First Impressions: HELLRAISER

 In case you missed it, there has been another Hellraiser movie that has been released. An Eleventh HELLRAISER movie. 

The first movie came out in 1987 and was directed by Clive Barker who was also the author of the story THE HELLBOUND HEART on which the movie was based. 

THE HELLBOUND HEART was about a man called Frank who buys a puzzle box not realizing that it opens a portal through which beings called Cenobites to arrive to inflict pain and then drag victims to a hellish dimension. 

After Frank is subjected to torture and taken away, his brother Rory and his wife Julia come to stay in that very house where Frank was taken. After getting hurt in the attic, he accidentally opens the portal through which Frank returns but who is no longer in a human state because of the experiments conducted on him by the Cenobites. 

What Rory doesn’t know then is that his wife had been having an affair with Frank and now wants to help him regain his human self. So while Rory is away Julia lures men she meets at bars and lets Frank feed on them so he can regenerate. 

Rory suspects his wife may be having an affair and along with his friend Kristy, tries to catch her red-handed. 

Kristy chances upon the puzzle box and takes it with her and runs, only to collapse later. At the hospital, she solves the puzzle box and a Cenobite comes to take her. She tells him about Frank and at first the Cenobite refuses to believe one of his experiments has escaped but then makes a deal with Kristy to have Frank confess what he did and only then will they take him back.

By this time Frank has already murdered Rory and wearing his skin. When Kristy comes to confront him, they get into a fight which ends with Frank accidentally killing Julia. Kristy manages to get Frank to admit who he is which leads to the Cenobites taking him back to their realm. 

Kristy is given the responsibility of the puzzle box. 

Now the movie was a little different. 

Frank’s brother is named Larry and not Rory. 

Kristy is Larry’s daughter and she has a boyfriend called Steve. Kristy manages to reverse the puzzle in the end and send the Cenobites back to hell. 

In the end, Kristy throws the puzzle box into the fire and walks away not realizing that someone has picked it up and returned it to the very same seller who had sold it to Frank. The vendor then sells it to another customer. 

When the move was being made, Clive Barker had sold all rights to the production company, not realizing then that Hellraiser was going to be a cult movie. 

While he refused to let his name be used to advertise the other movies in the franchise, he does serve as producer in the 2022 version of Hellraiser. 

Now in the past, the HELLRAISER movies have not exactly done well except for the first three. The movies that came out after were either released on single screens or straight to home video. 

So why is there a new HELLRAISER movie? 

Mostly because we live in an era of reboots and sequels. 

The new Hellraiser movie was released at a festival following which it had its release on Hulu. 

The movie received mixed reviews but scored better than the previous movies. It also received decent viewership. 

The story is a tangent from the original story written by Clive Barker. In this version, a recovering addict, Riley accidentally solves the puzzle box and summons the Cenobites that createstraight-to-home havoc in her life. 

The other change in this movie? The character of Pinhead is played by a woman. 

So far, the reviews have been sort of encouraging and positive for the cast and movie, so there’s a good chance that there will be another Hellraiser movie coming soon.