‘Hellraiser’ 2022: Selfless, Cold, and Composed
It’s all just chains and puzzle boxes, signifying nothing.
Ah, Hellraiser, Clive Barker’s delightfully greasy, horny, disturbing 1987 horror classic1. Based on his short story “The Hellbound Heart,” Hellraiser is a terrific—iconic—film that really messed me up as a teenager. It was a movie that made me question for the first time whether sex was always supposed to be, you know, fun—it was the first time the idea that someone might enjoy something you absolutely did not had ever been introduced to my tiny brain. It’s a horror film packed with ideas2, from the difference (or lack thereof) between pain and pleasure to the concept of consequences being completely divorced from our intent to the idea of a truly alien presence gleefully misunderstanding you. Oh, and also all the BDSM stuff with the cenobites, including the truly inspired Big Bad, the droll Pinhead, a creature eternally confused as to why we are not grateful that they are currently flaying us alive.
It’s terrific stuff. Over the course of 30 years, eleven films and various other projects have been produced under the Hellraiser brand, most nowhere near as interesting as the first two films (I actually think Hellraiser II is slightly better than the original). Most of these sequels were made in order to retain the rights, and boy does it show. But this year a new reboot hit screens on Hulu, after Barker reclaimed the rights a few years ago—meaning it has his approval and cooperation, even though he didn’t write or direct. That’s good! Good enough to get me to watch it3.
I mean, the thing about Hellraiser is that it created such a unique and interesting fictional universe4. The puzzle box! The frickin’ Lament Configuration, which is just a kickass name for anything. The cenobites! The chains flying out of nowhere, the endless tortures, the way pleasure-seeking idiots continuously go too far and find themselves being given “gifts” of incomprehensible suffering! This is rich stuff, and the visuals matched. With Barker back on board and a budget somewhat north of zero, the new Hellraiser might even be great!
Spoiler alert: It is not great5. It is also not terrible. It’s a perfectly cromulent horror film, and if you’re already paying for Hulu <shrugs> why not? But it’s disappointing, because it takes all that good Hellraisery imagery and reduces it to set dressing. This is just a horror movie with cenobites, it has very little of what made Hellraiser so interesting: The obsession, the decadence, that sense of unintended consequences spinning so far out of control demons come to tear you apart6.
Just Stuff
The logline of Hellraiser’s whole point is something like fuck around, find out7. What makes the original story and films so compelling is a combination of fundamental elements: The idea that pleasure-seeking can lead you to the exact opposite, the concept of an alien power not only misunderstanding basic human needs but absolutely disinterested in them as it goes about its business bestowing horrifying gifts of torture and suffering, and the way experience and physical sensation physically changes us.
These are potent ideas, and most of the iconography of the original films serve those threads. The puzzle box is terrific. We humans seek sensation, and we’re always doing stupid shit we don’t understand—we’re forever taking sketchy drugs supplied to us by strangers, having sex with people (and things) we know shockingly little about, and generally treating our nerve endings like they’re replaceable8. The puzzle box is sometimes sought out by knowledgeable people jonesing for the ultimate experience, but is just as often solved by some poor moron who can’t keep their hands to themselves. It’s a perfect metaphor for humanity’s bored, restlessly self-destructive nature—instead of pausing to wonder if solving this mysterious puzzle box is a good idea we’re all like oops, sorry, already solved it, what were you saying9?
The cenobites were pretty out there in 1987 with their beat-me-kick-me-tell-me-lies leather outfits and piercings. They may be a little less shocking today, but what’s truly interesting about them is that they started off as people—people who went too far, people who chased their own particular dragon over one too many lines. Their physical transformation into literal sex and torture demons is the ultimate consequence, and the wet, gory way their flying hooks and spinning blades rendered flesh was horrifying precisely because the victims had volunteered for it without knowing what they were getting into, which is basically how we live our lives10.
