My quick rating - 5,5/10. I absolutely have been waiting for years for this. I really hope they don't screw it up. And this is one of those times where my reviewing is altering the score constantly as I realize things that were included and also missed. It is impossible for me NOT to relate this to the original or the book since I grew up with both in my early teens. And don't freak out about the legendary character of Pinhead being a woman since Jamie Clayton does a pretty damn good job along with the returning cenobites. I am surprised that they didn't try and make the movie 20 minutes long to cater to this young adult generation of pansies that have the attention span of goldfish. I mention this because that is the primary reason this reboot of Hellraiser turned out the way it did. Nearly everything about the lore of the original book is gone. So to work with the lack of attention, the difficulty of opening the puzzle box is tossed out the window. Seems anyone who touches the thing in this flick can pop it open like it is a fresh box of breakfast cereal. The whole mystique then of it opening a door between the two worlds at first was mysterious but by the second half of the flick, the cenobites are just hanging around outside as if they forgot their ticket to the theater. I understand and find that why they couldn't get into the house was quite a nifty idea here but it completely is against what we have already known. But this is a plus and a minus at the same time since I understand the new audience. The thing is, the whole point of the box was to go after those that DESIRED something more, usually evil. To the extent of being told "It is not hands that call us, it is desire." when in Hellraiser 2 someone had an autistic genius open the box for them. The cenobites weren't just there to randomly slaughter people but to punish them. Here anyone who happens to get cut by the box, which protrudes some spike out of it to draw blood, is not prey for the torture but instead just a target like some slasher film. The kills in this are fairly tame as well which I cannot believe Clive Barker was ok with since he did co-produce this. The characters in this were actually cast quite well starting with Odessa A’zion as Riley who is the initial contact point after she and her boyfriend steal the box not knowing what it is. David Bruckner has once again shown us he certainly knows how to make a movie look good from his eye for detail to broad swooping shots. This comes into play later on when there is a great nod to the second Hellraiser which looked proper and had a dark atmosphere to it. But scenes such as this are so few and far between. The whole presentation is fine for a reboot as I said but any true fan will be very disappointed. The only reason I am not tearing it to shreds is that for the "everything is bullying" generation, I am sure that Barker realized that the audience today just isn't equipped mentally to handle his type of horror and allowed this to be toned down to such an extent. So appreciate it for what it does have and if you have no basis for comparison, you'll most likely enjoy it. But for me, I think my bias is clear and if Barker had NOTHING to do with this one like so many of the sequels, I would probably be far more critical. I do hope if they are going to move along with this series, they can get the restrictions lifted and move back to their true horror roots. It was just released on Hulu if you dare to stream it.
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