“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.”