Welcome to another great remake - or "reimagining" - of yet another franchise that should have been left alone. This HELLRAISER should have never raised from development hell, at least not like this. Ba-dum-tss!
And right away we have to deal with one of the film's biggest weaknesses: the protagonist. It seems to be quite fashionable to write poorly developed, annoying characters that we as an audience are then supposed to identify and sympathise with. But if the most prominent traits of your protagonist are an annoying, breaking voice and her clownish, overdrawn lips that seem such an odd choice, something is wrong from the very start.
Add in a loose edit with a runtime that feels thirty minutes too long, naive and quite predictable "twists", a poor sense of suspense, and you have your 2022 version of HELLRAISER. Oh, and of course the Cenobites have to be diverse as well now, which makes it feel like some Disney version of the material. It's actually Apple, so not very far off.
However, not all is bad - some decent gore effects try to make up for everthing else, and in some parts it's a commendable effort. Not nearly enough to make this worthwhile, but still.
The score is surprisingly decent at times, strangely awful at other times, which made me wonder if they pulled a GHOSTBUSTERS: AFTERLIFE, and they kinda did. The decent cues came from the original first two HELLRAISER scores, the awful ones were new. Why are scores so unremarkable, boring, and bad nowadays?
All in all, I guess it is a true horror fan's duty to watch this HELLRAISER, but if you are and if you do, please don't expect this one to be anything great. It's an effort, misguided and naive at its worst, acceptable and nice to look at at its best. Have some beers handy, and you'll get through.
And right away we have to deal with one of the film's biggest weaknesses: the protagonist. It seems to be quite fashionable to write poorly developed, annoying characters that we as an audience are then supposed to identify and sympathise with. But if the most prominent traits of your protagonist are an annoying, breaking voice and her clownish, overdrawn lips that seem such an odd choice, something is wrong from the very start.
Add in a loose edit with a runtime that feels thirty minutes too long, naive and quite predictable "twists", a poor sense of suspense, and you have your 2022 version of HELLRAISER. Oh, and of course the Cenobites have to be diverse as well now, which makes it feel like some Disney version of the material. It's actually Apple, so not very far off.
However, not all is bad - some decent gore effects try to make up for everthing else, and in some parts it's a commendable effort. Not nearly enough to make this worthwhile, but still.
The score is surprisingly decent at times, strangely awful at other times, which made me wonder if they pulled a GHOSTBUSTERS: AFTERLIFE, and they kinda did. The decent cues came from the original first two HELLRAISER scores, the awful ones were new. Why are scores so unremarkable, boring, and bad nowadays?
All in all, I guess it is a true horror fan's duty to watch this HELLRAISER, but if you are and if you do, please don't expect this one to be anything great. It's an effort, misguided and naive at its worst, acceptable and nice to look at at its best. Have some beers handy, and you'll get through.