Dir. David Bruckner | Now Streaming On: Hulu | Rating: 2/5

I’m known for a few things in our little community. One is being “the bitch who hates Hereditary” and another is being a Clive Barker fangirl. Hellraiser (1987) and its source material The Hellbound Heart are pivotal pieces of genre and my personal horror journey. I was really looking forward to this remake, especially its reconstruction of Pinhead and the Cenobites, but this felt almost sacrilegious.⁠
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David Bruckner is batting a hundred with me apparently, since I’m not a fan of anything he’s done, including The Ritual and The Night House. Bruckner is calling this 11th installment of the franchise a “reboot.” I’d love to know what he thinks he’s rebooting since this project lacks the grit, pulp, and grime of the original. The filthy feeling of the original Hellraiser is not only true to Barker’s vision of the story but is central to the canon of the Cenobites. ⁠
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This film is so dimly lit, you can barely tell what’s going on for most of it. My guess is that this was a tactic used to hide the mass-produced overedited feel of the sets and effects. Like the rest of this film, our dear Cenobites look plasticky and poorly put together. The Cenobites, especially Pinhead, are supposed to smell like death and carry a sense of doom everywhere they go. This crew feels like a mismatched replica of their predecessors. ⁠
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Riley and Trevor are insufferable leads, with see through, flat storylines. I caught the twist at about 35 minutes in but forced myself to sit through the excruciatingly long and boring remaining 90 minutes. It put me to sleep on my first watch, so I had to rewatch the ending the next day. ⁠
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This installment adds nothing to the universe of the franchise and is so utterly forgettable. I’m only giving this a two for the last 15 minutes of gore, but I really have no desire to watch any future installments with this same team. ⁠
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Know Before You Watch: Features death, gore, blood, sex, nudity.