Film Review: "Hellraiser"

Hulu's Hellraiser, makes the most of its budget, to create visually striking costumes, but also highlights a problem within fandom. Horror fandom is not exception to this malady, that mirrors the human condition, where the vast hole inside the audience is never filled. The culture is in need of constant entertainment. Streaming services have a hard time keeping up with the demand as after fans have binged on one thing, they immediately require another distraction from their lives. Much like an addict with drugs or an alcoholic they invest their personality into what they consume. Thus, objectivity becomes annulled. Hellraiser looks good and works off a story that covers it plot holes with the fantasy world it is set in. The big problem is Pin head. 

Pinhead's design looks good, but when she speaks, she whispers like a ghost. At time when given more dialogue her voice is layered with a lower tone to create a marginally more demonic sound, but it lacks the dominance and the authority of the original. When Dough Bradley spoke, you knew they had fucked up, even before the chains came out. There was a command to his voice that is just not present, no matter the lines the new Pinhead delivers it is not convincing. The character seems like just another cenobite, even when they are the only one on screen. When they stand outside waiting on the scream queens to escape, there is no menace because they are like a yard gnome, a frail figure with none of the physicality. The chattering cenobite is bigger and more menacing.  If Pinhead doesn't work, the movie doesn't work no matter what they get right.      

 Cliver Barker's production credit on this one included his signing a clause that said he would support whatever they decided to do with the franchise and say it's great as long as they add another zero at the end. After all it is not like studios are beating down his door for the rights to "Imagjica" or "the Great and Secret Show". . the Hellraiser property aka Hell-bound heart / the Scarlet Gospels and "Candy-Man are the cash cows he milks. Bradley who was not given the same cut of profits Barkers was put it best 

" Pinhead wore a skirt in the original it doesn't. Matter what gender Pinhead is only that the character is terrifying. That simply is not the case, the movie might have worked better if it was "Hellraiser rise of the Cenobites" and it was an origins story where they retconned it to where Voight turns into Pinhead , but left as is the iconic figure looked great, but had none of the menace that made the originals great. It's an alright movie that entertained for the bulk of it, despite some corners being cut in CGI and some of the blood effects, though not the first in the franchise to do so, yet it is not a good Hellraiser movie in its current state, perhaps the least scary of the franchise.