FILM · 2022 · USA
Hellraiser
26 archived facts 4 topics 1 source Last reviewed Oct 2026
26 Interesting Facts About Hellraiser
Interesting Facts (21)
- #001
Hellraiser was shot in Belgrade, Serbia.
- #002
For the score, Christopher Young reworked cues from the music he wrote for the first Hellraiser and for Hellbound: Hellraiser II.
- #003
Serena Menaker (Hiam Abbass), who comes to Serbia to get hold of the Lament Configuration for her employer, mirrors Julia Cotton (Clare Higgins) in the original Hellraiser (1987), who first goes out hunting victims for Frank.
- #004
Instead of the PVC fetish gear and latex of the original films, the rebooted Cenobites, Pinhead and Chatterer included, wear torn flesh held apart by body plating and split by protruding muscle. David Bruckner and Clive Barker decided early on that the Cenobites should look the way Barker first described them in his novella The Hellbound Heart, since both felt the BDSM scene that inspired the original costumes had become too commonplace to have the impact it did in 1987.
- #005
Leviathan's hell dimension comes from Clive Barker's original novella The Hellbound Heart and from Hellbound: Hellraiser II: a realm of labyrinthine corridors and an endless walkway watched over by the god Leviathan, it looks like a giant, moving version of the unfolded Lament Configuration, closely echoing how it appeared in the second Hellraiser film.
- #006
A female pin-headed Cenobite isn't as new as some viewers think. In the original novella, The Hellbound Heart, that Cenobite was said to have a feminine voice, the only clue to gender a human could pick up (which makes this film more faithful to the text), and more recently, in Boom! Studios' Hellraiser comics written by Clive Barker himself in the 2010s, Pinhead became a woman while Kirsty Cotton took over as leader of the Cenobites.
- #007
In the Pinhead costume, Jamie Clayton could barely move, it was so heavy and tight.
- #008
Making up all the Cenobite actors took four hours, and taking it off took roughly 45 minutes to an hour.
- #009
David Bruckner and his team approached original Pinhead Doug Bradley about a small part, but Bradley turned it down for two reasons, possible complications from the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and a wish to leave his Pinhead legacy as it was, and Bruckner and the team respected that.
- #010
When Riley first gets into Voight's mansion and rifles through his papers, we get brief glimpses of drawings that are actually portraits of all the Cenobites, including some we haven't met yet, like Anne and the pregnant Cenobite.
- #011
To "lament" is to mourn. Since the heroine chooses a life of grief instead of asking the Cenobites for a "favor," it fits that at the end the puzzle box returns to its original form, the Lament Configuration.
- #012
It's the first Hellraiser film with a female Pinhead. In Clive Barker's original novella The Hellbound Heart, Pinhead (a name Barker dislikes; he prefers "Hell Priest," which went unused until his 2015 novel The Scarlet Gospels) is described as "altered" to the point of seeming sexless.
- #013
As one of the producers, Clive Barker is directly involved in a Hellraiser film for the first time since Hellraiser: Bloodline (1996). Barker says he was effectively shut out of the series from Hellraiser: Inferno (2000) on, so he had nothing to do with the next five sequels beyond a few informal consultations. Original Pinhead Doug Bradley was also attached to the reboot at first but later dropped out.
- #014
When Menaker meets the Cenobites in the care home, a strange pillar is briefly visible in the background, apparently made of the skins of the puzzle box's victims, with Cenobites stretched taut across it. When the camera focuses, it looks like the same pillar that played a big part in the original Hellraiser, most notably in the early scene after Frank is first taken by the Cenobites and Pinhead/The Priest reassembles his face.
- #015
Jamie Clayton doesn't officially appear as the Priest/Pinhead until a full sixty-seven minutes in, though the Priest is briefly seen in silhouette at around twenty-six minutes.
- #016
In order, the sacrifices/deaths tied to each configuration in the main plot, leading to the box being fully solved, are: Matt (Lament - Life), Serena (Lore - Knowledge), Nora (Lauderant - Love), Chatterer (Liminal - Sensation) and Trevor (Lazarus - Resurrection). The first victim, Joey, was offered in the Lazarus configuration when he first completed the puzzle for Voight. When Riley solves the box, each main character's sacrifice matches a configuration: Matt always makes sure Riley has her own 'life,' Serena holds all the 'knowledge' of Voight's sins and research, Nora always acts out of love, and Chatterer, as a Cenobite, is a fragmented soul who has already felt the full 'sensation' of suffering, while Trevor secretly holds the 'power' to steer Riley into choosing the Lament Configuration.
