What You Need To Know About The ‘Hellraiser’ Reimagining Raising Hell On Hulu

High hopes seemingly met with rave reviews and a release at the beginning of Halloween month, and the wait is over for fans desperate to experience the reimagining of Hellraiser.

Director David Bruckner has the job of helming this new interpretation of the hellscape unleashed by creator Clive Barker’s The Hellbound Heart. The eleventh film in the franchise is a real return to form for the franchise. Here an addict called Riley, played by Odessa A’zion, stumbles across the iconic ancient puzzle box and accidentally releases a legion of sadistic sentinels led by Jamie Clayton’s Pinhead, aka the Hell Priest.

The Hellraiser cast and crew got together at an invite-only press conference to share their thoughts and experiences about being part of such an iconic IP and why the nightmarish vision means so much to so many. Here are some highlights from Bruckner, Clayton, A’zion, co-stars Drew Starkey, Goran Visnjic, Hiam Abbass, and producer Keith Levine.

Reimagining Hellraiser

David Bruckner: This is a new Hellraiser story. It’s not a remake of the original films, necessarily. It does harken back to them quite a bit, but it is the tale of Riley, played by Odessa, who discovers the box and opens it, and all hell breaks loose. Hellraiser is my first time working with a sacred IP and feeling a responsibility to what has come before us, and being so blown away. They’re interdimensional BDSM demons that throw chains at you from a labyrinth. It’s complicated stuff to get right, so actually making one of these films, my admiration goes to all the filmmakers that have come before us on it and holding that in as high a regard as we can. We also have a responsibility to lose ourselves in this and allow it to take us in different directions if we’re so compelled to be true to the story that we’re telling. Once you’re on the ground on the other side of the world and inventing these things, it takes you somewhere on its own, and you’re hanging on to the ride. It takes on a life of its own. It was a balance of trusting that and appreciating what had come before us.

The cast’s relationship with Hellraiser is personal

Goran Visnjic: When I was a teenager, there were VHS tapes of the first four Hellraisers in our local video store. In a few nights, my friend and I saw all of them. Number four was always my favorite because I’m a sci-fi fan, and it was happening in a space station. I felt a huge impact of that one, so when this script came by, I was like, ‘Okay, this is really interesting.’

Hiam Abbass: I’m going to disappoint you, but I didn’t know anything. Any horror movie would have never gone my way because I grew up in a place where everything was frightening anyway. If I was to escape in movies, I would choose something much easier on my psychology. I discovered through this movie that I was wrong. As an actor, I wanted badly to do one, and just a month before this came my way, I told my agent, ‘I want to do a horror movie.’ A month later, I got the offer. It was meant to be, right?

Odessa A’zion: I was always familiar with Hellraiser, but I didn’t grow up watching them. I started watching them, and then when I booked this, I really started watching them. If we are talking about favorites, I’d say my favorite might be the second one. I just rewatched that one last night because I want to re-prep myself. There are a lot of differences in our movie, but there are also a lot of similarities, and I feel like the second one, you could see that a lot.

Drew Starkey: My parents were big movie buffs, and my mom worked in a video store from the mid-80s through the early ’90s. She was a big horror fan, but Hellraiser was always one where she was like, ‘Stay away from that. Don’t go near there.’ As an act of rebellion, my brother and I watched it when we were too young, and the imagery always stayed with me my entire life. I always thought about it around Halloween, but it’s so ingrained into pop culture and our own experiences. The images and the characters have always popped up through many different times in my life. Because of David Bruckner, I think we all had a chance to revisit and dive into it; it was a lot of fun.

Jamie Clayton: I was a big scaredy-cat when I was a kid. I got into horror in my 20s, and there was a moment I had where I was really into it and things like Takashi Miike’s Audition and the Friday the 13th films. I actually hadn’t seen Hellraiser, so I watched it the night before I auditioned just to get a feeling of it, and I was like, ‘Oh. Why haven’t I seen this sooner? I get it. Oh my God, this is so beyond a horror film.’ There are so many layers and nuances to the story, and so much is implied, but there’s a lot of glamour, and it’s very sexy.

