Welcome back for another edition of A Second Look with Jeff Stockton! In this segment I will take a "second look" at a past LRF release with a fresh set of eyes.
With horror remakes on the rise at the studio, I decided to take a second look at one of the earlier big attempts - Season 5's Hellraiser remake/reboot from writer John Malone. Not a writer known for horror, John Malone didn't write another horror project until last season's Phantasm: Awakening (another remake/reboot). I never wrote a formal review for Pascal Laugier’s Hellraiser when it dropped 28 seasons ago, but I remember my reaction clearly: a bold and visually baroque reimagining of Clive Barker’s sadomasochistic universe that mostly worked - emphasis on mostly. I admired its ambition and how it deepened the mythology with a time-hopping structure and a richer origin for Pinhead. But I also found myself wishing it pushed harder - less arthouse restraint, more actual terror. For all its gnarly flesh-tearing and bloodied elegance, the film leaned more into creepy atmosphere and grotesque awe than into true horror. It was a beautiful nightmare, but rarely a scary one. My memory of it settled around a solid B-minus.
Revisiting it now, Hellraiser feels stronger, even vital. Its craft has aged impeccably - the sets pulse with dread, and the Cenobites, especially Sean Harris’s haunted, quietly tragic Pinhead, remain one of horror’s most unique reinterpretations of evil. The film's layered structure, once slightly bloated, now reads as epic: a timeline of corruption, obsession, and ruin that spans centuries. Even moments I once found indulgent (the WWI prologue, the Duc de L’Isle's grisly demise) now play like essential strands in a grander tapestry. Yes, it still could’ve used one more draft to sharpen its scares and tighten its pace - but it dared to elevate a cult classic into something mythic. In a horror landscape that’s since grown more sanitized and algorithmic, Hellraiser feels refreshingly perverse, deeply mournful, and uniquely committed to its own vision of hell.
Original Grade: B-
New Grade: B+
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