecstatically tortured in Hell, you might get to be a Cenobite too. It added a psychological dimension to the gory horror.

IMO Hellraiser III was when the setting really lost its way. The Cenobites became just scary monsters who turned random bystanders into scary monsters by creatively killing them. And the Scarlet Gospels, Clive Barker's recent sequel to the book that spawned the movie, was, frankly, boring trash.

Just more proof that a good story can be so much bigger than the people who tell it.
posted by xthlc at 2:12 PM on September 21, 2022 [4 favorites]


IMO Hellraiser III was when the setting really lost its way. The Cenobites became just scary monsters who turned random bystanders into scary monsters by creatively killing them.

But once encountered, who can ever forget the bone-chilling terror of Camcorderhead and CD Playerface?
posted by tomorrowromance at 2:15 PM on September 21, 2022 [13 favorites]


Indeed, a Lament Configuration can be anything that can be solved, from the concrete to the abstract: a building whose halls must be traversed in a certain pattern, a knotted string, a crossword puzzle, an equation.

A particularly challenging Wordle.
posted by betweenthebars at 3:02 PM on September 21, 2022 [7 favorites]


Cenobites are creatures of Order, and when chaos is turned to order in just the right way, with just the right degree of obsession, it will attract their attention, regardless of the form that it takes.

This was the comics idea, and I get why they did it, but it never really sold me. I have always liked the idea that the Cenobites are a sect of extremely disciplined hedonists whose explorations took them beyond reality. They explore all sensation as a sacrament, and, if you call them, they will come and test you and test you and test you until you are one of them or, I guess, raw material. This is why you can't "fool someone into opening the box" because the box is just the tool that you show your obsession and devotion through. The thing many supplicants ignore is that "experience" does not mean "pleasure." The evil in the first two films was entirely human; the Cenobites were just doing their thing. They didn't want to be called, but, if you summon them, they will set things right, according to their rubric.

I am a little disappointed to see that the new story seems to have missed that. Without it, the Cenobites are just BDSM monsters, which, folks, it isn't the 80s anymore.
posted by GenjiandProust at 3:14 PM on September 21, 2022 [6 favorites]


Indeed, a Lament Configuration can be anything that can be solved, from the concrete to the abstract: a building whose halls must be traversed in a certain pattern, a knotted string, a crossword puzzle, an equation.

THE SPELLING

YOU GUESSED IT, WE CAME

NO “TEARS,” PLEASE… IT HASN’T BEEN AN ANSWER YET
posted by infinitewindow at 4:08 PM on September 21, 2022 [10 favorites]


Also, the reason for me that the first Hellraiser is the best one is that, amateurish though it may be, the events and the characters are all solidly grounded in how real addicts and their enablers live their lives. Frank’s… resiliency mirrors the id-like urge to continue an addiction even after ruin; Julia is the ego-driven need to indulge in and take to the next level the novel actions that hijack her brain’s reward system; Kirsty resembles a superego-esque ideal that an addict can never attain again; and Kirsty and her father are both innocent family members harmed badly as by-products of addiction.

By the climax of the first film (mild spoilers), Kirsty is coping with trauma as it happens, Julia is scrambling to keep her hidden lover and murders secret forever, and Frank is doing anything and everything just so he can keep doing what he’s always done without a single care for anyone else.

But then again, these days I see metaphors for addiction in everything.
posted by infinitewindow at 4:22 PM on September 21, 2022 [7 favorites]


one last note: the Phantasm universe has often seemed to me to be the flip side of the Hellraiser coin, and only rights issues keep these two horror film series separated. The closest anything comes to “Phantasm but queer BDSM” is this music video.
posted by infinitewindow at 4:26 PM on September 21, 2022 [1 favorite]


I like this bit about the first movie:

Doug Bradley: "I remember getting the best note ever from a director when I was the Dutchman; Clive said, 'Dougie, I want you to say this line as if the North Wind was blowing through your eyes...'"
posted by doctornemo at 4:58 PM on September 21, 2022 [2 favorites]


A particularly challenging Wordle.

