Review: The shocking turns to numbness in new ‘Hellraiser’
‘Hellraiser’
Writer-director Clive Barker’s 1987 horror movie “Hellraiser” (adapting his novella “The Hellbound Heart”) became a cult favorite due to its kinky overtones and its visually striking villain: a spiky-domed demon dubbed Pinhead. The new reboot retains the elements that define a “Hellraiser” story, including the sadomasochistic extra-dimensional monsters and a cast of human “heroes” who rarely act heroically. But there’s something lacking. For all the flayed flesh and impaled skin in the picture, this “Hellraiser” isn’t sharp enough.
Directed by David Bruckner from a screenplay by Ben Collins and Luke Piotrowski — a trio who previously collaborated on the excellent supernatural thriller “The Night House” — this “Hellraiser” stars Odessa A’zion as Riley, a habitual substance user who helps her shady boyfriend steal an ancient puzzle-box. The box can be twisted into multiple configurations, each of which leads to the solver’s hands getting punctured and a portal opening to a realm ruled by the Cenobites, a hedonistic race for whom pleasure, pain and enlightenment are all tightly — some might say constrictively — intertwined.
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