We have such sights to show you from director David Bruckner’s reboot of the iconic horror franchise.
By Clark Collis, September 01, 2022
Director David Bruckner was a teenager when he first saw Hellraiser, the classic 1987 horror movie about a puzzle box and the pain-obsessed, inter-dimensional beings called Cenobites which are unleashed when someone solves it.
“It was so visceral and so impactful,” says the filmmaker, whose credits include 2020’s Rebecca Hall-starring Night House. “It was a movie that really really scared me. It’s digging into things that are so troubling that I was almost afraid of the people that created it!”
Bruckner has now joined the ranks of the franchise creators having directed a reboot, also titled Hellraiser, which is set to premiere on Hulu Oct. 7.
“This is not a remake,” says the filmmaker. “I just didn’t think you could ever remake the original Hellraiser. It’s too much its own thing and it would be, I think, perilous territory for filmmakers, because how do you top that? This is a new story in the Hellraiser universe.”
That story centers on a character named Riley, who is played by Odessa A’zion.
“It’s the tale of a young woman, who’s struggling with addiction and compulsive behavior, that comes in contact accidentally with the box and unfortunately begins to dabble with it,” says Bruckner. “And chaos ensues.”
Some of that chaos will doubtless arrive courtesy of the Cenobite leader Pinhead. The beloved horror character, and S&M icon, was portrayed in the original film, and many of its sequels, by Doug Bradley, but in Bruckner’s movie Pinhead is played by Sense8 actress Jamie Clayton.
“We felt a kind of anticipation around the fans to reimagine the character,” says Bruckner of the decision to cast Clayton, a trans woman. “We knew we wanted Pinhead to be a woman. Jamie was just the right person for the role. A person’s identity can be really exciting for a role in many ways, but I have to emphasize that Jamie absolutely killed, that’s how we got there.”
Bruckner also emphasizes that he did not ask Clayton to copy Bradley’s portrayal of the character.
“What Doug Bradley did with the character is so iconic,” says Bruckner. “We didn’t want to do a Doug Bradley impression, we just didn’t think that’s possible to do. There will be suffering, but you’re going to get a sense of what Pinhead’s desires might be in a way that hits a little different.”
In addition to Pinhead, Bruckner’s film features a new Cenobite, an image of which you can exclusively see below. “We call him The Masque,” says the director. “The Masque is one of my favorite Cenobites and it’s just a tease of really what’s to come as far as the Cenobites are concerned.”
So can we assume there will be other new Cenobites in the movie? “I think that’s safe to say,” says the filmmaker.
A’zion and Clayton’s costars include Goran Visnjic who plays a character fascinated by the puzzle box, or the Lament Configuration to give the object its proper name.
“His character is what would happen if an elite, one-percenter was also an educated occultist and became obsessed with all the possibilities surrounding the Lament Confguration,” says Bruckner. “He’s educated, he’s sinister, he’s an important human component in the moral fabric of Hellraiser.”
The screenplay of the film is by Bruckner’s regular collaborators, and Night House writers, Ben Collins and Luke Piotrowski, who have something of a history with the Hellraiser franchise.
“Night House was loosely inspired by a Hellraiser pitch that Ben and Luke had gone in with back in 2012, 2013, when the rights were still with Dimension,” says the director. “When I was in post- for the Night House, Spyglass (the production company Spyglass Media Group) brought in Ben and Luke to do a first draft and [then] brought me into the fold.”
Bruckner shot Hellraiser last summer and fall in Belgrade.
“Belgrade has some really interesting architecture, that feels very Hellraiser actually, that we were able to incorporate,” says the director. “I hope there’s a look across all the spaces and locations that feels slightly adjacent to reality as we know it. There’s a grounded realism but occasionally you’ll see numerous Roman-esque archways throughout various environments.”
The original Hellraiser was written and directed by British author-painter-filmmaker and all-around horror legend Clive Barker, who is one of the new movies’s producers.
“Clive’s been very involved,” says Bruckner. “Clive came on before the shoot, when we were in prep, and was really just a wonderful resource for me. He was really generous with his time, and very welcoming of the idea that this was a new group of artists, and that they were going to run with this and land in different places with it. He was very supportive of that.”
The new film’s director reveals that he would be in heaven returning to the franchise’s hell-ish environs if the film proves a success.
“Should the fans and the movie gods allow, I would love that idea,” says Bruckner. “Hellraiser is a unique challenge, I think, for a group of filmmakers because, you know, it could be a guy in a mask, but it’s not, it’s inter-dimensional demons that shoot chains at you from an endless labyrinth. It’s complicated and not just conceptually but also logistically. I feel like I speak for our whole team, the SFX, the VFX, the production design, we learned a lot on this. It is tempting to think we’d have an amazing grip on it going forward, should there be an energy and an appetite for it.”
The cast of the new Hellraiser also includes Adam Faison, Drew Starkey, Brandon Flynn, Aoife Hinds, Jason Liles, Yinka Olorunnife, Selina Lo, Zachary Hing, Kit Clarke, and Hiam Abbass. The film’s screen story is by Collins, Piotrowski, and David S. Goyer. The movie’s producers are Goyer, Barker, Keith Levine, and Marc Toberoff. Hellraiser is executive-produced by Gary Barber, Peter Oillataguerre, Todd Williams.
Hellraiser hits Hulu on Oct. 7.
