Hellraiser Reminds That Rich People Just Want to Make Deals With the Underworld While “Normals” Suffer as Collateral Damage

‘Tis the most wonderful time of the year. When all things and franchises spooky like to come out and play (even if one wishes that Hocus Pocus 2 did not). In Hellraiser’s case, Clive Barker and co. have bestowed us with something like a “reboot” edition (or a “new take,” if you prefer) of the original film released in 1987. Or, more precisely, just another chapter in the endless tale of the Cenobites that do so love to inflict what they view as “pleasure-pain” (but really, it’s just the latter). Especially to those hedonists like Roland Voight (Goran Višnjić), who become so addicted to the fine line between pleasure and pain that they can only become obsessed with finding the next threshold—and then the next and the next. Needless to say, Voight is a billionaire who has the time and resources to concern himself with such pursuits.

As 1987’s Hellraiser started out in an exotic location like Morocco, this latest narrative begins in Serbia. With Belgrade setting the stage for where Voight’s lawyer and all-around henchwoman, Serena Menaker (Hiam Abbass), goes to pick up the puzzle box so often purported to unlock the gate to “otherworldly pleasures.” As was promised to Frank Cotton (Sean Chapman) in Morocco. The difference between Cotton and Voight, of course, is that the latter has the means to truly take his explorations of the box to the next level.

Director David Bruckner (who recently brought us The Night House) then transports the audience from Belgrade to Voight’s lavish home in the Berkshires, where it’s clear that the scene we enter in upon is garden-variety to someone like Voight: an orgiastic buffet furnishing his guests’ “tastes” with whatever they might desire. And what Voight feigns desiring is the services of a sex worker at his party named Joey (Kit Clarke). Not that he doesn’t need some form of “service,” just not of the variety that Joey was hoping to provide, instead solving the next configuration of the box that will offer him up as the sacrifice required to grant Voight an audience with Leviathan, the ruler (or, at least, “overseer”) of Hell. Which the Cenobites are only too happy to be unleashed from when bored rich men like Voight see fit to tinker with their “little box.” His arbitrary and unnecessary tinkering for the sake of it being so much symbolism for how rich people’s whims are “ordinary” people’s bane.

Like Riley McKendry (Odessa A’zion), a recovering addict who lives with her brother, Matt (Brandon Flynn, who one might recognize from 13 Reasons Why) six years after Voight gets his audience with Leviathan. An encounter we have yet to know the full result of until the film’s final act. But before that point, we see Riley go through the same rigmarole as those foolish and naïve ones who came before her, including someone like Kirsty (Ashley Laurence) in the original film.

Except, unlike Kirsty, Riley is the one to unlock the box and start the configuration cycle all over again, inexplicably drawn to its arcane aura—especially after relapsing and popping enough pills for her fascination to get the better of her. The use of drugs in this version of Hellraiser also allows Riley to briefly delude herself into thinking that the “visions” she’s having of the Cenobites are mere products of some drug-addled hallucination. Granted, as she informs her boyfriend, Trevor (Drew Starkey), drugs have never had this effect on her before.

But in the wake of Matt’s disappearance (upon being stabbed, ergo “marked” by the box when he goes to search for Riley after they have a fight), the Cenobites’ continued emergence, along with intel about Voight that Riley finds on the internet, makes it clear this is not “just” some bad trip. She can’t “sober up” her way out of this one. And all because some rich dude decided he wanted to up the ante on his “sensations palate.” For Voight didn’t just unleash the evil of the box six years ago, he’s also the one responsible for dredging it up now, even after Serena did her best to hide the accursed contraption away in a safe in an abandoned warehouse where no one could ever find (therefore suffer from) it again. But dead or “alive,” what a rich man wants, he gets. Voight even shelled out the cash to turn his Berkshires home into a giant replica of the box itself, with the same ability to configure—plus one other “neat” feature: keeping out the Cenobites until Voight chooses to let them in. For it’s his intention to wield them as leverage so that Leviathan will show up again to demand his precious subjects’ “release.” As though one can ever be released from the pain entailed by being a Cenobite. Or someone stuck in the cycle of poverty, for that matter. At one point, in fact, Riley is sure to mention to Trevor that she should definitely be looking for a better job instead of spending time with him. Because, as she says, “I’m really tired of being broke.”

It is because of that “tiredness” of her own inescapable socioeconomic status that Riley falls for the trap Trevor sets for her desperation, offering the “opportunity” to make some extra cash by stealing some supposed valuable items from an unguarded warehouse—the very warehouse where Serena hid the puzzle box for humanity’s own good. Unfortunately, with Voight apparently flush for life (and for the “afterlife”), he’s still able to pay minions to get him what he wants, even though presumed dead (as Serena phrases it at the beginning, “He never does anything he can get someone else to do for him”—call it just another “divine privilege” of the rich).

And what he wants, even in his current state of, let’s call it, “debilitation,” is more power in lieu of the “pleasure sensation” he thought he would be getting as a “gift” from the Cenobites. For you might be able to maim a rich person, but you can certainly never kill off the power of their wealth, providing its own kind of immortality as it courses through generations like blood through veins. Even if Voight never got a chance to reproduce, the conclusion of Hellraiser makes it evident that the rich can always find a new way to “transfer” their power eternally.