The benchmark of the Hellraiser franchise has always been Pinhead and other Cenobites. Every movie, in one way or another, has introduced new Hell characters. The new movie is no different.
In a recent interview with ComicBook.com, Hellraiser reboot director David Bruckner expanded on the idea of having new cenobites in every new iteration of the franchise. And there was one in particular who had to make an appearance. The main challenge, he said, was giving fans something brand new.
“Well, we definitely wanted to reference Chatterer. As fans, how can you not? But we needed an idea of how to do Chatterer and there’s been some pretty rad Chatterers over the years. We had a Chatterer dog in part four, we had a torso-only Chatterer in Inferno. So we were really excited about the idea of a very, very tall Chatterer who had a pretty interesting body modification that, again, flesh and body modification as a replacement for our concept of what had been leather in the original movies.”
As a director of several horror movies and someone who was once attached to a Friday The 13th reboot, Bruckner is particularly aware of how important it is to provide fans with new characters and storylines to keep things fresh. In this one, Bruckner said that “Cenobites are their own leather.”
With this in mind, Bruckner said the different design approach “allowed us to take concepts from the original films that maybe referenced other characters in some ways.” So are these new cenobites or older ones with body modifications? Bruckner said he wanted to leave that up to interpretation.
“Now, whether they are specifically intended to be those Cenobites or this is a new Cenobite with a similar modification, I dare not say. Obviously, there are similarities in some of them and some of them are brand-new creations for us.”
Bruckner shared that each new movie in the franchise “should have the obligation to introduce you to new a Cenobite or several that you haven’t seen before. They’re too fun.” In fact, cenobites are practically the core of the movie, so it’s good that Bruckner is paying so much attention to them.
“They all have a bizarre regality. They’re both beautiful and terrifying to look at and I love the idea that all of their modifications and wounds are eternally fresh.” This is an important part of being a cenobite: “They’re feeling everything all the time, but they have gone so far in the pursuit of human experience, that those sensations are now desirable to them and they’re able to ride on this with this principled zen.”
This is why they have “monastic qualities,” he said. But at the end of the day there’s one reason Bruckner is so excited about them, “it’s just too fun,” he said, “for creators to not find new things to show us.”
Hellraiser premieres on Hulu on Oct. 7. You can read our review here.