Reviews
A LEVIATHAN-SIZED GOOD TIME: ‘Hellraiser’ (2022) Review
The Priest (our latest version of Pinhead for the uninitiated) says that you can never return from a threshold you’ve already crossed…which shows she hasn’t seen this film given this is a return back over the threshold of bloody fun we’ve been waiting for.
Hulu’s Hellraiser Reimagines a Cult Franchise
Hulu continues the hot streak it had from the recent success of Prey with another franchise continuation: Hellraiser. The 2022 hard reboot and reimagining of the 1987 original film follows Riley, an addict in recovery living with her brother Matt. Fallen on hard times and with rent due, Riley and her lover Trevor break into a shipping container owned by old billionaire Roland Voight’s and find the enigmatic Lament Configuration. As Riley solves the puzzle box, the beings summoned return to continue their harvest.
Much like Prey, I think this fresh start to the new dynasty of Pinhead (this time around just called The Priest) and company is the vital resuscitation for a property that’s been on the ropes as long as Hellraiser has been. It’s a welcome change, and a big budget shock to the system, which also helps make this a possible contender for the best legacy film of the year. I have to talk specifics to really get into what works and doesn’t work, so head to the Bottomline to avoid the
Cosmic Horror and Social Commentary in the Script
Starting with the script, the film really makes you feel the cosmic horror of the Cenobites in an impactful way that even the first movie in the franchise didn’t entirely capture. Beyond that, the story explores themes that are heavier and more vital to the social issues plaguing America today than you’d expect, specifically with Riley’s addiction taking center stage. Her journey for the truth behind what took her brother ends up being a surprisingly poignant allegory for dealing with the fallout of addictive behaviors and the consequences of indulging them; for that, I commend the film.
Speaking of Riley, our lead Odessa A’zion is the real standout of this movie. Riley is vulnerable and human in her flaws, but never errs on the side of weakness or indignity, and A’zion’s performance is to be thanked for that. Regrettably, she is also so good she’s forced to sometimes carry the rest of her co-stars.
Mixed Bag: Dialogue and Supporting Characters
The dialogue is undeniably mediocre in the front half of the film following Matt’s disappearance, and it feels especially bad whenever Colin and Riley are on screen since the tension between them over Matts’s death should be evident but is never fully realized; a shame since both A’zion and Faison are great actors, but maybe didn’t get the best of direction on those terms. The same can be said of Trevor & Norah, who are really only here as sacrificial lambs for The Priest to dice up for Leviathan. It’s a shame because we get a hint at them being developed into actual characters in the first 15 minutes but lose that train of thought and end up with the same pigs for the meat hooks we get in a lot of the other movies.
But of course, what you’re really interested in is our villains, who make up for every shortcoming this movie has. Jamie Clayton’s The Priest, whose casting was met with a hotbed of discussion and eager anticipation from the jump, stacks up as a powerhouse alongside (and against?) Doug Bradley. I imagine there will be many arguments to come amongst horror nerds over which is the true greatest Pinhead. Her voice and demeanor are different, and she lends an ethereal facet to the role that you’d expect from an extradimensional torture demon with alien ideas of sensation. Supporting actor Goran Visnjic whose appearances bookend the movie makes a great secondary antagonist of billionaire Roland Voight, who manages to invoke his threatening nature even when he’s up against forces he doesn’t fully understand.
Cenobite Designs: A Gory Masterpiece of Horror
In honor of these belles of-the-special-effects ball, of which I have one thing to say: the new Cenobites are out of this world and will absolutely, no contest, have the best creature design you will see in a horror film this year. They just hit the pin on the head when it comes to remixing the classic look of the Cenobites without fully alienating what made them so dope in the first place; we don’t have slick black leather, but the formerly ornamental wounds they have now practically make up their entire costume as fleshy pseudo clothing. Gross, but above all else ingenious. I particularly enjoy the newest member of the Gash, The Weeper with his bisected limbs (though my love for Chatterer has not diminished in the slightest). And I have to give some love to The Gasp, who gets a money shot reveal of her flayed back that was just the biggest and best possible flex the makeup department could have done. Well played.
