The man and the wife discover something strange after they have moved to an old house, and this stranger seems to be a hideous creature of the world of devils. The hideous creature is the half-brother of the man, who is also the lover of the former woman who is hiding on the top floor after he lost his ground body and turned into three of the S & M demons, Cenobites. This ugly creature returned to life by a drop of blood on the ground. The creature's ugly task begins to force his former mistress to sacrifice his human sacrifices to complete his body with a quick image.
This is a movie without wit, style or reason, and the true horror is that actors were made to portray, and technicians to realize, its bankruptcy of imagination.
Barker's vision cribs equally from the mythos of vampires and zombies, but Hellraiser's overriding ridiculousness (and nagging budgetary shortcomings) can't disguise the fact that the movie is at least unwittingly a product of the AIDS crisis.
[Writer/Director Clive] Barker's dazzling debut as a director creates such an atmosphere of dread that the astonishing visual set pieces simply detonate in a chain reaction of cumulative intensity.
Not only did it revolutionise horror and force mainstream critics to accept that it could ... have real artistic weight, it captured a moment in time when social and sexual mores were shifting in a fascinating way.
Sharp grim direction and tight writing from Clive Barker who turns his story of a puzzle box invoking the forces of hell in to an experience rather than doing the work for us...
It's a dark, frequently disturbing and occasionally terrifying film that suggests Barker's vision hasn't quite made the conversion from paper to celluloid.
