Reviews Film / Hellraiser

More compelling to ponder than to watch.

Hellraiser is a lofty horror fantasy about people's horrific fantasies—an old puzzle box launches a ritual that summons sadomasochistic demonic entities who destroy the summoner with the most exquisite pain imaginable. When a wretch gets resurrected and uses his old flame to help reconstitute his body with human victims, the terrifying Cenobites he's cheated might be the only thing that can stop him.

The film is a little awkward as a movie. I find the franchise's evolution toward focusing on the Cenobites to be entirely reasonable because they're such striking concepts compared to the interesting but comparatively mundane monsters of Frank and Julia Cotton (unmarried but sharing a surname because Julia married Frank's brother). The Cenobites are a religion of bondage monsters mutilated in striking symbolic fashion and they're arcane and grim and threatening in a way that makes them ripe for centering stories around, but instead they're the collectors abiding by a ritual defied by the real villains. I find the balance of tone also feels off because of this. Frank and Julia feel more heightened and melodramatic than the Cenobites. Though the Cenobites are striking and grim, the film's framing and direction makes them feel a little more mundane than they should.

The film is also a little choppy from time to time and doesn't feel the most well put-together. A big factor harming it was the overdubbing of most of the British cast with American accents (even Frank's actor who affected an American accent on-set). It's noticeable, it destroys the sense of setting which is meant to be England, and it really hurts that we've never gotten a cut with the fully intact performances. They'd make it feel better.

Still, the story is visually captivating and eerie. The score is haunting, some sequences are hypnotic, and there's some truly gruesome gory effects befitting the story that you can only really get from this film era. Kirsty Cotton, the hero, is well-performed and likeable as she tries to bargain with the Cenobites to save her father's life and then dispatch Frank and Julia. I like the idea of her stumbling into a ritual world she's not meant for and having to wrangle it to her advantage. I feel like the rules of the story are a little vague (why was the resurrection even possible, and how does the box really get solved?) but it works as a fun seed for the dark imagination.