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. 

Hellbound: Hellraiser II

For all its faults Hellraiser had solid, dramatic ideas about familial unease underpinning the transatlantic vivisection. Director Tony Randel's Hellbound: Hellraiser II doesn't even bother with that kind of personal dimension. The film begins well enough - Clare Higgns' Julia is dragged out of the underworld by Kenneth Cranham's Dr Channard, a lobotomist who is sexually excited by flayed bodies. Early scenes of the Julia drifting around Channard's house, smearing bloody hand-prints over his all-white interiors are visually interesting too, evocative of the human cost associated with Channard's hobbies. Julia and Channard do make for an intriguing couple too: Channard's an Aleister Crowley fan who uses his position at a psychiatric hospital to requisition police evidence and stage satanic ceremonies; Julia, hardly pliant arm-candy, actually seems to be working directly for the all-powerful shape that twists and turns at the centre of this film's rendition of hell. Neither of these villains gets very much to do beyond that though. Julia is trapped glowering at a pair of dreary heroines, boasting about her new role in this destitute cosmology as a wicked witch. Channard (eventually) gets himself a Cenobite makeover but ends up falling apart at a crucial moment for no particular reason. This is Hellbound's problem. Characters and their actions aren't tracking towards satisfying conclusions, they're simply grist for risible splatter effects.

Hellraiser

Clive Barker's directorial debut takes a Sunday evening television idea and thoroughly vandalises it. Hellraiser's adulterous love triangle involves married couple Larry and Julia, as well as his flick knife carrying brother Frank. Weeks before Larry and Julia's wedding, Frank made a point of fucking Julia with such animal expertise that she's never been able to shake the memory. Following a prolonged disappearing act from Frank, the bickering bride and groom move into his former lodgings, the decrepit old family home. Unknown to them, Frank met a sticky end in the attic after purchasing an ornate puzzle box. Whilst moving a mattress, Larry snags his hand on a rusty nail. Being of a weedy constitution, Larry rushes upstairs to show his wife, spilling copious amounts of soupy gore on the bare floorboards. 

This blood offering returns the dead Frank back to life as a desiccated, vampiric corpse. Reunited with Julia, Frank sets about manipulating his former plaything into bludgeoning drippy businessmen for him to feast on. Although Doug Bradley's Pinhead gets all the attention, Hellraiser is really Julia's film. Barker and actress Clare Higgins take what could be a sleazy, one-dimensional role and beef it up with anxiety and hesitation. Julia is willing to help her flayed lover but she isn't brazen, it's an obligation. A unpalatable task for her to slowly churn through. The hammer murders she commits are also framed by her disastrous interactions with men. Julia's husband is a loud-mouthed dolt who keeps pawing at her even when she's sobbing. The suits she picks up to feed Frank are either sneering yuppies or ditherers who turn rough once they are behind closed doors. Frank, Julia's idea of salvation, doesn't even pretend to love her.

S&M debauchery aside, a sense of sadness hangs over Hellraiser. Julia has spent her life settling. Her marriage is so lacking in passion that she's willing to cave other people's heads in to feel desired. Julia is used to putting up with slights and soldiering on. She doesn't even flinch when Frank starts making it obvious he's lusting after Julia's stepdaughter Kirsty. She simply looks the other way. Disappointingly, Hellraiser the film eventually loses interest in Julia as well. Despite doing all the heavy lifting in the second act, Julia is dumped as soon as the demonic Cenobites turn up. Hellraiser had developed two competing ideas of how female sexuality is commodified - youth versus experience and expertise. Sadly they are barely allowed to clash. Julia is discarded, skinned off-screen, leaving Ashley Laurence's Kirsty front and centre, banishing monsters by solving a Rubik's Cube.