Hellraiser (2022) (Steelbook Import) (4K UHD Review)
Director
David BrucknerRelease Date(s)
2022 (December 11, 2025)Studio(s)
20th Century Studios/247Hub/Phantom Four Films/Spyglass Media Group (Turbine Medien)- Film/Program Grade: B
- Video Grade: A-
- Audio Grade: A-
- Extras Grade: B+
Review
[Editor's Note: This is a Region-Free German 4K Ultra HD import.]
For a franchise that has revolved around puzzle boxes carrying a curse that can be transferred from recipient to recipient, it shouldn’t be too surprising that the inevitable remake/reboot of Clive Barker’s original Hellraiser has carried a curse of its own. To be fair, that curse had already infected the franchise, just in a different way. While the first four films had all received theatrical releases (in one form or another), the franchise went direct-to video after that—and it just kept going and going, with Dimension Films churning out installment after installment on increasingly nonexistent budgets, most of them serving little purpose other than as fodder to retain the rights. Yet that morass of mediocrity is relatively straightforward compared to the tortured path that the remake ended up following.
Back in 2006, Clive Barker announced his intention to write the script for a Hellraiser remake that would still be produced under the aegis of Dimension Films. The project passed from director to director and even writer to writer after that, with Barker at one point saying that he would now write and direct it himself and Doug Bradley returning as the Hell Priest (popularly known as Pinhead), but none of that ever came to pass. Eventually, the rights reverted back to Barker and a new version started development under the banner of the Spyglass Media Group instead. David S. Goyer wrote a story treatment for the new film, and when David Bruckner came aboard to direct, he brought along his Night House writers Ben Collins and Luke Piotrowski to write the script. Nearly two decades after Barker’s first announcement, the curse of the Hellraiser remake was finally going to be lifted. (Or was it really? More on that in a moment.)
Ever since Barker’s original 1986 novella The Hellbound Heart, the Hellraiser franchise has revolved around the search for the ultimate in sensory overload leading to puzzle boxes that open the doors to another dimension (no pun intended), where S&M demons called Cenobites offer the ultimate in both pain and pleasure. The first LeMarchand box was in the Lament Configuration, although the meaning of that term was left somewhat nebulous throughout the rest of the franchise. While other boxes were glimpsed in the background, and Hellbound: Hellraiser II teased a godlike geometric figure called Leviathan, the Lament Configuration has remained at the forefront—at least until now.
The key to this new conception of Hellraiser is that the LeMarchand Box can take on different configurations for different purposes, each of them representing different sensations: Lament, Lore, Laudarant (Love), Liminal, Lazarus, and Leviathan. A six-sided box that can be opened six ways, each of them serving a unique purpose for the solver—whether that purpose was intended or not. Setting a configuration results in a sharp blade piercing the user’s hand, with their blood being absorbed by the box and marking them as targets for the ultimate in sensory experience that the Cenobites can offer. Yet as in the original Hellraiser, there’s a way out for those who are willing to pass the curse onto someone else, as the Hell Priest (Jamie Clayton) tells Riley (Odessa A’zion):
“Gifts cannot be ungiven. Only exchanges can be made.”
Riley has spent much of her young life in search of sensations of a different kind: she’s a recovering drug addict. She’s currently living with her brother Matt (Brandon Flynn), his boyfriend Colin (Adam Faison), and their roommate Nora (Aoife Hinds), all while trying to balance her own troubled boyfriend Trevor (Drew Starkey) on the side. Trevor tells Riley a story about the missing multimillionaire Roland Voight (Goran Višnjić), and he ropes her into a scheme to break into an abandoned warehouse that reportedly contains some of Voight’s riches. Riches indeed, because what they discover is a LeMarchand box, and once Riley starts to solve it, she puts everyone in harm’s way, leading them to search Voight’s mansion to find a solution for escaping the Cenobites.
While Hellraiser offers plenty of gore (never fear, it has such sights to show you), Bruckner chose to shift away from the black leather S&M milieu of Barker’s film in favor of the gifts of the flesh being of a rather more, shall we say, fleshly sort. And without Doug Bradley’s commanding presence as the Hell Priest, Bruckner decided to lean into the sexual ambiguity inherent to the story by casting trans actress Jamie Clayton instead. Culture wars being culture wars, that inevitably upset some fans of the franchise, but it’s truer to Barker’s more androgynous figure from The Hellbound Heart, and it’s entirely in keeping with the entire Hellraiser ethos. Bruckner also incorporated some of the other elements of the novella that weren’t included in the original film, returning to the franchise’s roots while still forging his own path forward.
