The new Hellraiser replaces the kink of the original with a new metaphor of drug addiction. One problem: if drugs were all this boring and sad, no one would ever do them. What else gets lost when "Elevated Horror" loses the visceral allure of transgression?
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Eroticism, sexual menace, and masochism all play a part in this film, but I'm not sure that the protagonist Kirsty experiences, on screen, the comingled desire and terror the Cenobites represent. The Cenobites are not even necessarily directly erotic monsters (though apparently the film was developed under the title Sadomasochists From Beyond The Grave, which rules). Some of the eroticism was apparently in part taken out due to MPAA censorship. Go figure. And yet, what remains is a kind of eroticism of texture. It's looking at these practical effects, these monster designs, and being repulsed but also wishing to see more of them. What makes it read that way for me is not necessarily in the story itself, but in the sensory imaginary of Chatterer putting its fingers in Kirsty's mouth and going [clickclickclickclick] next to her ear. The first time I saw that I recoiled from the screen!
...But I also kept looking, and over the years have returned again and again.
Maybe it's this dynamic that inspires the drug (or more broadly "mental health" or "cycles of trauma") metaphor increasingly popular in contemporary Elevated Horror. The possibility of relapse certainly hangs over everything in Hellraiser 2022. Protagonist Riley is treated with constant suspicion from everyone from her brother to his friends to paramedics over the possibility she's relapsing, something I could get if the film seemed to understand "substances" as offering something appealing to the user. Something seems to have gotten lost in stylistic translation, though. The metaphor is suggested by the stylistic allure of the genre, then the metaphor becomes sort of heightened by the modern vogue for horror films to not just mean something but Mean Something (Elevated), and in the gloomy ponderousness of the style the original aesthetic that carried the meaning gets lost.
Every cursed relic is a drug. Every drug is fentanyl.
Here's a question though: if the puzzle box the Lament Configuration represents drug addiction, why would anyone ever fucking start? The whole thing seems viscerally unappealing. You move a couple parts around (this is actually pretty cool and appealing in an autistic kinda way) then a blade snaps out and jabs you. The original puzzle box was content to summon a bunch of demonic angels to pierce your flesh with meathooks, but this has an added Drug Metaphor Effect. Which... mostly constitutes making you kinda droopy, before sending you screaming to hell.
I may not act like it but I've smoked a drug or two in my day and idk man I'm sorry but if this is what they did, no one would fucking do them.