Hellraiser: Revival Will Ignore All Canon After Hellraiser II
We have such sights to show you.
Horror films have historically leaned on the genre’s literary history, whether it be simple inspiration or outright adaptation, and there are a few peerless authors in that respect. There are the authors responsible for a work so groundbreaking and influential that its DNA permeates horror cinema: your Mary Shelleys and Bram Stokers. Then there are those with such massive bodies of work that have been sufficiently plundered for adaptation – take your pick between the New Englander who gave us Pennywise the Dancing Clown and Carrie White, or the one who gave us Cthulhu.
But there are also those writers who, although maybe not as canonized or prolific, have struck lightning with specific creations that ended up immortalized and resurrected on-screen numerous times. Liverpool’s own Clive Barker is one of those cases, and his most famous cinematic work – 1987’s gruesome and self-destructively erotic body horror nightmare Hellraiser – has lived on through film in some way, shape, or form for almost 40 years now, including a 2022 reboot that rewrote the series’ canon. But this year the series is set to take a leap into a different medium, with an officially licensed video game (the first of its kind) that revisits the films and sheds the weight of the less-than-stellar sequels that came after Hellbound: Hellraiser 2. But now, the timeline of Hellraiser is getting a suprising continuation, in video game form.
Hellraiser: Revial is a reboot, that ignores some of the movies
As evidenced by a recent 14-minute gameplay showcase from IGN, Hellraiser: Revival, the upcoming survival horror game developed and published by Saber Interactive, bucks the asymmetric multiplayer curse that has plagued so many horror games and offers something more akin to a Resident Evil 7 vibe wrapped in a blasphemous, S&M aesthetic. The exclusive look shows off a sequence where the game’s main character, biker gang member Aidan Lynch, chases a hulking demonic beast into the woods and arrives at a compound that looks like a museum or a mansion. Along the way, we see the combat, stealth, and exploration in action as the player fights off depraved cultists and infiltrates the building, all culminating in a boss fight with a surprisingly limber, skinless gentleman named Bruno.
Just from the brief glimpse, it’s clear that the game understands the texture of the franchise, which makes total sense because at every step of development Saber emphasized the importance of the first two films and the original book they were based on, The Hellbound Heart. Clive Barker was brought on as a story consultant early on, and Doug Bradley, the original Pinhead, was brought back to voice the character. The game even ignores the canon of the eight sequels and reboot that followed Hellraiser 2, with the game’s associate director revealing in an interview that Revival takes place 20 years after the events of the original movie (placing it somewhere in 2007).
What will the Pinhead and the Cenobites think of 2007 nightclub culture?
The game’s narrative feels perfectly at home with the sensual horror of Barker’s original work — Aidan and his girlfriend Sunny’s volatile, lustful relationship reaches new heights when they discover a puzzle box named the Genesis Configuration, but after Aidan cuts Sunny with the box during a tryst, they’re greeted by the brutally committed sadomasochists known as the Cenobites, who promptly spirit Sunny’s soul to Hell.
Armed with the infernal powers of the Genesis box, Aidan is left to fight his way through legions of twisted souls and a cult fixated on becoming Cenobites themselves in order to hopefully save himself and his lover from eternal damnation (or eternal pleasure from the opposite perspective). Hellraiser is a franchise that, despite a spectacular cult-classic first outing, hasn’t been treated so well by the years — but it looks like Saber Interactive is going back to its roots to deliver something just as grotesque and morbidly alluring as the original.
