20 Ways The 'Hellraiser' Franchise Has Changed: Then vs. Now

The return of Hellraiser is a cause for celebration. Or so we are afraid of saying, because the Hellraiser franchise has never gone anywhere — it has just spent decades pumping out awful sequels, all of them worse than the one that came before. But in the context of the debasement that the 1987 masterpiece has spent ages undergoing, there might be some reason to be hopeful. An important one is the return of Hellraiser's braindaddy, Clive Barker. And yes, we do feel comfortable calling Barker “daddy.” Too comfortable, actually.

Barker got the US rights for the original adaptation of his novel back again in 2020, and he's producing the newer adaptation. If things work out, this means that we might find ourselves again living in a world in which Hellraiser is a respected reference within horror, instead of the name of those duds you find in Netflix’s darkest corners that you just know you’re never going to watch. So in order to celebrate the beautiful possibility of Hellraiser returning to our cultural imaginary, we now examine the franchise, then and now. Oh, we have such sights to show you.