On a technical level, the film is all aces. And though the music is overly bombastic at points for my taste, it’s never tonally out of place, and when those musical stingers hit, they hit like wire cutting to the bone.
Hellraiser 2022 Review: The Bottomline
Slow to a start character-wise and not without some flaws, Hellraiser (2022) drops us directly into some mind-bending visuals, nasty master-crafted special effects, and some seriously mean-spirited monsters that make for a body-breakingly wild and grotesque experience. Be warned, this isn’t for the faint of heart. It’s got gore beyond the boundaries of gore—and that’s quite all right by us. We’re not judging, go watch it ASAP.
Hellraiser is streaming on Hulu.
There are countless subgenres within subgenres for horror, and one that feels underutilized is workplace horror. Unless you’re one of the lucky few, most people wake up at some point during the day, go to work, and then come home. It’s one of the few things in life that’s nearly unavoidable. While there are countless real-life examples of workplace violence, seeing exaggerated forms of it in film can still be fun. When I pitched covering The Belko Experiment for this month, I actually thought I was pitching Joe Lynch’s Mayhem. I soon found out how incorrect I had been, but figured I’d go along with it anyway.
Mike Milch (John Gallagher Jr.) and 79 of his coworkers are locked inside the towering building they come to work in every day in Bogotá, Colombia. They’re given simple instructions: murder two coworkers within the next half hour. When they fail that task, coworkers’ heads start blowing up left and right. When they’re given the next task, kill 30 people in two hours, they take it…a little more seriously.
The Belko Experiment’s Brutal Premise Sets Up High Stakes
Written by James Gunn and directed by Wolf Creek creator Greg McLean, The Belko Experiment is a painfully by-the-numbers film that offers little more than a handful of entertaining kills. Its futile attempts at commentary regarding work/life balance or just how bad “faceless” upper management is fall so flat it’s comical. Nothing like multi-millionaire James Gunn telling me how awful it is to have to work a real job for a living. Great work. And its one-dimensional characters do little more than create a slight sigh of relief when they’re dispatched without regard.
A singular attempt at cleverness is broached from the beginning when we see a colony of ants in an ant farm on someone’s desk. Oh, look at that, these workers are nothing more than mindless ants! But any attempt at following that slightly clever idea is quickly thrown away. At one point, Barry Norris (Tony Goldwyn), the big boss in the office, attempts to group up who should and shouldn’t be killed; who has the most value outside of work. Gunn had the perfect opportunity to make Barry a deep and more sinister antagonist. If Barry had grouped people into sets from most to least profitable for the company, we would have something. It would show that Barry is a forward-thinking villain who is trying to suck up to the people who get paid even MORE than him!
Missed Opportunities for a Smarter Corporate Villain
I’ll do you one better. After all of that, what if the bad guys that Barry recruited to help him cull his subordinates realized they were just pawns in the game of Big Business? So then they attempt to repent by killing Barry in the hopes that they can find a common means of escape from this hell? Why is there zero attempt at making an interesting story other than this shitty, watered-down Battle Royale with people we don’t give a shit about? Instead of anything interesting, we’re just given a group of baddies who try to get into the security office’s gun safe. The only reason we’re slightly scared of the “bad guys” is because they’re bad guys.
The only slightly interesting performances we get are from David Dastmalchian and Adria Arjona, even if it might be a fluke. As someone who is a fan of Greg McLean and the Wolf Creek series, something just felt disconnected about nearly every aspect of The Belko Experiment. I’ve brought it up before that sometimes it’s okay to have a film that doesn’t tell a great story as long as the kills can carry some of the weight. But to say this film has a story is laughable, and that carries over to how flat this film looks.
Skip The Belko Experiment and Watch Mayhem Instead
It’s weird how sour this film left me. When I was watching it, I found myself grimacing at some of the kills. And I didn’t vehemently dislike it as much as this review would suggest. But as I sat there and thought longer, I just couldn’t wrap my head around what anyone sees in this. Mayhem is an all-around better film that tackles this same subject but in a much better way. So if you ever decide to sit down and watch The Belko Experiment, maybe go watch Mayhem on Shudder instead.
