Movie Review: 'Hellraiser (2022)'

While the newest iteration, simply titled “Hellraiser,” is going straight to Hulu, don’t mistake it as a sign of another failure. It feels like a rebirth for the franchise.

The story follows the familiar route of the Clive Barker series, where a down-on-their-luck character, this time the struggling addict Riley McKendry (Odessa A’zion) stumbles upon the blood-draining puzzle box and mistakenly summons the pinheaded Hell Priest (this time, played with menacing stoicism by Jamie Clayton) and the Cenobites to indulge in pleasure from other peoples’ pain.

Directed by David Bruckner, who helmed the underrated Rebecca Hall indie horror movie “The Night House,” he doesn’t dig too deep into the lore of the new Pinhead and its minions. Instead, it’s treated more like a slasher, with these grotesque creations trapping and dismembering Riley’s friends for their own pleasure.

Compared to the original, a miracle of a success considering writer-director Clive Barker was learning how to shoot a movie while it was happening, this is a more honed affair. It has a look similar to other recent horror continuations like David Gordon Green’s “Halloween” and the 2021 “Candyman,” where the grime of the original is gone, and every scene is seemingly lit by a single low-watt lightbulb.

Similar to “Candyman,” this one tends to stumble along but stays engaging through A’zion’s frightened, frenetic performance and the beautifully horrifying, tactile nature of the Hell Priest and the Cenobites.

I might be grading this on a curve because this shouldn’t work as well as it does. But for what it is and tries to achieve, paying homage to a classic series by giving it some much-needed dignity, it’s a success.