Suddenly, last Friday's solution, PARER, takes on a ominous new meaning. "We will pare your soul apart!"
posted by SPrintF at 4:58 PM on September 21, 2022 [4 favorites]


There is simply too much for me to say. My brain is locking up. I hope this is a great movie! Ironically, given Clive Barker's original conception of Pinhead (I also know he was called something else, I also can't remember what), I feel like Doug Bradley's deep, stentorian voice is as crucial to Pinhead, indeed to the whole series as we know it, as James Earl Jones is to Darth Vader; I can't imagine anyone else as Pinhead. On the other hand, Jamie Clayton is hot. And absolutely a casting choice that shows a motherfucker just definitely gets Hellraiser.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 5:02 PM on September 21, 2022 [1 favorite]


Barker as a queer, kinky person and are well aware that Pinhead is canonically androgynous
One of the concerns I have is that we might see trans women actresses get pigeonholed into certain roles. Clayton is most certainly not androgynous, but I'm sure she can skillfully play a character who is. And if trans women are chosen for 'husky' voices, that's worrying too.
I loved her role in Sense8 specifically because she was simply a beautiful, brilliant, lesbian girlfriend.
I do hope this is one of many future, much needed advancements for trans women in acting. I can tell you that as a trans femme vocal performer, I worry a lot about where I and others like me fit into the theatrical community.
posted by Flight Hardware, do not touch at 5:23 PM on September 21, 2022 [9 favorites]


I have always found the Box to be a uniquely compelling proposition, because I must admit I would find it extremely difficult to not fiddle with it. Not for the "let me unlock new realities of pleasure" thing, but rather a weird desperate need to figure out how the dang mechanism works.

So, my own experience with this is by no means extensive, but people who get into exploring that edge between pain/pleasure, extreme experiences, etc... they're literally trying to figure out how the dang mechanism *within their psyche* works.

If you fiddle with it, you might learn things you don't want to know.
posted by hippybear at 6:44 PM on September 21, 2022 [3 favorites]


But then again, these days I see metaphors for addiction in everything.

Much of the NIN catalog post The Fragile is Trent working through his issues. It's crystal clear once you use that lens.
posted by hippybear at 6:47 PM on September 21, 2022 [2 favorites]


If you fiddle with it, you might learn things you don't want to know.

Well, I was referring specifically to the physical engineering of such a device (as though it were even possible in the first place) -- I already know that, left unmoored from objective reality and the consequences therein, I am a monster.

...like I imagine if you gave James Watt a late-model internal combustion engine he would go apeshit trying to take it apart, regardless of the personal cost. Less "where does this take me?' and much much more "how can I build literally hundreds of these things because how do you not want one of these? The answer is of course you do want one, and that's why I have to understand them! So I can build more! Always more! Hahahahahahaaaa! My hands are bleeding, and it is utterly irrelevant!!"
posted by aramaic at 6:58 PM on September 21, 2022 [3 favorites]


...like I imagine if you gave James Watt a late-model internal combustion engine he would go apeshit trying to take it apart, regardless of the personal cost.

The Engineer will arrive should the moment merit.
posted by infinitewindow at 8:10 PM on September 21, 2022 [3 favorites]


There is only one force in the universe -- talentless, banal and condescending -- that can subdue a Cenobite.

Hell isn't Eternal Pain. It's much worse. It's all about Eternal Waiting Just Outside. And you are...?
posted by zaixfeep at 9:29 PM on September 21, 2022


Bradley snarling, "Do I look like someone who cares what God thinks?" was a great moment.

One of my favorite moments is when Kirsty asks Pinhead "You've done this before, right?". The absolute bone-deep weariness Bradley puts into his "Many, many times" reply is wonderful.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 6:08 AM on September 22, 2022 [4 favorites]


My husband and I like to spend NYE watching single-franchise or -theme horror movie marathons, and this tradition was begun the year we watched all the Hellraisers! Now, I haven't watched every movie the whole way through (we had an escape clause where either of us could pull the plug on any of the latter-day sequels when they got too painfully boring, but you had to first answer some Hellraiser trivia), but I will absolutely plonk myself down in front of any entry in this franchise, even if it involves haunted a MMORPG. I'm really excited for this!
posted by quatsch at 6:17 AM on September 22, 2022 [3 favorites]


My expectations have been so fucked by the actual Dimension Films treatment of the franchise that I both expect nothing from this and expect to be pleased and relieved by a great deal of it. The movies could genuinely not get worse than the were in the ass-end of the previous ten, and as much as the trailer doesn't show anything of substance it looks good and I enjoyed the art and lighting design in a lot of the flashes of grotesqueries it gave us. The story might be dumb as a bored in the end and might nominally fuck with the canon but the canon was, to be fair, thrown overboard and rusting at the bottom of the sea for a couple decades already. Gimme a pile of aesthetic and some puzzle boxes and a glimpse of the self-convicting dark desires in the human heart and I'll be happy enough. Of which:

Dare we hope for a reunion episode of We Have Such Films To Show You?

