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Hellraiser (1987) casts a long shadow over the horror world. The original film, directed by Clive Barker, is a remarkably faithful adaptation of his own novella “The Hellbound Heart,” a twisted love story of forbidden passion and pain. The hotly anticipated reboot from director David Bruckner (The Ritual, The Night House) stars Jaime Clayton as the Priest and Odessa A’zion as new final girl, Riley. A recovering addict, Riley stumbles upon the Lament Configuration and finds herself dragged into the world of its painful magic.

Also drawn to the box is Roland Voight (Goran Visnjic), a wealthy entrepreneur obsessed with the power of the occult. On the surface, Bruckner’s new vision of the story bears only symbolic resemblance to Barker’s original novella The Hellbound Heart, but upon closer examination there are several thematic connections lurking just beneath the skin. 

We are first introduced to the “Hellraiser” lore through an ornately carved golden box. Commonly called the Lament Configuration, Barker’s original text refers to the mystical puzzle as the Lemarchand Configuration, named for the master craftsman who created it. Many of the franchise’s films present the puzzle box as easy to open. A simple tracing of its circular button is often enough to unlock the magic. But Barker’s Frank puzzles over the box for hours. Describing this challenge, he writes, “there simply seemed to be no way into it, no clue on any of its six black lacquered faces as to the whereabouts of the pressure points that would disengage one piece of this three-dimensional jigsaw from another.” 

Bruckner’s box is similarly difficult to open, with many different moving pieces and five additional configurations to solve. Expanding the mythology, this new box transitions through Lament (life), Lore (knowledge), Lauderant (love), Liminal (sensation), Lazarus (resurrection), and–in a subtle nod to Hellbound: Hellraiser 2–Leviathan (power). Anyone still holding the puzzle in its final form is granted an audience with God and the choice of one of these six rewards. Bruckner was fascinated with this element of the script telling the Hollywood Reporter, “it’s the six iterations of the box and how those represent the extent of human experience, which are explored alongside the Cenobites. I thought that was a wonderful expansion of the mythology and something we hadn’t seen before.”

Bruckner’s new variation of the puzzle box demands more than simple solutions. With each subsequent configuration, a tiny blade or sharp corner emerges, tearing the flesh of the hands that hold it. Anyone whose blood the box tastes is marked for sacrifice. As they bleed, the bells begin to ring, the walls of reality open, and the Cenobites (Jason Liles, Yinka Olorunnife, Selina Lo, Zachary Hing) appear to claim their newest soul. Achieving the Leviathan solution means sacrificing five people to the Cenobites along the way; a new victim for each configuration. This is a slight variation and possible softening of the box’s gifts. In Barker’s novella, those who solve the puzzle are pulled into another dimension to be tortured eternally by the Cenobites. Those taken by Bruckner’s Cenobites suffer greatly, but their torment is finite. The Priest describes one victim’s end as exquisite, implying that he is gone, his torture thankfully concluded. 

Many of the subsequent sequels in the Hellraiser franchise treat the Priest, commonly called Pinhead, as a villain. Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth in particular sees a liberated Pinhead (Doug Bradley) devour innocent souls and massacre an entire night club full of victims. Bruckner’s version of the iconic character is much closer to Barker’s original vision. Rather than villains, the Cenobites are merely disciples of hell, obliged to claim those who open the box but leaving everyone else alone. Barker’s text describes the four Cenobites as “hierophants,” “sexless things,” and “theologians of the order of the Gash.” While certainly monstrous in appearance, they only threaten those who have solved Lemarchand’s puzzle. Barker characterizes these mysterious beings in delightfully gory detail, each with their own unique brand of bodily mutilation. Bruckner has taken some liberties with his new band of theologians, inspired by a more general description from the novella: “Was it the scars that covered every inch of their bodies, the flesh cosmetically punctured and sliced and infibulated, then dusted down with ash?” Like Frank, Bruckner seems to have asked himself this same question when designing Cenobites for a new generation.

The updated design for the Priest is fairly accurate to The Hellbound Heart. Knowing no one could ever recreate Bradley’s beloved depiction of the urbane monster, Bruckner opted to go back to Barker’s text: “Its voice, unlike that of its companion, was light and breathy–the voice of an excited girl.” Casting Clayton, a transgender actress, to don the prickly costume brings the character even closer to the gender fluidity of Barker’s original intentions. Contrary to the depiction of the franchise’s many films, the Priest is not the leader of the Cenobites in Barker’s novella. Merely one of four, it is not the first to speak and there is no indication of any authority among the group. It’s not until we read this account, “Every inch of its head had been tattooed with an intricate grid, and at every intersection of horizontal and vertical axes a jeweled pin driven through to the bone,” that we’re able to identify the iconic creature that would become the face of a ten-film franchise. Barker himself has a tense relationship with the character and reportedly detests the nickname Pinhead. The word never appears in his original novella and he incorporates it into his sequel, “The Scarlet Gospels,” only as an insult to his most famous character. 

