I watched the new Hellraiser movie. Overall it is entertaining and it has some well-thought things that I enjoyed. But there was something bothering me about the cenobites in this movie (even if Jayme's Pinhead is amazing, excellent acting work there) and I couldn't put my finger in it. So I looked the original cenobites and I found it.
All of the actors in general, cenobites or not, are young and thin and beautiful, even the cenobites. There is an older woman and I was rooting for her to be the main character but she is old and fat, we couldn't have that, could we?
Houses look like houses where people live, they dress like people like them dress, mind you. All that is well conceived. But the cenobites are clean and not gorey. And the three main cenobites are all young and hot women (come the fuck on with this, though).
They took out the BDSM leather style, that is fine by me. But it still feels like a latex suit at times (maybe that explains why it was so dark sometimes, so you wouldn't notice), because of how clean cut and polish it all looks. I am usually turned down by even the slightest gore, I didn't have to take my eyes out of screen more than a couple of times.
The original cenobites are not so young and definitely not clean. Link here for reference. They are bleeding, and some of the blood looks old but some looks recent, and the skin they show looks tired. Only Pinhead and another one may look dignified and have a white head, but it contrasts all the more with the rest of the look, with the open chest wounds that look like they are reopened daily. Even the leather they wear is dirty as if they just came out of a session.
They didn't really have that complicated wounds either. Chatterer is the one with the most worrying modification but all the others? They seem achievable. Someone who is into pain could confirm but I'm pretty sure you can get the wounds that Pinhead has in his chest with knives and needles alone. Some of the deformation they have also looks like the product of acid or burning water. In short, it looks like it's painful daily, but reachable and renewable, like what someone worryingly into BDSM would seek for feeling things.
And then, as for the cleanliness that this movie has: In Hellraiser Judgement we even see the spaces where they "live?" and it is like an empty old house so dirty and old that it just doesn't feel sanitary to have open wounds exposed there. The cenobites in there also look like they didn't shower in days. It is disgusting. Example:
Kudos for the acting and filmmaking in this one because they manage to scare and because Pinhead gives the right vibes on acting alone, but as it is for the design of the cenobites, I didn't love it because it is aesthetic before it is gorey. I didn't feel the pain of the wounds, I didn't feel tempted by that possibility either (and I am NOT a bdsm person, but the original cenobites did feel like an invitation). It just felt like punishment of sorts, not like something those people actually sought out themselves and even then, like something they eventually got used to, not like something is renewed daily because you enjoy it.