Earlier this year, Hulu released Prey, a surprisingly good prequel/reboot of the Predator series. Next, the streaming service is hoping lightning can strike twice with a similar straight-to-Hulu reboot of Hellraiser starring Jamie Clayton as Pinhead, and while it’s too early to say if Hellraiser will be as well-received as Prey (which rules, by the way), the film’s first trailer certainly makes a solid case for this being a Hellraiser-ass Hellraiser movie.
We’ve got an evil puzzle box, we’ve got ominous religious imagery, we’ve got a ton of blood, and—best of all—some creepy freakin’ Cenobites. What more do you need while hell-raising? The movie is supposed to be a new adaptation of Clive Barker’s original novella The Hellbound Heart, which he later adapted into the first Hellraiser movie, but this trailer makes it look it’s just following the standard sort of Hellraiser story beats: Somebody wants to open the puzzle box, they do and it’s bad, then somebody doesn’t want to open the puzzle box and has to figure out how to avoid bad things happening. (That’s not a criticism, just an observation, since it’s not like Prey was a dramatic departure from the standard beats of a Predator story.)
Hellraiser, which also stars Odessa A’Zion and was directed by David Bruckner of The Night House and the “Amateur Night” segment from V/H/S (that’s the one where the dudes are killed by a demon lady), will be available on Hulu on October 7. All the “from the master of horror Clive Barker” stuff in this trailer isn’t necessarily inaccurate, as he’s a producer, but it seems more about indicating that he at least signed off on all of this even if he didn’t necessarily have an active hand in… rending the flesh and inserting the pins and all that.