The thought has occurred to me, though I haven't pinged griph about it at all. Dragging someone else back into this feels like a bigger responsibility than just doing something stupid to myself. But maybe? I could quite move myself to try and resurrect it for the previous newest movie, Judgement, which was about as precisely as awful and underwhelming as expected. But this one might be Not Totally Lousy? I'm summoning up a little hope, having finally, literally just for the sake of this thread, watched the trailer; I usually don't watch trailers for stuff I'm already planning to watch. But then again what are the chances a Hellraiser movie, even a well-executed one, will have the sort of narrative twist and depth that would make a trailer spoilery? So, yes. Hmm.

I feel like Doug Bradley's deep, stentorian voice is as crucial to Pinhead, indeed to the whole series as we know it, as James Earl Jones is to Darth Vader; I can't imagine anyone else as Pinhead.

I feel you on this; even, as you say, as at odds with the original book's characterization of Lead Cenobite as his voice is, Bradley was just fuckin' great in the role and made it his own. I think the easiest path to getting over changing him and his voice out is the last two movies where they had someone else trying to sort of step into those shoes and fail so so fucking miserably. A change here is welcome, and a slightly more unworldly voice like the trailer has seems like a good direction to tack in, regardless of the casting.

Point of clarification: No one really needs to watch any of the previous Hellraiser movies in preparation for this new one.

This is absolutely true; this isn't a modern MCU continuity-fest, it's not even something with the light-but-there continuity of the Saw franchise. From five on they're all direct-to-video releases based mostly (completely? I can't remember, it's been a while) on unrelated unproduced horror scripts with some Pinhead et al shimmed in to justify continued control of the franchise option.

But some of them are not without charm. I mean they're pretty shitty to a one, but some are shitty with a couple of odd high points depending on whether those specific things qualify to you as high points. Mostly casting stuff: Hellseeker stars Dean Winters who is honestly fun to watch (and you can pretend it's, like, in-universe retribution for him being such a shitty boyfriend in 30 Rock) plus you get a Kirsty cameo. Deader is maybe the most competent of the bunch and also stars Kari Wuhrer if you're e.g. a Sliders fan (plus it features, along with here, a lot of the production crew and some casting in common with two genuinely terrible Prophecy sequels shot in the same eastern European area at the same time). And Hellworld has both Lance Henriksen and Katheryn Winnick in it, though disappointingly little actual cringey computer/online content given the framing.

Revelations is genuinely the worst of the franchise and is sort of fascinating to study as a nadir of the series, and features an attempt to ride a little bit of the found footage trend contemporary to it. Just a pure excretion, shot in two weeks and looks like it was shot in a weekend. I won't say it's fascinatingly bad, it's mostly just badly bad, but. Outer dimensions of cinematic pain and pleasure, and all that; do i look like someone who cares what Rotten Tomatoes thinks?
posted by cortex at 9:02 AM on September 22, 2022 [5 favorites]


Started watching H2 last night... I laughed at Dr. Channard being a psychiatrist/psychologist AND a brain surgeon. Classic movie logic: a psychiatrist studies the brain, right? So why wouldn't they know how to perform brain surgery? And vice versa: study brain surgery, learn about depression and bi-polar disorder. Sort of like how Tony Stark and Bruce Banner are "scientists" in the MCU: they are just great at all the science, doesn't matter if it's physics, chemistry, biology, time travel, rocket design, radiation, epidemiology, whatever the hell, they can science that shit with their scientific expertise.
posted by Saxon Kane at 9:19 AM on September 22, 2022 [7 favorites]