What drew David Bruckner to Hellraiser

David Bruckner: I had a friend in high school that was kind of my gateway drug to horror. I couldn’t handle those movies. He would force me to watch things, and Hellraiser was inaccessible to me even then. It was too much. It wasn’t just the gore, the atmosphere, and maybe the themes underneath, like the idea that there was a fate worse than death that you would go and suffer for an eternity. That would send me home thinking, and I wouldn’t be able to sleep. I would get stuck in a thought loop. Towards the end of high school, going into college, I think I dug into it a bit, and Hellraiser was so complex to me. It was different every time I saw it, and over time, it became this revered, inaccessible icon in the horror genre that I think, like a lot of fans, you really have to learn to understand. Honestly, it was an honor and a privilege to be a part of the team and bring it back to life. Just getting to make a Hellraiser movie is something that I never thought I’d get to do.

Creating a new Pinhead

Jamie Clayton: I tried to do something uniquely my own. David and I had so many Zooms and discussions about how the body would look, how the head would be, and the sort of stillness that was incorporated. It was all those conversations with David about his idea of what it would be when he took on this project and then me bringing my bits and bobs to it and the meshing of those things. I’m hoping that it’s something really unique. Doug Bradley is incredible, but I didn’t want to be compared or have people be like, ‘Oh, she nicked that from him. She’s doing that thing that he did.’ It’s another reason why I think they wanted a woman to play the role because it takes the burden off the audience of that comparison. It’s a whole new thing. Doug is amazing, and no one could ever do what he did.

Which creators were instrumental in the LGBTQ+ representation in the series

David Bruckner: That was something that we talked about. Keith and myself, Ben Collins, Luke Piotrowski, the writers, and Spyglass, the studio, right from the beginning, we understood that was very much present and part of the identity of the original franchise. We wanted to make sure that that was something we got right both in theme and representation, and it was exciting. We had a lot of good counsel from people that helped us navigate that a bit, and it was something that everybody was behind from the beginning.

Handling Hellraiser’s visceral imagery

David Bruckner: When you’re doing sex and violence on screen, you’re always digging into some stuff that is going to affect people, so I just think they’re powerful expressions in movies. It’s not to be taken lightly if you’re going to show people in states of vulnerability, if you’re going to stimulate the audience or evoke something that is an image that’s going to stick with you. What did we want to get across? I think a lot of it was just about the spirit of the franchise and finding the flavor of it that felt right for us but also letting the story take us there as it would. In the original film, the plot is a little bit more directed towards the sexual aspect of Hellraiser. Still, I think we found some interesting connective tissue in this, particularly as it relates to addiction and all forms of addiction in some ways. I think it’s in the DNA of the movie in many different ways.

Keith Levine: I’ll say we never wanted it to be gratuitous, the sex or the violence. Whenever we were doing it, we wanted to treat both like art. Even if you’re staying in a moment maybe longer than you would hope, it’s not because we’re trying to be gratuitous. We’re just trying to make it beautiful, to be honest. Also, in the society that we’re living in today, I don’t think anyone wants to see either pushed to the brink for no reason, so we were very conscious of it. I think everything we did was very measured, and even in the edit, we discussed trying to find the right balance of everything.

The uniqueness of author Clive Barker’s horror

Jamie Clayton: Clive is gay and has a really honest, unique, very sexy approach. Write what you know. He wrote The Hellbound Heart off of his experiences going to BDSM clubs in New York in the 70s. That’s what makes it different because he’s not afraid. It’s not just slash them up to slash them up; there are all these layers and ideas and things you can dig into. You catch them, or you don’t, and you relate to them, or you don’t., but they’re there, and that’s what I think makes Clive’s ideas really special. There’s a sexiness to what he writes and to Hellraiser that doesn’t exist, in my opinion, in other horror franchises.

Hellraiser is streaming on Hulu from Friday, October 7, 2022