The new Hellraiser movie on Hulu has been delighting audiences with its trademark gore and faithfulness to the original movie – this is the 11th Hellraiser, after all. The ending, however, left some people scratching their heads. Spoilers ahead, obviously.
Hellraiser 2022 was directed by David Bruckner and written by Ben Collins and Luke Piotrowski. While there are 10 other movies in the Hellraiser universe, they don’t neccesarily need to be seen to understand the plot of this one.
The story involves a group of demonic-like creatures called Cenobites who show up after someone solves a magic puzzle box that opens a dimension to a terrible place. Before we get into the ending, let’s go over the plot.
What is the plot of Hellraiser 2022?
The beginning of the movie shows a young guy named Joey and a really creepy guy in a suit named Ronald Voight, played by Goran Višnjić. Voight tells Joey to solve the puzzle, and when he does he’s stabbed by a hidden knife.
After that, a portal opens and Joey gets tied up by chains. Voight then yells that he is “a penitent of the Leviathan” and wants an audience. We then meet Riley McKendry (played by Odessa A’zion). She’s an addict who’s trying to recover and living with her brother Matt (Brandon Flynn) and his boyfriend Colin (Adam Faison).
She starts seeing a new guy named Trevor (Drew Starkey), whom her brother disapproves of because he thinks Trevor is a bad influence. Trevor then asks Riley to rob a warehouse and she agrees, only to find the puzzle box, albeit in a different form.
Riley uses drugs and comes home high and her brother kicks her out. She then goes to a playground and starts popping pills. She takes out the puzzle box and manages to reveal the knife but it doesn’t cut her. The cenobite high priest Pinhead (Jamie Clayton) shows up and says the box was meant for her, but that she can bring someone else for the sacrifice is she doesn’t want to be sacrificed.
In the meantime, Matt goes looking for his sister and is stabbed by the box and taken by the Cenobites. Riley eventually notices her brother missing and begins to investigate the box. She learns that the box belonged to Voight and that he sacrificed five people to get an audience with the God of the Cenobite dimension (also known as The Labyrinth).
Riley realizes she’s currently on the same path Voight was before. The movie explains that there are six configurations for the puzzle and that each time someone is cut they’re bound to the Cenobites. Because she was not cut, her brother took her sacrifice and she is the owner, which leaves four sacrifices left. The second is Voight’s secretary, the third is Riley’s roommate Nora when they go to Voight’s old house to try and find Matt.
OK, let’s go over the ending now.
What is the Hellraiser ending explained?
Riley — along with Colin and Trevor — runs from the Cenobites in the mansion. When Chatterer gets stabbed by the box and is sacrificed (the fourth sacrifice) Riley has a flash of inspiration and realizes she can get the final sacrifice by tricking the Cenobites.
This is where the twist comes in. It turns out Trevor was working for Voight all along and intentionally got Riley to find the box. Then Voight enters with a chest piece demonstrating how he was transformed by the Cenobites after he chose “Liminal,” or sensation, one of the six “gifts” that a person gets for completing the puzzle and providing all five sacrifices.
The six prizes, by the way, are “resurrection, power, knowledge, love, life, and sensation.” We learn that Voight chose sensation because he felt like he’d tasted all of Earth’s pleasures and wanted more. However, the “gift” turned out to be a device that makes him feel endless pain, as the Cenobites can’t distinguish pleasure from pain and only enjoy other people’s suffering.
Voight then stabs Colin, which summons the Cenobites and Voight demands that Pinhead make him normal again. Pinhead explains that the gift can’t be given back but it can be switched for something else. Voight agrees and gets “Leviathan,” the gift that means power.
When the Cenobites go to claim Colin, Riley asks them to take Trevor instead. Then she stabs Trevor and Colin is released. Pinhead offers Riley a gift that will resurrect her brother, but she knows the gifts are really curses so she declines and accepts that her brother is gone, instead of bringing him back as God knows what.
Pinhead explains to Riley that she’s inadvertently chosen “the Lament Configuration,” known as life. This means she’ll always live a life of regret, according to Pinhead. Riley and Colin exit the mansion with Riley not sure if she made the right decision about her brother.
Hellraiser is currently streaming on Hulu.
Published: Oct 7, 2022 05:31 pm