A rewatch and a new-to-me on actual physical media!
21: Hellraiser (1987)
Author Clive Barker’s directorial debut, about a man coveting his brother’s wife while also in the process of coming back from the dead. Mostly known, as the trailer and art going back to the original poster show, for the Cenobites, the beings responsible for the actual villain being dead but not quite dead enough. I always liked the idea, lost pretty much immediately in the series, that they’re monsters but not necessarily villains.
All the hook and chain violence was always so extreme I couldn’t relate but the bit where Larry cuts his hand makes me wince every time.
The medium: The Arrow DVD comes with a Barker commentary track, a Barker and Ashley Laurence commentary track, an original making-of and a retrospective and a barker interview and a featurette about the unused Coil soundtrack... (and now a 4K option too)
In related news, spamming from an online knockoff store...
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| Not today, thank you... |
22: Hellraiser (2022)
Hellraiser 2022 looks like it’s an actual reboot instead of a legacy sequel that uses the original name (unlike 2021’s Candyman) as it doesn’t involve any returning characters played by the same actors and the only call-back to the sequels is the appearance and naming of Leviathan and the on-screen naming of the Lament Configuration. although like many a worldbuilding follow-up the creators feel the need to explain that name and the explanation’s pretty thin.
Like a lot of the sequels it makes owning the Configuration and wanting to get it open something super-rich decadent assholes do instead of the original’s more middle-class decadent asshole.
And like a lot of the sequels it’s basically a slasher with more involved steps in the slashing. The Cenobites do a lot of silent walking, spaces expanding and doorways appearing happens so often it loses its strangeness, and while they’ll stop and talk they obey some overly restrictive monster rules. And most of the victims are slasher-target young, though not generally dumb. (Though the flatsharing lifestyle and lead Odessa A’zion’s resemblance to Alia Shawkat also makes it feel like Cenobites invading Search Party.) And there’s a Scream-y twist at one point that I mostly found puzzling. And while the anatomical-art Cenobites are fine, there is one important bit of production design I found distractingly goofy-looking.
Good sparing use of some of the original musical themes as well, while avoiding heavy use of the main theme that a H*rry P*tter theme sounds like a riff on.
Overall: oh well.
The medium: released on DVD here due to complications of Hulu being Disney and IIRC Paramount launching their own streaming thing, so we got it in physical media! Sadly said DVD has nothing extra.
Gameability: Well, there’s Kult obviously, but normal people stumbling into a route to Hell and trying to escape works in human-scale supernatural horror generally.
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