That new path is most evident in Hellraiser’s unexpectedly powerful ending, where Riley is forced to face a genuinely painful choice that goes beyond mere physical sensation. The Night House had been about a woman processing the trauma of her husband’s death, so Bruckner, Collins, & Piotrowski carried the idea of processing trauma into Hellraiser while taking the concept of different LeMarchand configurations full circle (or full square, as the case may be). Riley is given a choice, and in the best spirit of recovery, she decides to accept the consequences of her own mistakes and live with the regrets. That may never provide full closure for her, but it does finally provide an opportunity for the Hell Priest to explain the configuration that’s been the heart and soul of the entire Hellraiser franchise:
“Then you have chosen a life of regret. Knowing everything you’ve done, everyone you’ve hurt and lost. Your suffering has barely begun. You choose to live, to carry that weight, bitter and brief. You have chosen the Lament Configuration.”
Unfortunately, Bruckner’s Hellraiser wasn’t able to escape the curse of the franchise. While it was screened at both Fantastic Fest and Beyond Fest in 2022, it never got a theatrical release and ended up being relegated to streaming on Hulu instead. It still hasn’t received a physical media release in North America to this very day. (Such are the times in which we live.) That’s a shame, because it had the potential to relaunch the franchise if it had been given a proper theatrical release with a good marketing campaign. After all, there are five more configurations left to go, and the coda for Hellraiser also offers the birth of a new Cenobite to take the Hell Priest’s side. Bruckner and producer Ken Levine have both expressed interest in making a sequel, but as of this writing, the curse of Hellraiser has held strong.
Cinematographer Eli Born captured Hellraiser digitally at 3.4K resolution (in ARRIRAW format) using Arri Alexa Mini cameras with Cooke anamorphic lenses. Post-production work appears to have been completed as a 4K Digital Intermediate, framed at 2.39:1 for its theatrical release. This version has been graded for High Dynamic Range in both Dolby Vision and HDR10. The results can be a little challenging to assess, because while many people complain about HDR being too dark when it’s really just due to how their displays are tone mapping HDR content, in this case, Hellraiser really is an exceptionally dark film. The color palette is limited, favoring earth tones like browns, blues, and greens, but the deep black shadows do tend to dominate the proceedings. There are splashes of color whenever it’s thematically or stylistically appropriate, such as the sickly amber sodium vapor lighting that bathes some of the nighttime exteriors, and deep reds show up whenever the blood begins to flow. Fine textures on the skin, makeup effects, and costuming do benefit from the 4K treatment, at least when they’re clearly visible, but this definitely isn’t demo material—and to be fair, it wasn’t intended to be. Hellraiser was meant to be a dark, oppressive experience, and that’s exactly how it looks in 4K with HDR.
Audio is offered in German & English Dolby Atmos, German & English 5.1 DTS, and English 2.0 DTS, with optional German, German SDH, English, and English SDH subtitles. The Atmos tracks are mastered at a disappointingly low level, requiring a substantial increase in volume in order to compensate, which may compress the dynamics somewhat. But it’s an otherwise aggressive mix with sound effects like wind, rain, and thunder blasting overhead, and plenty of creaks and groans to go around. Interestingly enough, the flying chains aren’t given as much directionality as you might expect, but whenever the lines blur between the realms, the environments can be heard unfolding around the viewer. The score by Ben Lovett blends his own work with some of Christopher Young’s familiar themes, and they inevitably end up overshadowing the new material. But it works well enough.