H2 has some of the key symptoms of sequelitis (throwing a kid in peril in the mix being the most glaring), but I do love how over-the-top the Dr. Channard stuff is, and I love Clare Higgins as Julia in the first two movies. My favorite thing about Hellraiser and to a lesser extent Hellraiser II is how they have this extremely metal horror vibe but feature a lot of actors who seem like they wandered in out of a BBC miniseries. It's just not something you are going to find in most movies, and it's completely lacking in the subsequent films in the series.
posted by cakelite at 9:39 AM on September 22, 2022 [2 favorites]


Dr. Channard's "And to think...I hesitated" is one of my favorite horror movie lines ever.
posted by Faint of Butt at 5:24 AM on September 23, 2022 [6 favorites]


This looks sooooo baaaaad. I’m excited.
posted by aspersioncast at 9:10 AM on September 25, 2022 [1 favorite]


Next up: Cenobites vs. Jason
posted by rhizome at 10:16 PM on September 26, 2022 [1 favorite]


I watched this when it came out on Friday and I was pleasantly surprised. I thought it did a pretty good job of staying true to the Hellraiser aesthetic, while also being a pretty well crafted film. I'm curious to hear what other folks thought.
posted by Cogito at 2:46 PM on October 10, 2022 [1 favorite]


I watched it this weekend too Cogito, and while I was a little let down by the story (I feel like there are some great themes in the original story and I prefer the idea that the Cenobites are not out for innocent blood, but for the souls of the hedonist) but everything else about the production was good, "direct to streaming" is a huge upgrade from "direct to video/cable" it seem. What I really appreciated, however, was the excellent creature work on the new Cenobites. They are all gross and fantastic.
posted by 3j0hn at 8:34 PM on October 10, 2022


I thought it was okay! It was an okay horror movie, which in context of the last several films makes it a stunningly good Hellraiser film. Looked great, lots of fun set and creature design, casting was all solid, writing was...not direct-to-cable and I'll take it. The mix of callback and new cenobite design was fun; I am certain I annoyed my wife by yelling "HEY IT'S MY BOI CHATTERRERRRRR" when he showed up.

Clayton was great as a detached and confident Pinhead and I think fully established a successful tone there that shows that the best way to honor Doug Bradley's iconic work is go with self-assurance in a different direction and make it your own. I could absolutely see her developing the character in more films.

I prefer the idea that the Cenobites are not out for innocent blood, but for the souls of the hedonist

I'm there with you, but now that we're here I'm curious to see whether and how they would develop this new take on the mythology given more franchise to work with. I did find it interesting that they were apparently not so much interested in innocent blood as just not choosy: the fact that an extant cenobite apparently contributed just fine toward the body count is an interesting wrinkle that pushes things back toward a more interesting, less fairytale black-and-white good-and-evil read. Why they would be hung up on that idea of literal body count iteration, who knows; it does feel a bit rote, a bit structured for voyagers into the outer dimensions of experience, yeah?

Which: the second film in the series did bring us this whole concept of Leviathan and a seemingly locally coherent place-ness in which cenobite-y things happened and people went and over which Leviathan hovered, and brought us a character in Dr. Channard who, like our new Mr. Voight, ascended into the ranks of the cenobites and possibly the power structure. There's an implication going back that far of not just a voidscape but of a hierarchy and (let's talk about real horror here) a bureaucracy atop which Leviathan in all its pointiness resides.

So what if the mythology isn't changed; what if this is just a new management paradigm? Leviathan started reading up on pen-and-paper RPG systems and started thinking, what I need is to set up a set of character classes and a D6-based typology? The cenobites never cared, per se, about only-the-hedonists, that had just been the assignment Bradley-era Pinhead had been working and now they're on a different job, new KPIs. Maybe Pinhead wrote a report about the events of Hellworld and, whatever else happened, that implication of a little gamification of the proceedings made its way up the corporate ladder?
posted by cortex at 8:48 AM on October 11, 2022 [2 favorites]


Yes, I like this theory. I want to know more about these Cenobite KPIs.
posted by 3j0hn at 2:51 PM on October 11, 2022


It involves the dreaded TPS Configuration.
posted by rhizome at 1:38 AM on October 12, 2022


Lemarchand's box changing shape is just another kind of reorg
posted by Cogito at 1:29 PM on October 13, 2022 [1 favorite]


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