Hellraiser Review: 6 Ups & 4 Downs

Downs...

4. It's WAY Too Long

The new Hellraiser is the longest film in the series by a pretty massive margin, clocking in at an indecently overlong 121 minutes - almost an entire half-hour longer than the 1987 original.

If Bruckner found a way to justify that expanded runtime with a deep-dish delve into the mythology of the Cenobites that would be one thing, yet his film spends far too much of its runtime functioning as a relatively formulaic slasher film and investigative mystery horror movie.

The first act in particular is a bit of a slog, focusing excessively on the focal batch of human characters while keeping Pinhead (Jamie Clayton) and the other Cenobites off-screen for almost the entirety.

Given that Hellraiser '22 doesn't fully feel like a Hellraiser movie until its gnarly third act, it probably would've been smart to cleave a solid 20-or-so minutes from the first two reels.

Instead, as is the problem with so many streaming-exclusive releases, a probable lack of pushback against the director has resulted in a bloated, over-indulgent end product.