Hellraiser

Clive Barker's extradimensional sadomasochists are given a new lease of life thanks to a Disney streaming platform. Landing at Hulu (or whichever lackadaisical digital delivery giant is squatting on the film's distribution in your region) is a big step up for a series that has spent the last decade or so in a purgatorial rights-retention phase that saw new instalments barely screened beyond cast and crew parties. David Bruckner's Hellraiser is neither a sequel nor the long-promised remake of the 1987 original though, it's a rethink. A slasher slanted reboot with a tick 'em off structure further embellishing the A Nightmare on Elm Street-isms that crept into Hellraiser's less serious sequels while also switching the central relationship with Hell's emissaries from invitational (no matter how accidental) to sacrificial. This deliberately cruel adjustment allows the film to tease out another layer of power dynamics in a franchise that worked best when it burdened women with the sins of their self-indulgent men. 

Odessa A'zion plays Riley, a former addict struggling to get her life back on track while she squats in her brother's apartment, subjecting the tightly-packed household to the sights and sounds of her love life. Hellraiser deploys this idea of chemical or psychological dependency with no real intention to derive insight. Instead it's shorthand for the Riley character to remain lightly scorned by her peers and just unreliable enough that these same acquaintances meet increasingly sticky ends. Bruckner's film, written for the screen by Ben Collins and Luke Piotrowski, dangles an idea that the mission of Jamie Clayton's Hell Priest is self-perpetuating - that they find clueless marks then ruthlessly exploit their emotional vulnerabilities - but a third-act realignment pivots proceedings back into the realm of predatory billionaires. Goran Višnjić's Voight, the owner of a mansion riddled with red rooms, occupies a curious place in this story. He's a middle-aged voyeur who pays desperate twentysomethings to meddle with the occult on his behalf. The (strangely passive) monsters who stalk his estate then would seem to reflect the tastes he nurtured solving the central puzzle box - young bodies flayed and stripped of their identity. We assume they are the human grist ground on Voight's path to rapturous pleasure.