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Elevated by writer-director Clive Barker's fiendishly unique vision, Hellraiser offers a disquieting - and sadistically smart - alternative to mindless gore.
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All Critics (44) | Top Critics (5) | Fresh (31) | Rotten (13)
Utterly bizarre and entirely ridiculous - and yet effective, an imaginative guignol festival, like the goriest of soap operas, in which one wrong move opens a portal to hell. Oct 11, 2017 | Rating: 4/5 | Full Review…
Utterly bizarre and entirely ridiculous - and yet effective, an imaginative guignol festival, like the goriest of soap operas, in which one wrong move opens a portal to hell.
Peter Bradshaw
Minor grisly fun, but don't expect the movie to linger when it's over. Jan 11, 2008 | Full Review…
Minor grisly fun, but don't expect the movie to linger when it's over.
Jonathan Rosenbaum
[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. Feb 9, 2006 | Full Review…
[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.
Derek Adams
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. Jan 1, 2000 | Full Review…
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.
Richard Harrington
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. Jan 1, 2000 | Rating: 0.5/4 | Full Review…
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.
Roger Ebert
The reason the movie works as well as it does is because of its human characters. Oct 14, 2019 | Rating: B+ | Full Review…
The reason the movie works as well as it does is because of its human characters.
Chris Stuckmann
Arriving in a decade in which most movie monsters were monotonous slashers, the Cenobites were truly exciting, original, and unsettling characters. Oct 13, 2019 | Rating: 3/4 | Full Review…
Arriving in a decade in which most movie monsters were monotonous slashers, the Cenobites were truly exciting, original, and unsettling characters.
Matt Brunson
Part of the film's excellence comes out of its taboo-ness, depicting everything from abusive love to the sometimes dangerous links between sex and death, pain and pleasure. May 1, 2019 | Rating: 5/5 | Full Review…
Part of the film's excellence comes out of its taboo-ness, depicting everything from abusive love to the sometimes dangerous links between sex and death, pain and pleasure.
C.H. Newell
Rightly considered a horror classic for pushing boundaries around sex and horror, Hellraiser is a flawed film with forgettable characters and gaping plot holes in the second act. Nov 25, 2018 | Full Review…
Rightly considered a horror classic for pushing boundaries around sex and horror, Hellraiser is a flawed film with forgettable characters and gaping plot holes in the second act.
Chauncey K. Robinson
Horror is at its best when it's relentless. Clive Barker knows this, and his debut feature as director is so gleefully vicious, so relentlessly grim that it's going to be very hard for fans of the genre not to like it. Nov 13, 2017 | Rating: 4/5 | Full Review…
Horror is at its best when it's relentless. Clive Barker knows this, and his debut feature as director is so gleefully vicious, so relentlessly grim that it's going to be very hard for fans of the genre not to like it.
William Thomas
With Hellraiser, Clive Barker created one of the most genuinely disturbing movies of the last 20 years. Nov 12, 2017 | Rating: 4/5 | Full Review…
With Hellraiser, Clive Barker created one of the most genuinely disturbing movies of the last 20 years.
Bob McCabe
The film is for the most part a return to the cutting edge of horror cinema, and in its inventively gruesome moments a reminder of the Grand Guignol intensity that has recently tended to disintegrate into lazy splatter Oct 17, 2017 | Full Review…
The film is for the most part a return to the cutting edge of horror cinema, and in its inventively gruesome moments a reminder of the Grand Guignol intensity that has recently tended to disintegrate into lazy splatter
Kim Newman
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