They turned Hellraiser into a vanilla Freddy Krueger inspired slasher, which makes for a very watchable if unmemorable experience.

Some of the ideas, even if borrowed, were convincing : the mansion, the dumb rules, the drug allegory. And some true Hellraiser concepts and visuals like the Leviathan moment were particularly well done but no spoilers here.

The most disappointing was probably the Cenobites design way too elegant and Alien like, not gruesome or surreal enough. Plus the characters deaths felt like generic gory horror à la SAW or Escape Room. It was missing a sense of spectacle and boldness despite having clearly a decent budget.

Still an enjoyable movie.

College kids get chased around the woods by Cenobites. Cenobites lay siege to those kids in a mansion. It's like the zombie formula, but with Cenobites.

All of which makes the Cenobites feel pretty ineffectual. Never mind that Cenobites getting locked out of a house isn't really in keeping with, you know, opening all those portals from other dimensions in the walls and floor. Maybe it's a magic house, I don't know.

The Hellraiser reboot has decent art direction. It has a budget. There's nothing wrong with the new Pinhead, she's fine. But in terms of story, they phoned it in this time. We're left with a movie that's perfectly acceptable as some time-waster slasher that you forget the moment the credits roll, but that's all. Lamentable, considering the potential.

Looking back at what made the original so good was how off putting it was , dark and very original.

The source material being the same we wouldn't expect much new .

Where this outing fails is to raise the bar on what made the original so good.

The tension and build up is ok but I felt disappointed with the costumes. To me the heavy layered latex looked like heavy layered latex. The original was a darker filmed movie and the Cenobites were so disturbing the first time you see them . In this newer version we have a wider field of view shot further away and it looses its claustrophobic feel . Escaping seems easier and that drives the tension down.

So different cinematography and poor customers and such take away .

The good is the protagonist the actor does a good job portraying seemly troubled youth .

Act 3 has a bit of a twist but comes too late in the film to save it.