Hellraiser [2022]
“I don't know what they promised you. Knowledge? Love? I sought pleasure. But all they have to give is pain. It's a trick. All of it.”
”Subversive”
”Deviant”
”Salacious”
”Profane”
These are all words one might use when describing the 1987 Hellraiser and the sights it had to show you. While their definitions haven't changed since then, director David Bruckner and writer pair Ben Collins and Luke Piotrowski seem to have gotten them confused with “basic”, “forgettable”, “bland”, and “mundane” when attempting to reboot the franchise. Hellraiser 2022 [hereby known as “Hell”] feels exactly like what would happen if Disney wanted to make a “serious” horror movie but didn’t know how to handle a proper R-rating… and with their ⅔ ownership of the platform Hell is streaming from, it’s no wonder the film is totally lackluster and deserving only of what amounts to a modern-day “straight to DVD release”.
Bad editing, acting, and sound mixing alongside a story that I can only imagine was stolen from a 5th-grader’s Myspace; make for an experience that is saved from being entirely forgettable only because it is so insufferable. Now, I understand that Hellraiser is a series all about suffering, altered – Genie-esque – promises, and hellish experiences… but there’s no reason that the viewer should be made to suffer alongside the characters on screen.
Hell commits a sin that so many bad reboots do: It creates an entire film to expand lore and offer context for something that no fan wanted expanded or contextualized. In doing so, Hell creates a 120-minute prologue film that feels empty, pointless, and contrived. The film takes nearly every chance for growth and, instead of moving the story forward, resets it to simply begin the same loop you just experienced. From beginning to end you learn nothing about any of the characters you didn’t know instantly upon meeting them, and aren’t invested in any of their struggles, moralities, choices, or the implications of the events unfolding around them. The film seems to establish its rules on the fly and change them whenever is convenient.
Where the original film thrived off it’s impressively disgusting and inventive practical effects, Hell has chosen to use “modern” CGI instead that looks straight out of the 2010’s “everything has to be 3-D” era. This is made all the more apparent because the parts of the film that ARE true to Hellraiser’s beautiful aesthetic are f-a-n-t-a-s-t-i-c looking and truly upsetting in the way that any Hellraiser should be. Fantastic looking, that is… when you can actually see them. There are lots of complaints of modern film and TV being too dark, making it difficult to see details, but I think most of those complaints are fielded by people using outdated or poorly calibrated TV’s. The set this was viewed on is neither outdated, nor poorly calibrated and was even adjusted part-way through to add brightness in an attempt to see more of the thematic and great special effects. Whoever mixed the audio must have also decided on how to light the film, because both aspects are equally unforgivable.
As a first film, this would have been a decent entry into the world of big-budget cinema. As a third… I’m afraid that neither of Bruckner’s previous films are good enough to buoy this sub-par attempt. I hope he was paid well, and I hope that others feel less strongly than I do so he can have another shot somewhere down the road. For me though, Hellraiser is a series that could absolutely thrive in the modern world using VFX tech to enhance high-end practical effects… but Bruckner and co. have further damned and comedified the ailing franchise with this half-baked, boring, nonsense attempt at resurrection, and confirmed its relegation into the dime-store dollar-bin instead.
“You have chosen the Lament configuration.”
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Though it really needs an entire overhaul to matter much, these would probably take it from a 4 to a mid 5 or close to a 6. The story overall is just WAY too bad to be anything better than that.
1. Remove the intro entirely.
We don't need to introduce a meaningless character just to get a subpar, background kill on them and then introduce our equally forgettable villain. There's a better way to do this.2. Don't introduce the millionaire villain until the scene in the walls.
In the scene where the "bad guy" is reintroduced in the walls [scrambling on the pipes for some reason?] the assumption is that he's been turned into a cenobite or some other kind of monster. Great, let us think that with even more power by not knowing who this person is at all. It's a much more interesting move to introduce a new/ catalyzing character very near the end of the movie instead of resurrecting one that nobody cared about in the first place [Oh, millionaire, playboy, debauchery guy gets killed/ disappeared by demon box... how sad…]. Basically as soon as he's re-revealed he literally just TELLS us what happened anyway... so there's no need for the 10-minute intro that... also tells us what happened but ends right before the part that actually matters.3. Start the movie with the woman in the hospital.
If we cold open the film with a 1/3 full frame of her breathing heavily into her oxygen mask, clearly frightened, and move that into the scene where the cenobites show up and take her, that is a WAY stronger intro and introduces every part of the conflict that matters. All she has to say when they show up is something along the lines of "I hid it! He completed the cycle, you have what you wanted!"We can also get the classic "No tears, it's a waste of good suffering," in response. Then, chain noise, violent death, HELLRAISER title on screen, cut to couple just like the film did anyway but have it say something like "3 Days Earlier" rather than the stupid "6 Years Later".
3 days is a more relatable timeframe and pretty much guarantees that we'll get back to that point and probably adventure beyond it as well, so that's fun.
We've also set up the whole thing already so when they "find" the box in the safe we know that this woman we opened with had something to do with it [making our meeting with her much more interesting since we know her violent end] AND [in the actual release of the film] our lead already tells us that it's been missing for 6 years when she's looking into the disappearances online anyway, so there's no need for the film to open with that [ultimately meaningless] timeframe.
4. Remove the knife from the box.
Of all the dumb things in this movie, the "ha ha got you" knife that jumps out of the box was easily my least favorite. There was absolutely no need and nobody would have batted an eye if the box just magically cut whoever was holding it... though I guess we'd have to lose the idiot plot point of cutting a cenobite with the box if we did that... What a shame.5. Remove ALL cgi that could have been done with practical effects.
This is a tall order and the least realistic of all my wants because it can't be fixed with an at-home video editing program. Intro? Easy re-edit with software. Knife... less easy but doable. This? SO much of the film was AWFUL looking cg that it would take a total rework of the film to make it happen. Incredibly disappointing. Maybe they should look at 2016's The Void and take some pointers on how to make a compelling 80's movie.6. Don’t watch this movie at all.
It’s perfect if you can’t see any of it.
