A Taste of Good Suffering

“Hey, are you okay?” my wife asked, leaning over in the darkened theater.

The Dark Tower continued to play on the screen above us, the catalyst for her cinematic wellness-check. It wasn't that I was visibly upset, but what was unfolding on that screen was such an obvious catastrophe that my wife, largely unaware of The Gunslinger and The Man in Black’s ongoing conflict, knew it would be more than a bad movie. It would be a haunting.

I am not precious about adaptations. For my money, most adaptations aren’t risky enough! The original text exists, so who cares? Plant your flag. But most people, I think, have at least a few lines they irrationally draw in the sand. Stories—a movie, book, song, whatever—worth being precious about, because something about them sticks in your brain, so the irrationality wins out. 

Stephen King’s The Dark Tower is one of my irrational texts. Clive Barker’s Hellraiser—or The Hellhound Heart, if we want to drill back even further towards Barker’s novella—is another. The Dark Tower is my Lord of The Rings, a sweeping adventure that captured my heart. Hellraiser pierced my soul, playing on every doubt and dread I have death and what comes after. 

It’s a funny text to be precious about, too. There are nine fucking Hellraiser sequels, the vast majority of which you’d describe as little more than direct-to-VHS projects explicitly meant to maintain a hold over rights. At one point, Pinhead—apologies, The Hell Priest—is uploaded to the internet. It’s challenging to hold the Cenobites sacred when the tagline is “evil goes online.” 

But it is defendable! What I’m precious about is Barker’s original stories, not what happened in its wake, like when Pinhead (however humorously) mimicked Jesus on the cross and said “I am the way," and the Cenobites became paperthin villains while one shot CDs out of its mouth. Or the Lament Configuration going to space.

But outside of 2022’s misguided but well-meaning sequel, largely anchored by a powerhouse performance by Jamie Clayton as a gender-flipped Pinhead, I’ve never been promised anything. Hellraiser: Hellworld can’t hurt me, because Hellraiser: Hellworld is, by very design, an insult.

Why should I expect anything more—or less—from a goddamn Hellraiser video game? And why is anyone making a Hellraiser video game in 2026? This is not an active property. There is no movie on the horizon. There is no Elevated Horror television adaptation airing Sundays on HBO. Not to mention the game’s publisher, Saber Interactive, is led by a publicly loathsome creature. 

The “why” is answered in the game itself. Because Hellraiser: Revival is the first time, perhaps outside of comics, anyone’s given this much of a damn about Hellraiser since 1988. The reason you make a Hellraiser game in 2026, it turns out, is because you care enough to do it yourself, and Hellraiser: Revival is the rare case that’s simultaneously respectful of its source material without falling into the trap of treating it as hallowed ground. Ground is meant for footsteps, and especially by credits' end, Hellraiser: Revival uses Barker’s world to chart its own path forward. 

Hell, they even find a way to credibly weave Hellraiser’s noted BDSM aesthetics without feeling exploitative or mocking. In 2026, we make Hellraiser video games that also understand consent!

Which is not the same as saying Hellraiser: Revival is an excellent game. It’s not? Whatever that means? In most respects, it’s a profoundly average survival horror adventure that tries—and largely fails—to do much of anything with the bits and pieces it’s plucked from the games before it. I stand by my initial revulsion this summer, wondering why someone would cram this much combat into a Hellraiser video game, of all things. To some extent, it’s an unanswerable question, because there’s lots of reasons to believe Hellraiser, beyond its world, isn’t all that suitable for a game.