Making one of many higher Hellraiser films isn’t all that troublesome, to be utterly sincere. Any franchise with greater than three or 4 entries is sure to be uneven, however Hellraiser’s drop-off is especially sharp, going from a sequel that improves on the unique (Hellbound: Hellraiser II) to 2 films that aren’t good, precisely, however are fairly enjoyable to look at (Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth and Hellraiser: Bloodline) to a long term of direct-to-video sequels so unhealthy, the sequence begins to appear like a meta-joke the place ache is being inflicted on the viewers as a substitute of the characters. And but, for almost 35 years, followers have remained dedicated to 1987’s Hellraiser and Clive Barker’s diabolical imaginative and prescient.

Director David Bruckner is a type of followers. That’s clear watching his new reboot of Hellraiser, which doesn’t return to the supply materials, precisely, however does stay loyal to its spirit. The heroes of this straight-to-Hulu movie are dirtbags, queers, and addicts. The tone of the film could be very severe and grownup, a welcome pivot from teen-centric slashers like Scream (2022) and Bodies Bodies Bodies. The occult artwork deco manufacturing design blows the unique’s puzzle field as much as superior architectural measurement. The Cenobites encourage a wide ranging mixture of marvel and terror, soft-spoken and luminescent underneath the pale moonlight. And the chains… oh sure, there are chains, flying in each course and ripping human our bodies aside like baggage of milk.

Still, Bruckner’s priorities, and people of screenwriters Ben Collins and Luke Piotrowski (The Night House), are considerably completely different. While the 2022 film has an omnivorous sexuality that feels proper for Hellraiser — we see each homosexual and straight {couples} bare in mattress collectively, and there’s extra male nudity than feminine — this model is much less kinky than Barker’s sadomasochistic authentic. In that movie, the promise of an eternity spent on the knife’s edge between pleasure and ache held a perverse fascination. Here, it’s an unequivocal evil, with no attraction for anybody apart from the Cenobite chief, billed right here as The Priest (Jamie Clayton), and her minions. Even Hellraiser’s wicked billionaire (and there merely have to be a wicked billionaire) regrets his adventures “in the further regions of experience.”

Photo: Spyglass Media Group/Hulu

Instead, Bruckner and firm get off on franchise lore. This movie fleshes out the world of the Cenobites in new and complete methods, laying out precisely how the Lament Configuration (i.e., the puzzle that summons the Cenobites) works and the seven steps a penitent should undergo with a view to request, because the movie places it, “an audience with God.” Each of those steps requires a human sacrifice, and Hellraiser buys itself time by having its protagonist determine this out and intentionally draw out the intervals between these bloody choices. It’s right here that the movie begins to lose focus.

Hellraiser opens with a title card that reads “Belgrade, Serbia,” which replaces Morocco as the worldwide capital of taboo delights. There, the Lament Configuration is bought and introduced again to Voight (Goran Višnjić), the decadent billionaire referenced above, who promptly sacrifices a younger man to it and summons the god Leviathan. Fast-forward six years, and the field sits deserted in a delivery container in an empty warehouse. Then 20-something degenerates Riley (Odessa A’zion) and Trevor (Drew Starkey) “liberate” it whereas looking for valuables they’ll promote for fast money.

The couple met at a 12-step assembly, however merely dealing with the field pushes recovering addict Riley off the wagon. Here, Bruckner’s movie reaches for a extra sensible tone, putting the Hellraiser universe in one thing that extra intently resembles our world than something in Barker’s authentic. The subsequent argument between Riley and her extra accountable brother Matt (Brandon Flynn) equally grounds the movie in down-to-earth conflicts and settings — till the arrival of the Cenobites turns a public park right into a surreal nightmare, and Matt inexplicably vanishes.

Overwhelmed by guilt and grief, Riley goes out looking for clues in regards to the puzzle field she suspects may need brought on Matt’s disappearance, briefly launching the movie right into a procedural plot it ought to have adopted via to the tip. Instead, it shifts focus as soon as Riley breaks into Voight’s Massachusetts mansion, with Matt’s boyfriend Colin (Adam Faison) and their roommate Nora (Aoife Hinds) following shut behind. There, Hellraiser pivots from a thriller right into a siege movie, because the group barricades themselves inside Voight’s palatial dwelling whereas the Cenobites collect exterior.

Photo: Spyglass Media Group/Hulu

This chunk of the movie highlights Hellraiser’s two greatest weaknesses: the characters and the size. The movie earns most of its two-hour working time, however Riley bringing the remainder of the gang on top of things on what the hell these issues are and what they need burdens Bruckner’s reimagining with a number of too many dialogue scenes throughout an already sluggish stretch of the movie. And other than the truth that she has a brother and a weak spot for booze and capsules, we all know comparatively little about Riley. We know even much less about her pals — a second of silence, please, for poor Nora, who has no distinguishable character traits apart from being “the roommate.” That makes it troublesome to have interaction with the drama between the characters, about which even the movie’s writers appear detached.

Perhaps appropriately, essentially the most compelling determine within the movie is a Cenobite. Of the 5 actors who’ve put their mark on the infernal bureaucrat colloquially referred to as Pinhead, Jamie Clayton is the one one moreover Doug Bradley to essentially embrace “Pinhead” as a personality. Clayton’s model is breathier and extra female than Bradley’s authoritative priest determine; she’s extra of a holy mystic than a pope-king. Her black eyes take a look at the people begging for mercy in entrance of her with the chilly curiosity of an alien scientist, and he or she waits patiently for them to come back to her with regal posture and delicately folded fingers. Clayton’s Pinhead is a special, quieter sort of horrifying, which makes the voluminous dialogue she delivers within the movie (excess of Bradley within the 1987 film) quite ironic.

The Cenobite design in Hellraiser is superb throughout, profiting from developments in prosthetics to scrap black leather-based fetish gear in favor of fits made out of their very own flayed pores and skin. Familiar traits are exaggerated — the feminine Cenobite’s throat folds have by no means seemed so vaginal — and new designs evoke the horror of iron lungs, cleft fingers, and human taxidermy. The movie is bloody and intense when it must be, at one level following a pin via a personality’s throat and out the opposite aspect. But its most creative horror flourish is constructed into the units, which shift and clank into place just like the items of the Lament Configuration when the Cenobites are close to.

Hellraiser 2022 simply clears the admittedly low bar of being among the finest Hellraiser films. It’s the most effective one since Hellbound: Hellraiser II, and would possibly even be the second finest within the sequence after that movie. It has some nice, grotesque visuals, which makes it an actual disgrace that this movie isn’t getting a theatrical launch. And it accomplishes what many followers (together with this one) wished for the sequence, which was to drag it out of the artistic purgatory the place it’s been caught for a few many years now. The solely factor to worry about at this level are the factors the place Barker’s kinky edge has been sanded down for a extra sex-averse period, and his enigmatic storytelling scrapped in favor of exposition that’s extra legible, however much less compelling. Beyond that, the struggling is beautiful.

Hellraiser can be launched on Hulu on Oct. 7.