Hulu pins down the first trailer for its new Hellraiser
The horror reboot is going straight-to-Hulu on October 7
Aux News Hellraiser
Earlier this year, Hulu released Prey, a surprisingly good prequel/reboot of the Predator series. Next, the streaming service is hoping lightning can strike twice with a similar straight-to-Hulu reboot of Hellraiser starring Jamie Clayton as Pinhead, and while it’s too early to say if Hellraiser will be as well-received as Prey (which rules, by the way), the film’s first trailer certainly makes a solid case for this being a Hellraiser-ass Hellraiser movie.
We’ve got an evil puzzle box, we’ve got ominous religious imagery, we’ve got a ton of blood, and—best of all—some creepy freakin’ Cenobites. What more do you need while hell-raising? The movie is supposed to be a new adaptation of Clive Barker’s original novella The Hellbound Heart, which he later adapted into the first Hellraiser movie, but this trailer makes it look it’s just following the standard sort of Hellraiser story beats: Somebody wants to open the puzzle box, they do and it’s bad, then somebody doesn’t want to open the puzzle box and has to figure out how to avoid bad things happening. (That’s not a criticism, just an observation, since it’s not like Prey was a dramatic departure from the standard beats of a Predator story.)
Hellraiser, which also stars Odessa A’Zion and was directed by David Bruckner of The Night House and the “Amateur Night” segment from V/H/S (that’s the one where the dudes are killed by a demon lady), will be available on Hulu on October 7. All the “from the master of horror Clive Barker” stuff in this trailer isn’t necessarily inaccurate, as he’s a producer, but it seems more about indicating that he at least signed off on all of this even if he didn’t necessarily have an active hand in… rending the flesh and inserting the pins and all that.
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I’ve always felt that Hellraiser probably has the mythos/worldbuilding with the most potential of the major Hollywood horror franchises. It’s a crying shame it’s been handled so poorly for so long. I’m hopeful for this but verrry skeptical.
I don’t disagree, but I also think that in the US the sex stuff makes it a tough sell. The sex stuff usually makes stuff a hard sell in the US, more so than the gore.
The US is so nuts. Insane gory violence is a-ok, but sex, which propagates the species, is forbidden.
Agreed!
I absolutely do NOT agree with that double standard and so am with you in spirit but this point never sat well with me. Meaning, I think it’s not a well conceived counterpoint. First, are you saying that you think it should be the reverse? Sex is ok in films but violence isn’t? Because I can’t agree with that. We should not censor either. Second, there’s a false equivalence between insane gory violence and sex. Many, many, many pre-teens and teens engage in sex. Very few engage in insane gory violence. The possibility of insane gory violence is extremely remote and there are a lot psychological, legal, cultural and social barriers between impressionable youth and insane gory violence. On the other hand, pre-teens and teens are notoriously horny as fuck. You can see why adults would be ok with one (insane gory violence) and not the other (sex) because there’s an almost 100% guarantee of one and an almost 0% guarantee of the other. Again, I let my kids watch both. The preceding was purely academic in nature.
Pinhead needs an intimacy coordinator.
It seems, from the plot synopsis describing the main character as a drug addict, that this reboot is side stepping the sex stuff by focusing on the drug side of “person who wants to experience every pleasure imaginable goes about it in self-destructive ways.”Understandable that they’d go this route although a little disappointing. Plus, the Evil Dead remake already did the “80s horror reimagined as metaphor for addiction” thing.
This and Highlander are both franchises where the idea of them will always be cooler in your head than any actual adaptation.
Though I think that the Highlander franchise’s extraordinary shittiness all comes from people deciding that they simply could not make anything else in this world without also calling it “Highlander”.
It looks pretty damn good.
This is why I keep a flashlight near my bed. 🙂
Fleshlight?
…with spikes?
You misspelled Fleshlight.
This is a good movie for a reboot, I’m surprised it’s taken this long. The originals weren’t very good and Clive Barker doesn’t seem like something that would speak to the younger set without a freshening up.
The first two are great 80s horror movies. The rest are absolute trash
I know the first couple have some fans… I’ll just say I’m interested to see what they do with a bigger budget. There were some interesting ideas buried in all that 80s cheese.
