I never fully watched Hellraiser when i was a kid. At my age it was nightmare material.
Over the years, it never dawned on me to watch them. But now with the 2022 release, i recently watched the original 1987 Hellraiser, in preparation to watching the 2022 Hellraiser, so i could compare.
I thought it would be a re-make, but no, however. It's a revival.
Anyhoo, (after what is it, a trillion sequels?) i would have hoped this revival would have been something special. And i went in to watch it, really thinking they would go full-gore-mode, what with movies like Saw being screened, and many others that don't shy away from the excess blood splattering all over the screen; Hellraiser has all the reason to welcome the extreme-gore-visual-fest, what with all there body parts stretched, cut open and deformed.
So, suffice to say it disappointed in the "gore" department. The 1987 movie didn't shy away from it, at all!
Shame Hellraiser 2022, shame!
The Cenobites really are a quirky hellish lot! Gotta love 'em!
And while there's some interesting looking ones in the 2022 movie, their costumes had a terrible FX artist behind them, looking nothing like real flesh and blood, but instead like rubber.
While the movie is solid, this 2022 version felt like nothing special, for a revival of such a high-caliber staple of a movie that is Hellraiser.
And while good overall, it did hit a weak spot during the middle and turned into an episode of Scooby-Doo, or your typical "dumb teen horror movie", with a Hellraiser theme.
Like, Zoinks!
But, it did immediately move away from being goofy however, and went back to good.
Final verdict: good movie, good acting, nothing special for a revival of Hellraiser. After a trillion sequels i was hoping they would up the stakes and make an extremely gorish Hellraiser, like i said, and that was my biggest disappointment for this movie.
That and Pinhead. Yeah...female Pinhead. Because fuck if they can leave pre-existing characters alone.
Thanks for reading!