Every year studios come out of the woodwork trying to capture those Halloween dollars because everyone is at least going to check out a couple of horror films during this time. As someone who was around for the original Hellraiser movie back in 1987 I was hopeful that this higher budget sequel (it is NOT a remake) was going to capture some of that enjoyment. It failed on every conceivable level and when I look at the metacritic or IMDB scores from the "professionals" I can help but the system is rigged because this movie is flat out awful yet the pros give it around 7/10.
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Even people that have never seen a Hellraiser film are familiar with "Pinhead" so there's always that iconic thing to try to lure them in. That's what worked on me even though I do not have a Hulu account. When we start the story it appears as though we are in for a treat because for the first 15 minutes or so they actually do a great job of introducing the story. Unfortunately, the next hour or so is spent on argumentative dialogue so awful that I frequently found myself skipping it all. What we have is a sufficiently culturally and racially diverse group of 20 somethings that just argue with each other all the time. I don't know how many times somebody says "we don't have time for this" but it a lot! The script is terrible and I guess that since they didn't really have a real story here that they had to fill up that time with something in order to make the movie long enough.
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We aren't introduced on-screen to any of the Cenobites, which are the real stars of the show until quite late on and then when we do meet them they fail to put any sort of fear into this "horror" film. They don't even achieve a sense of dread since for the first time ever, they seem to be constrained by their surroundings. This breaks from every Hellraiser story that has ever existed. Since the hell-creatures actually travel between realms, why the frick would the be stopped by a gate on a property? Of course this isn't going to mean as much to people that have never seen the movies before but it just doesn't make sense that they appear out of nowhere, but then are immediately impeded by certain things in the real world such as fences, walls, stairs, even glass windows. It's just frustratingly bad.
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When we do meet Pinhead it wasn't surprising to me at all that he is now a she. That is just the way Hollywood is now. Pinhead, as you may recall, has the ability to send chains attached to hooks to thrust them into anyone involved in summoning the Cenobites. However, in one particularly stupid portion of the overall very stupid film, a man announces "your chains will not work here!" and they don't. No explanation is given as to how this could be possible, it just is that way.
This really stupid situation is made worse by the fact that literally 5 minutes later, the chains all of a sudden do work.
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Cenobites never ran after their prey but rather would slowly pursue you and wait for you to fall down or something. A feeling of dread was created because you had a demon who never gets tired that was chasing after you. In Hellraiser 2022 there are Cenobites that run and get their heads stuck in gates. The fact that all of them teleported to that same location a few minutes ago is just somehow theatrically irrelevant.
To anyone that appreciates continuity in their movie experience, this is just one eye-roll after the next.
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As irritating as the Cenobites new uselessness is it is no the most irritating part of this film. The worst part is by far the actors playing the humans. NONE of them have redeeming qualities. They are all whiney brats who constantly argue with one another and for all but one of them, it doesn't appear as though they had a great deal in the way of acting training before filming this turd of a movie. I don't know how much of the dialogue that I skipped through, but it was most of it. I think they actually do more teleporting in this film than the Cenobites do because they will just randomly appear at certain out of the way locations that there is no real way that the others could have possibly known where that place is.
Should I watch it?
I can't think of any reason good or bad for anyone to suffer though this. The only real suffering that comes out of this movie is that of the viewer. Even though I am a long-standing fan of the franchise, I only didn't turn this off several times because I was hopeful that it would redeem itself towards the end. It does no do so. Terrible script, terrible acting, rather poor special effects considering the budget, and a nonsensical plot-progression that completely breaks from established canon join forces to create one of the worst horror films I have ever sat through.
Don't just take my word for it, go and look at the thousands of non-professional user reviews and see for yourself. I would rather watch 2 hours of a teenage reality show just for the cringe than be forced to watch this film again.