Bloodline is a great 90s horror movie
Hulu recently put out an adaptation of Barker’s “Books of Blood”. From everything I heard, it wasn’t very good.
Hold up. The first Hellraiser is incredible, especially in how it subverted the usual horror tropes. Are the cenobites evil? Not really, in the same way that wasps aren’t really evil. It was Julia and Frank who were evil. The first Hellraiser is an awesome movie, the sequel is pretty good if much more convoluted, and the rest exist.
This looks… fine. It looks like a glossy mainstream modern horror flick, but it gives off none of the sense of the surreal and otherworldly that the first two movies radiate. Admittedly, you can’t judge a movie by its trailer, but this just doesn’t convey the right mystique.
I’m yet to be sold on it, it’s been a LONG damn time since Hellraiser was good, but I’m cautiously optimistic. Visually, though, 10/10. I *love* the new Cenobite designs. I do wish they had gone even more book accurate, but these are really fucking cool.
Yeah but I think it needs a Cenobite who shoots CD out of his head 🙂
Could use a spaceship, too, now that I’m thinking about it.I kid, but as I wrote that, I realized that I kinda want horror villains to randomly go to space again.
Is there a horror franchise in the last couple decades with enough sequels to justify the “in space” entry.Saw in Space maybe?Human Centipede in Space?Orphan in Space?I feel like all the best horror of the last decade or so have been one and done affairs
The Conjuring series isn’t one-and-done, but going to space wouldn’t fit the setting.
Moon’s haunted.
Good point, they might have to mine the classics. Killer Klowns From Outer Space is having a moment right now, maybe Killer Klowns From Outer Space In Space?
What about Alien in – wait nmI don’t think there’s been a Predator in space, that could be fun.
Hellraiser did not “randomly” go to space
… Okay, and? I said “horror villains”. If you’re going to do the pedant thing, the Cenobites aren’t villains.
Point of order- saw that one in the theater. It was…something.
The way I see it, the goofy Cenobites from part 3 were unwilling victims, when usually they’re made from people who are already way into S&M.Also, Pinhead is sort of a renegade Cenobite by that point, roaming freely on Earth flexing his burgeoning X-Men powers, which include conjuring fishhook chains and blowing up cars. So it could be those “Cenobites” are just Pinhead fucking around with his reality-altering powers, and not the creatures that would come out of the actual Cenobite machine we saw in part 2.Obviously this all very important
So some writer got really pissed they couldn’t solve a Rubik’s cube…and bdsm ensued
That was… disappointing. The few still shots I had seen had me interested. Visually it looks good, but it certainly doesn’t look like any possible interpretation of The Hellbound Heart. The trailer makes it look like a higher budget version of the endless awful Hellraiser sequels where it was basically Final Destination but with cenobites.The Hellbound Heart is a relatively small and personal horror story where the cenobites barely appear. Hellraiser somewhat captures that, and while it’s a horror classic, Barker is not a good director. At least it still got the overall themes through though. The trailer also shows shots that are inspired directly from Hellbound, but without the gonzo nuttiness that was the uncut Hellbound. Which is also not what I’d call a good movie. It’s more a string of disturbing scenes linked by some boring exposition, but they really went for it on the disturbing aspect. A good bit that had to be cut to avoid an X rating. The trailer doesn’t seem like the movie has found its lane.
Here’s the thing. Barker vision of Hellraiser is so far removed from the novella at this point, that book was really just a means to an end for him to direct his own film. Like in the grand pantheon of the Hellraiser continuities, nothing really connects to it. The Toll and Scarlet Gospel books a continuations of the first film.
Yes a really good Hellraiser movie needs to be grubby and nasty. You should feel like you need a shower after watching. This looks very slick which is kinda bland.
You hit the, uh, pin on the head there, brother. It doesn’t look grimy enough. Hell shouldn’t look like a perfume ad.
I guess they are going to mix up elements from all the saga, including the impressive Leviathan scenes from the second one, and I am up for it. Let’s see how the actors work, because that was an unsung part that made the first two more effective than they should.
Where are Frank and Julia and Kirsty? Isn’t this supposed to be an adaptation of the short story…?
The font they chose is too similar to the Law and Order franchise.