Many unfamiliar with the story believe the central villain of Hellraiser to be Pinhead. This is a fair assumption considering the marketing leans heavily into Bradley’s magnetic image. But the actual villains of Barker’s story are humans named Frank and Julia. Obsessed with the pursuit of pleasure, Frank purchases Lemarchand’s box intent on experiencing the indescribable ecstasy it’s rumored to unlock. He becomes trapped in the Cenobite’s torturous reality, able to see the room he once inhabited but invisible to the rest of the world. When his brother Rory accidentally spills blood in the room,  Frank sees an opportunity to escape. Absorbing this fluid, he begins to regenerate, repairing his ruined body with the tissue and viscera of another. Unfortunately a mere splash is not enough and Frank sends his lover, Rory’s wife Julia, to bring him fresh victims. One by one, she seduces men and lures them back to the house. She then kills or incapacitates them, offering their bodies as sacrifices to Frank; meat to use in renewing his torn body. 

Bruckner plays with this theme of malicious sacrifice with Voight, a substitute for the nefarious Frank. We meet Voight in his first quest through the configurations. The story then jumps ahead six years and we eventually learn that his choice of a Liminal gift is a torturous device piercing his chest and twisting his organs. The contraption is perfectly calibrated to cause the maximum amount of sensation, never dulling his nerves or allowing him to adjust to the pain. Like Frank, he has been trapped in a never ending cycle of torture, suffering in the shadows and watching the world continue without him. 

Voight has embarked upon a second quest through the configurations hoping his next gift will be the removal of this Liminal device. Though his plan differs from Frank’s, both men need to sacrifice the bodies of others to free themselves from the Cenobites’ gifts. Voight tasks his employee Serena Menaker (Hiam Abbass) with finding victims to feed to the Cenobites, each body furthering his journey to the Leviathan. Like Julia before her, Serena pays a steep price for aiding Voigt in this murderous task. 

One of the more insidious similarities between the original text and Bruckner’s new imagining is the concept of a trade. In Barker’s story, Kirsty absentmindedly begins opening the puzzle box while hospitalized in the wake of Frank’s attack. Though they know she has solved the puzzle in ignorance, the Cenobites have no pity, saying, “there’s no help for it. No way to seal the Schism, until we take what’s ours.” But Kirsty brokers a deal with them, offering to lead them to Frank who has escaped their clutches. The Cenobites hesitantly accept, on the condition that Kirsty can get Frank to confess himself. Barker’s film sees the Cenobites renege on this deal, but in his novella, they honor the bargain despite doing nothing to help Kirsty accomplish it. 

Bruckner’s story slightly inverts this concept. When Riley balks at sacrificing herself to the configuration, it is the suggestion of a Cenobite that she designate another to take her place. The Priest insists they will not be denied, but they do allow her to select who she marks and only take those who have been chosen by the blade. This is a slight nod to the 6th film in the franchise, Hellraiser: Hellseeker, in which Kirsty (Ashley Laurence) offers to trade her soul for five others, last of which is her nefarious husband Trevor (Dean Winters). Having been marked by Voight, Colin (Adam Faison) finds himself prey for the Cenobites and winds up in their cutting wires. Before he can be dragged away, Riley demands to choose another victim. She stabs her traitorous boyfriend Trevor (Drew Starkey), marking him as the final sacrifice that will earn her a hellish gift. As in Barker’s original story, the Cenobites honor this deal. Riley chooses Lament, the first configuration and freedom from their torture. Having granted the gift, they disappear, leaving our realm until they are summoned again. 

When Frank first solves the Lemarchand puzzle box, he expects to be greeted by five Cenobites. When only four arrive to collect his soul, they tell him, “The Engineer will arrive should the moment merit.” Many speculate that Barker’s film shows the Engineer chasing Kirsty in a tunnel to hell, but his original novella contains a ghastlier depiction. After the Cenobites have collected Frank, Kirsty is fleeing the house when she encounters Julia, now wearing her wedding dress and holding her own severed head in her lap. The voice that calls to Kirsty from the torn vocal chords identifies itself as the Engineer, having taken the form of Julia’s body to contact the last remaining survivor. 

Bruckner also does not show us his Engineer, but it’s possible this is the audience Voight will have once he’s completed the final configuration. After convincing the Priest to remove his torturous “gift,” she offers him a trade: Liminal for Leviathan. In what she calls their highest honor, Voight is dragged up into the sky by a massive chain piercing his chest. We see him again in a final scene, stripped and laid out on a golden table. He will now become a Cenobite, trading his own torture for an eternity of wielding the same power over others. A disembodied voice, possibly that of the Engineer, triggers this transformation. While not explicitly stated in Bruckner’s film, this formless figure appears at the end of both stories, hinting at a continuation in the world of the Cenobites. Also a nod to Hellbound: Hellraiser 2, it’s possible that a forthcoming film will follow the newly created Voight-obite as he is summoned to earth by the puzzle he once possessed.