Review – Hulu’s Hellraiser (2022) feels a little removed from reality Cinemax

The original Hellraiser is, at times, a far more complex film that often receives acclaim. The film is still rough around the edges, but it’s a harrowing examination of the personal hells we create for ourselves in the search for love, desire and sensation. It’s arguably more about the human cast than their demonic counterparts, the Cenobites, or even the box that ties all of these threads together. It’s the kind of horror that modern “elevated horror” struggles to achieve. It wasn’t a motley group of nervous twenty-somethings running away from “monsters” on a lonely stretch of road. THIS is another film we’ve seen a lot of.

THIS is probably the most disappointing quality of the 2022 Hulu reboot: it abandons the complexity of the original film to give us another paint-by-numbers slasher copycat in which one-dimensional characters struggle to find the only thing that will keep the threat at bay.

The film focuses on Riley (Odessa A’zion), a recovering addict who now relies on other vices to make ends meet. She shares an apartment with an overbearing but good-natured brother and his roommates. Her brother of course, as she has reservations about her new relationship (one of many in the recent past) and after a pretty intense confrontation she relapses. Her friend has other plans and plans to rob the warehouse of a wealthy businessman.

The robbery leads to the acquisition of the legendary puzzle box “Lemarchand’s Lament” and the film quickly picks up pace from there.

The look of the film itself has no flaws. It feels very cinematic and the direction complements that very well. The performances are also consistently very solid. If one can blame this latest entry (reboot) in the series, it’s the script, a bizarre selection of Barker’s mythology, storylines from previous films and a new set of rules that sometimes contradict everything.

While this script is useful for positioning our characters, it doesn’t know exactly what makes “Hellraiser” “Hellraiser,” and that’s unfortunate enough to throw off the balance of the entire film. See, “Hellraiser” really isn’t about being hunted by pain-filled Cenobites or dealing with Lodgeholders to gain power or immunity… it’s about the unfathomable absence of satisfaction. Barker’s original vision held on to the perversity that tainted reason and turned people into monsters. Without this understanding, they are just monsters that hunt men.

Unfortunately, Hulu’s Hellraiser fails because of this. It borrows its template from a number of forgettable slashers, reducing the true mirror-like introspection of the original to an afterthought. The Cenobites pursue Riley and her surviving roommates throughout most of the second act; Roommates who, apart from Riley’s brother, seem extremely thin as paper. By the time we get to the real Hellraiser classics full of obsession and doppelgangers, we no longer have any real heroes to root for, but instead look blindly at the screen to see if they can pull something else off before the film’s final moments. Ultimately, the effort simply isn’t there. In the end, all the fans who were so focused on Pinhead and Jamie Clayton’s performance just didn’t feel like fighting the real villain…lazy and uninspired writing.