- #017
It finally arrived with a special festival screening on 2 October and a release on 4 October 2022, ending 26 years of development hell and delays.
- #018
After the Cenobites take Serena in the hospital, the puzzle box turns into a shape like two interlocking pyramids, also the shape of the Incal, the ancient relic in Alejandro Jodorowsky's comic of the same name. In the comics, the relic grants immense power to whoever holds it, so all kinds of forces, good and evil, are after it, and the same goes for the puzzle box, whose solver can gain great power and knowledge from the Cenobites, albeit in twisted form.
- #019
Filming took place in Serbia in 2021, with the cast traveling and quarantining amid that year's Omicron wave of Covid-19.
- #020
This new entry in the popular horror series with fantasy and science-fiction ties is one of four horror films Twentieth Century Studios released in the 2020s, alongside 'Prey' (a Predator prequel), 'Alien: Romulus' (an Alien sequel set between Alien and Aliens) and 'The First Omen' (a prequel to the original The Omen). Of the four, The First Omen is the only one that wasn't released on Hulu or originally made for it.
- #021
This reboot of Hellraiser (1987) spent years in development hell. French director Pascal Laugier worked on it for four months after Martyrs (2008) premiered, planning a very serious version exploring gay S&M culture, but left when the producers wanted something more commercial for younger audiences, and made The Tall Man (2012) instead. In October 2010, Dimension Films announced via Variety that Todd Farmer and Patrick Lussier (My Bloody Valentine (2009)) would take over, with shooting planned for the new year and release in late 2011 or early 2012, but after the eighth sequel, Hellraiser: Revelations (2011), made to hold on to the rights, Farmer confirmed the two were off the project. In 2013, visual effects artists Mike Le Han and Paul Gerrard pitched Hellraiser: Origins with a two-minute short, Hellraiser: Origins (2013), made with a crew of 47 and 100 extras, showing bodies writhing in Hell under the eye of a very gaunt Pinhead. But when series creator Clive Barker announced that same year that he was working closely with Dimension Films on a Hellraiser remake that would also bring back original Pinhead Doug Bradley, Gerrard said a feature-length Hellraiser: Origins would never happen.
Production Story (1)
- #022
In October 2007, Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury were confirmed as directors, with Clive Barker producing, but they left the project in April 2008.
Characters & Cast (1)
- #023
Famous American makeup artist Gottmik, a contestant on RuPaul's Drag Race season 13, was invited to audition for Pinhead during pre-production after Bruckner saw Gottmik's Pinhead fantasy look in the Drag Race finale. Gottmik didn't get the part, but like Jamie Clayton, who did, Gottmik is a prominent trans artist.
Deeper Meaning (3)
- #024
The box's six configurations stand for six gifts: Lament ("life"), Lore ("knowledge"), Lauderant ("love"), Liminal ("sensation"), Lazarus ("resurrection") and Leviathan ("power").
Hellraiser (2022): a sceneImage: Wikimedia Commons · Formanavt, Public domain - #025
Roland Voight (Goran Visnjic) closely echoes two major villains of the Hellraiser (1987) series. One is Frank Cotton (Sean Chapman) from the original, a manipulative, sadistic hedonist who comes to regret the "experiences" the Cenobites gave him and will do anything to trick them, even at the cost of other people's lives. The other is Dr. Phillip Channard (Kenneth Cranham) from Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988), who feeds victims to the Cenobites by getting them to solve the box so he can reach the Hell dimension, has devoted extensive occult research to the Cenobites, the Lament Configuration and Leviathan, and is finally turned into a Cenobite himself. In fact, after Voight's transformation at the end, Ben Lovett's score echoes Christopher Young's theme for Channard.
- #026
With this reboot, every major slasher icon of the golden age of the 1970s and 1980s has now been remade: Leatherface of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre in 2003, Michael Myers of Halloween in 2007, Jason Voorhees of Friday the 13th in 2009, Freddy Krueger of A Nightmare On Elm Street in 2010, Chucky of Child's Play in 2019 and now Pinhead in 2022. All these remakes share their originals' titles, and Pinhead is the only one portrayed as sexless, bringing him closer to the character Clive Barker first wrote.
Sources & editorial notes
Reference databases
- IMDb
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