In 1987, the great Clive Barker adapted his last book, Hellraiser, for the big screen. A dark cube/puzzle story that, when solved, opened the doors to another dimension, bringing demons, the “cenobites”, back to Earth. Demons, creatures with needles in their faces, and nightmares galore. The rest is history. 35 years and 10 films later, Hellraiser has become a cult franchise. Even if all the films are not good (good understatement), the figure of the Pinhead sits alongside Jason Voorhees, Michael Myers and other big names in horror. It’s been years since the franchise’s films have been looked at too closely, but that’s likely to change. David Bruckner (the man behind the excellent The Prey of a Shadow), to do a real reboot of the series. History to better stick to current fashion – poke, Halloween -, even if the project dates from 2006, at a time when, at the embryonic stage of the thing, it was the French Pascal Laugier who had been approached. The film, logically named Hellraiser, didn’t excite us so much until then, but the first teaser made us change our minds. What if it was the first good Hellraiser in over 20 years? Hope still exists. It remains to be seen how the film will be available in France, since the feature film will be released on Hulu on October 7 in the United States, so it could, as was the case for Prey, be released on Disney+. We hope so, anyway.
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