Turbine Medien’s Region-Free 4K Ultra HD Steelbook release of Hellraiser is a three-disc set that includes a Blu-ray with a 1080p copy of the film and a second Blu-ray with additional extras. It also includes a J-card slipcover. The menus are in a combination of English and German, but they’re easy enough to parse (and remember that Google Lens is your friend if you still want to translate them). Turbine also released the film with four separate Mediabook covers that were limited to 666 units, each containing a 55-page booklet with essays, designs, and photos. All of those releases have since sold out. However, the disc-based contents of each are the same as the Steelbook release:
DISCS ONE & TWO: FEATURE FILM (UHD & BD)
- Commentary by David Bruckner
- Commentary by Sierra Spencer and Josh Russell
- German Trailer (HD – 1:49)
- U.S. Trailer (HD – 1:49)
DISC THREE: BONUS (BD)
- Such Sights: Reimagining Hellraiser (HD – 55:36)
- Creating Cenobites (HD – 33:48)
- Leviathan Tech (HD – 9:32)
- German Trailer (HD – 1:49)
- U.S Trailer (HD – 1:49)
- Trailer Show:
- Hellraiser: The Gate to Hell (German) (Upscaled SD – 1:10)
- Hellraiser (U.S.) (HD – 1:34)
- Hellbound: Hellraiser II (German) (Upscaled – SD 1:22)
- Hellbound: Hellraiser II (U.S.) (HD – 1:17)
- Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth (German) (Upscaled SD – 1:52)
- Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth (U.S.) (Upscaled SD – 1:52)
- Hellraiser IV: Bloodline (German) (HD – 1:30)
- Hellraiser IV: Bloodline (U.S.) (HD – 1:14)
- Hellraiser: Judgment (German) (HD – 1:58)
- Hellraiser: Judgment (U.S.) (HD – 1:56)
Aside from a collection of English-language and German-language trailers (the latter of which aren’t necessarily identical to their domestic counterparts), the rest of the all-new extras were produced by Turbine, starting off with two separate commentaries. The first is with David Bruckner, who says that he’s excited to do the track since he hasn’t done one in nearly a decade. He’s also glad that he hasn’t watched Hellraiser in a while since he feels that he can see it differently with a little distance. Unsurprisingly, “differences” are the running theme of his commentary, like the differences between the practical and digital effects; the differences between his approach and Clive Barker’s; and even the thematic differences between the original and the remake. Bruckner wanted to keep things a little more grounded, at least before they become fully fantastical, and one key element of that was encouraging his actors to deliver more naturalistic and less theatrical performances than the ones in the original film. He also took a different narrative approach, with Riley not being driven by desire as much as by the consequences of her previous desires, namely, her addictions. Ultimately, it’s grief, not lust, that drives her quest. Yet Bruckner didn’t want a one-to-one correspondence between the theme of addiction and the themes of the original film, with everything playing out a little differently.
The second commentary with Josh Russell and Sierra Spencer of Russell FX is moderated by Ed Martinez (although in practice, they do just fine on their own). They offer some background about how they got involved with the project—having worked with Bruckner before on The Night House, they were actually tracking its development. They go into great detail about not just the makeup effects, but also the way that digital effects were integrated (in some cases, it was used to blend two or more different practical effects together, not as full digital creations). But some of their makeup effects kicked it old-school, incorporating inflatable bladders and other traditional techniques. They also discuss the design of the various puzzle boxes even though they weren’t involved with creating or building them. Russell and Spencer are clearly proud of the work that they did under difficult circumstances, and they should be.
Such Sights: Reimagining Hellraiser is a making-of that features interviews with David Bruckner, Ben Collins, and Luke Piotrowski. They cover the development of the script from David S. Goyer’s story treatment; getting the themes right while taking them in a different direction; designing the new boxes and Cenobites; the makeup and visual effects; the casting; shooting in Belgrade; dealing with quarantine during the pandemic; and Ben Lovett’s score. In the process, they explain how they honored the legacies of Clive Barker, Doug Bradley, and Christopher Young, all while striking their own path.
Creating Cenobites is an interview with Josh Russell and Sierra Spencer that goes into greater detail regarding the makeup effects, with examples of their work starting all the way back to the prototype Pinhead that they created as a way to audition for the job. They also break down each of the Cenobite designs that made it into the final film, their limited involvement with the puzzle boxes (mostly the bleeding effects), and the integration of their work with the visual effects. Interestingly enough, they note how dark that the lighting was, and that it allowed them to represent voids through the middle of certain Cenobites simply by having a black spot in the makeup (so once again, the darkness of this 4K version is accurate to how the film was intended to be seen).
Finally, Leviathan Tech expands on Creating Cenobites by showing how the technology for the puzzle boxes was incorporated into the makeup for each of the Cenobites. Spencer steps through some of these tech pieces from design to 3D printing, painting, and incorporating them into the prosthetics.
There aren’t any extras missing here from previous releases of Hellraiser for the simple reason that there haven’t been any. There was a DVD release in the U.K. (yes, DVD, not even Blu-ray), but that appears to have been bare-bones. So Turbine’s version isn’t just the first time that Hellraiser has been released on UHD or Blu-ray anywhere in the world, it’s also the first time that any extras have been included. In other words: it’s kind of a big deal. And it’s a worthy installment in the franchise, too, so this Turbine UHD is highly recommended. (Just don’t try watching it in any environment other than a fully darkened room.)
-Stephen Bjork
(You can follow Stephen on social media at these links: Twitter, Facebook, BlueSky, and Letterboxd).