Would it be a month of coverage on Horror Press if I didn’t bring up at least one aughts film? I know the curator of all things Horror Press, James-Michael, is shaking his fists at the sky and cursing the fact that he approved me covering The Hitcher. Of all the remakes that were so pervasive throughout the aughts, The Hitcher is one that slipped completely under my radar. And that’s a damn shame. It wouldn’t be until I found a DVD copy at Bookoff that I finally got the opportunity to watch it. Hot damn, the critics really got it wrong here.
The Hitcher: A Road Trip Turned Nightmare
Jim Halsey (Zachary Knighton) and his girlfriend Grace Andrews (Sophia Bush) are on a road trip to Lake Havasu in Jim’s gorgeous Oldsmobile 442. An unfortunate run-in with a mysterious hitchhiker, John Ryder (Sean Bean), Jim and Grace find themselves in a fight for life and death. Only, John isn’t their only concern. With the 5-0 hot on their tails, Jim and Grace must escape from a psychopathic man with a death wish and the hot-tempered, hot-faced Lieutenant Esteridge (Neal McDonough). As the odometer grows, so does the body count.
The Hitcher is one of those remakes that does not have the approval of the original’s lead, Rutger Hauer. Which is astounding to me. Sure, the original is good. But it doesn’t set itself apart from the crowd too much. Rutger Hauer’s John is slightly more reserved, and while he has an edge to him, I don’t necessarily find him overly menacing. (Don’t kill me.) Sean Bean’s John Ryder, on the other hand, is furiously terrifying. There’s no question that there are tons of issues with the Platinum Dunes remake, though, for me, the pros significantly outweigh the cons.
Jim Halsey Falls Flat
The biggest issue is the character of Jim Halsey. I love how the roles of Jim and Grace are swapped from the original film. It brings an updated, modern edge to the film and is a great way to throw audiences who have seen the original. Though I can imagine the hyper-masculine fans of the original were not too happy with that. When it was decided to swap the roles of the characters, it seems like any character depth for Jim was thrown out of the window. I think Zachary Knighton is a wonderful actor who does the best with what he has, but he doesn’t have enough to work with. Writers Eric Red, Jake Wade Wall, and Eric Bernt updated the film with tons of epic scenarios and moments, while seemingly forgetting to make the supposed lead of the film interesting.
On top of cardboard Jim, the inciting police incident just feels very forced. Grace runs into a diner, covered in blood, after she and Jim found a family butchered by John. Someone from the diner calls the police, which leads to Jim and Grace being arrested and charged with murder. Whether or not that’s supposed to be commentary on rural police doesn’t matter because it completely fails to do anything other than forcibly push the story forward.
Besides that? I hate to say, but I don’t have many issues with The Hitcher.
Soundtrack and Atmosphere: A High-Octane Experience
First and foremost, The Hitcher’s soundtrack is incredible. We start the film with Move Along by The All-American Rejects. Talk about a shot of adrenaline. And the greatest needle drop in all of aughts horror history is Nine Inch Nails’s Closer during the film’s most wild car chase. It’s hard not to get lost in this film when the music kicks in.
What really sells this film is how intensely they handle the violence and the film’s gorgeous chase scenes. It’s no Death Proof, but these scenes are miles above the Fast movies that were out at this time. In a day and age where chase scenes are overly produced, badly edited, and just plain boring, The Hitcher manages to infuse horror and action in a way that probably won’t be seen again. Watching films like The Hitcher makes me sad for the state of modern cinema. The Hitcher wasn’t made to win scores of Oscars; it was made by people passionate about telling a badass, harrowing story (minus Jim). And they greatly excel at that.
The Hitcher Is a Misunderstood Cult Favorite
The Hitcher falls in line with my running theory of post-9/11 ultra violence. We were a nation scared of what happened, what was happening, and what seemed to be on the horizon–The Hitcher bottles that fear and anger, packaging it into a nasty piece of genre. Sean Bean and Sophia Bush are an on-screen match made in heaven. They wade through harsh lighting, thick film grain, and buckets of blood to deliver a film that critics and audiences unfairly panned. While audiences may have moved along, I sure didn’t. I want to exist in a world of nothing but aughts genre films, but am forced to live in a world of elevated horror. Le sigh.
