‘Hellraiser Review: A Reboot Of The PainFreak Horror Franchise Is Now The Worlds Edgiest Disney Movie

Every horror film is about pain, but only Hellraiser is about sadomasochism—its electricity and agony, its highest calling. Hellraiser, a reboot of a franchise that debuted in 1987 and gave us nine sequels (time flies when you imagine being tortured for fun), is a homage to Clive Barker's 1986 short film. Hellraiser." But the new Hellraiser is taking a long time to get to what fans of the series would call the good stuff. Yet when it does, the film doesn't hold back. Flesh is torn and skinned, flesh is washed away, and the torn flesh becomes mystical and mechanical devices. spreads through horror The film's brutal ending will remind you of bad cinematic mayhem landmarks like The Audition, The Cage, Saw and the 2018 version of Suspiria and David Cronenberg's Future Crimes return to body horror.

However, even before getting under the skin, the new Hellraiser could be considered one of the most sinister horror films of recent times. It's a wild horror film released by Disney, and in case you're wondering how Disney - which not only owns everything you watch, including Hulu, the platform that streams Hellraiser - is now attaching its brand to the horror series. A nightmarish exhortation to outrageous sexuality, the answer is: Hellraiser really does feel like a Disney movie for most of its two-hour runtime... except when it seems to be possessed by the spirit of the Marquis Sade.

Features - Rebellious-looking writer Riley (Odessa Ha-Zion), her goofy boyfriend Trevor (Drew Starkey), her overprotective brother Matt (Brandon Flynn) and her boyfriend Colin (Adam Faison) are like "Disney characters." " is that they don't have any hidden aspects or character statements like, say, Bodies Bodies Bodies. They're just a bunch of lads, with almost no internal interest; they're colorless, like the characters in Scooby-Doo. I had everything set up for about an hour, Hellraiser dies. The characters really they wait for the meat. The film can be called "Bodies, bodies, bodies (with chain hooks)".

Also, the Hellraiser movies have never amounted to anything in this regard. The solemn pioneer/aesthete/guru of the sadomasochistic spectacle (his pale white head with checkered stripes and perfectly ordered rows of pins looks like an art installation) has evolved over time the defiant figure of Freddy Krueger, the evil talisman of the megaplex. fear. But who remembers or cares about the people infected with their pleasure pain virus?

In the new Hellraiser, Pinhead, colloquially referred to as the Priest of Hell, joins the Cenobites, a group of ghost demons who give new meaning to the phrase "open body parts" (a person's spine is open, as if someone had operated on it). ). is). One of the cenobites walks like an alien geisha, another looks like a robot with the mouth of a nun, and the third looks like a portrait of Francis Bacon with his mouth frozen in the middle of a scream. As for Pinhead, he's turned into a soft creepy puppet of himself, with starry baby eyes and a velvety, sexually ambiguous voice. The fact that the Hell Priest is played by actor Jamie Clayton brings the film somewhat closer to the spirit of Barker's novel. However, when Pinhead and his ghostly friends roll in, it turns the film into a set of talismans so precious that I almost expected to hear someone say, "Collect all five."

The film cuts while they are off screen, the only plot seems to be Riley's desire to get her brother back after he plunges into a cosmic realm of pain. Trevor knows more than he lets on, "How did you manage to change like a cube?". Of course, it refers to the Lemarchand box, the engraved mechanical puzzle box that has been a hallmark of the Hellraiser series, revealing the pain of pleasure that transports your soul to a new world. In Hellraiser, the tricky logistics of the box is also a kind of metaphor. It starts as a cube, and if you press the right buttons and rotate it at right angles, it reveals and rearranges its hidden parts, after which it is no longer a square. Just like you stop being square after trying kicks that twist into forbidden shapes.

The new Hellraiser works as a metaphor, a spectacle in the flesh. However, it doesn't work as a story. And maybe that's because there's something dated now about the film's view of morbid sensuality as a one-way ticket to hell. The movie wants to send you to hell and back, but it's like what you'd find on a dating app these days.

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