But in this newest Hellraiser there’s precious little of that. Some reviewers have inexplicably written about the film’s addiction metaphor as if it’s a powerfully felt thread in the story, but it really isn’t. Yes, there’s something there if you squint—something about how an addict will betray anything and steal anything to get their fix—but it’s faint, at best. Riley (Odessa A’zion) is an addict in the old Hollywood tradition, shown to be slightly inebriated once and spending the rest of the time clearheaded and righteous11. When she stumbles onto the puzzle box and inadvertently sends her brother to the cenobites, she starts investigating in order to try and get him back, sending one person after another to their grisly demise in the process. It’s fine, if you’re looking for a B-, C+ horror movie. But the real crime is that the iconography just sits there. The puzzle box is just a macguffin to get Pinhead (a terrific Jamie Clayton) on the screen, just a bit of the ole’ CGI to explain why sex demons are showing up to tear off your flesh. None of it means anything because there’s no connection to the characters. If you swapped the puzzle box for, say, an app on someone’s phone, it would be exactly the same story.
On accident
In the original Hellraiser films, the people sucked into hell to be tortured by Pinhead and friends were seekers, folks who maybe didn’t want to be flayed alive for eternity but were bored with stuff like regular sex and drugs. Their decadence and desperation drove them to risk the puzzle box—and then drives them to try and escape their fate, which also drives the other, non-hellbound characters. The baroque imagery of the Hellraiser universe feels right because it’s tactile. These are people obsessed with pleasure and sensation, so of course a puzzle box with its intricate inlays and smooth action is irresistible12. And every wet thunk of a hook into flesh slaps because it’s a hideous deformity of the sort of sensation they thought they would get from, you know, sex demons13.
The new version forgets all of this. It’s just boring torture, meaningless pain meant to shock in the same way all gory horror movies try to shock. There’s nothing behind it all. Most of the people being tortured here aren’t rotting and ruined gourmands chasing the ultimate anything, they’re just your usual slightly dumb secondary characters who find themselves in a the wrong movie at the wrong time. There’s no poetry to it. You can’t feel it the way you felt the originals.
Oh well, someone will try again and maybe get it right. These days the next reboot is just around the corner, which is a surprisingly hopeful thing. Plus, I sleep well at night knowing my own tastes and desires are so basic I am in exactly zero danger of ever meeting any sex demons. And, frankly, thank goodness.
Next week: Star Wars and feature creep.
This is the film that taught me I don’t have a BDSM bone in my body.
Also: Leather outfits. So, so many leather outfits. And one suspects the leather is not made from animals, if you get my drift (there are a lot of flayed people in this universe, kiddo).
The bar for getting me to watch a horror movie is ridiculously low, however. All it takes is a competent Netflix thumbnail image. What’s amazing is how many bad horror movies can’t even get the damn thumbnail right.
I was 16 when I read the story and the first movie hit the screens. Both made me feel feelings I’ve been trying to suppress with liquor ever since.
After all of those terrrible Hellraiser sequels, is this a spoiler? I think not.
AKA a standard Saturday night with Your Humble Author. The demons is the hangover, in case I’m not being clear about my Boomerific love affair with whiskeys.
Considering how horny these films are, this is often meant literally.
Spoiler alert: They are not.
This is one of those rare moments when my own incomeptence and stupidity is a comfort: I am a man who can’t solve a Rubik’s Cube no matter how much time you give me. I am in exactly zero danger of solving the Lament Configuration and summoning ravenous sex demons. And thank goodness.
For example, no one told me that when you adopt cats they spend most of their time smearing their butts on every surface of your house and now I live in a petrie dish.
Someone with more energy and mental clarity should write an essay about Hollywood Addicts and how they always look so healthy, go long stretches without using drugs, and seem able to quit their habits whenever convenient for the plot. Sometimes I think my fellow writers have no integrity.
A modern update would simply be an enormous red button. No one—and I mean no one—would be able to resist pushing that button even if we were informed ahead of time of the likelihood of sex demon infestation as a result.
Am seriously considering making Sex Demons the title of my autobiography. It would boost sales, I think.
My go to Halloween movie is usually "Ginger Snaps" (and the sequels).
Xtra points Jeff for paraphrasing a Dr. Demento favorite and using "cromulent" in a sentence.
I watched Hellraiser on VCR in the late eighty’s. I had recently completed Gross Anatomy and I was fascinated as the deceased MC fleshed out before my eyes. It was reverse dissection. Way cool. I haven’t been able to watch the original movie since. I may check out Hulu’s rendition of I’m sufficiently bored ver Halloween. Nice post.
Kregger