Instead, David S.Goyer, Ben Collins, and Luke Piotrowski develop a brand new story that still reuses all the main elements of the original Hellraiser. We still have a villain, Roland Voight (Goran Visnjic), who goes after the Cenobites to experience new pleasures that are not available on Earth.
It is a reboot of the Hellraiser franchise, the eleventh installment overall, and a second adaptation of the 1986 novella The Hellbound Heart by Clive Barker, which was adapted into the 1987 film Hellraiser.
Bruckner's Hellraiser is not a cut-and-paste remake of the original. In fact, it takes certain elements of Barker's film and reworks it to tell a more modern story.
Hulu and 20th Century Studios' Hellraiser 2 will be the sequel to David Bruckner's 2022 Hellraiser reboot starring Jamie Clayton as the female Pinhead.
After this, each release in the Hellraiser franchise is technically a stand-alone film (and a direct-to-video movie), so you can watch them in any order. They still take place within the Hellraiser universe, but they don't necessarily follow the story linearly.
Freddy is a member of the Cenobite council and the rival of Laughing Jack. He is also the most feared and dreaded enforcer of Zalgo, even more so than Pinhead. Freddy is played by Robert Englund.
The original book that it's based on, The Hellbound Heart, was suggestive of a female Pinhead, and the comic books also explored the idea. There's also plenty of fan art, wonderful works that all theorized the possibility of Pinhead as a woman. So it only felt appropriate to us.
For Bruckner, the decision has its roots in Barker's work, as The Hellbound Heart “was suggestive of a female Pinhead, and the comic books also explored the idea.” Bruckner also points to fan art of female and non-binary versions of The Priest as sources of inspiration. “We were never afraid of it,” he declared.
Roland seemingly gets pulled into the Cenobite realm after he chooses the Leviathan configuration. In Hellraiser's closing scene, a powerful invisible force strips his skin and puts needles in his throat, which indicates that he, too, has been turned into a Cenobite.
They are revealed to be former humans who have been converted into Cenobites by the supernatural power native to their home dimension; the source of that power is shown to be a deity named Leviathan ("the god of flesh and desire"), which appears as a massive, rotating lozenge with patterns of LeMarchand's box on its ...
When a person solves one of the many boxes (Carborro, the Lament Configuration, etc), a small group of Cenobites arrives. If Leviathan, god of Hell, believes the person is worthy to become a Cenobite, they are taken to Hell to be made a Cenobite in a Cenobite Transformation Chamber operated by the Engineer.
Spanning several generations, this final bloody entry in Clive Barker's horror tour de force acts both as prequel and sequel to the original Hellraiser films.
What is the difference between the old and new Cenobites?
Both have received an updated design in the Hellraiser reboot, Bruckner deciding to ditch the original Hellraiser's black leather in favor of an anatomical structure. Much like the film itself, the new Cenobites are the perfect balance between honoring and elevating the original.
However, 20 years after her first encounter with the Cenobites, Kirsty agrees to take Pinhead's place in Hell as the Hell Priest after losing everyone she's ever cared about - becoming a Cenobite crafted based on his original style, and the new favorite of Leviathan.
The Cenobites are disfigured, sexless, sadomasochistic entities tasked with capturing whoever solved the riddle of the demonic puzzle box known as Lament Configuration and submitting them to extreme physical torture, an act meant to reveal all of the hidden pleasures of intense pain.
All the evidence to me shows that Kirsty and Pinhead admire and do to an extent love each other. A kind of Romeo and Juliet thing going on, but even more of a horrific way of being in love.
Nothing is known of her early life, but since Cenobites were human in their past lives, Pinhead most likely lived a human life before solving the Configuration Box herself, becoming a cenobite and serving the god Leviathan of the Labyrinth, hence no longer remembering her past life as a human.
Upon solving the box in the early 1920s, Spencer was given both the pain and pleasure he was looking for, and subsequently transformed into Pinhead, as depicted briefly in the opening of Hellraiser 2.
Each of the four primary Cenobites from The Hellbound Heart were featured in the film, with appearances based upon their descriptions in the book. The first Cenobite became Butterball, the second Pinhead, the third Chatterer, and the fourth The Female.
What did Clive Barker think of the new Hellraiser?
David Bruckner: "[Clive] was very understanding and welcoming of the idea that this was a new group of artists, playing in the universe that he had created, and that there would be, as he put it, welcome departures. He's also very excited about where the themes collide.
Edward, then, is a Cenobite, which is why he has scissors instead of hands, he's so pale, and he wears black leather clothes that look very similar to the ones the Cenobites usually wear.
According to an interview in the book Taking Shape II, the Michael Myers (AKA The Shape) cenobite would have had his mask permanently affixed to his skin and had his arms replaced with knives.
Candyman is a Cenobite. Both stories which Hellraiser and Candyman are based off of are by Clive Barker. Each character only causes mayhem when they are summoned. To top it off all they know after their deaths are pain and pleasure.
