Hellraiser (2022) Reviewed

Not an awful attempt at the classic franchise but perhaps standards are low after David Gordon Green’s Halloween soft-reboot and Netflix’s recent Texas Chainsaw Massacre iteration. Director David Bruckner and co pull off some pretty solid horror compositions, but everything is very clean, very blocky, so far removed from the woozy VHS sleaze of Barker’s original. Which would be fine, if this wasn’t Hellraiser, and if the mise-en-scene didn’t underwhelm so thoroughly. Barker built tension through milieu, repetition, and rhythm. Bruckner and DP Eli Born leverage trendy negative space, huge establishing shots, shadows; CGI. Contrasts. In their hands, it’s ambient. It’s wallpaper. 

There are some interesting script-level choices, like protagonist Riley, who’s right out of recovery, stumbling through her twelve steps, and Odessa A’zion gets a chance to show her chops in a white-knuckle performance (A’zion also excelled in Netflix’s Grand Army, itself cancelled after one season). See also the thrill-seeking businessman who flies too close to the sun in what might be the films saving grace- and his Grecian apotheosis is one of the films only truly beautiful moments.
 But it all goes to show that you can find all the right parallels; you can swap one type of pleasure for another; retrofit a concept and make it y2k; you can punch up-  but without any cinematic purpose there’s no reason for your film to move instead of existing on a page.