Kevin Yagher was so upset with how Miramax recut and handled his Hellraiser sequel. They changed the narrative, removed character and narrative moments, and he couldn’t get his version of the story to the screen.

The result is not great, it’s not exactly horrible, but it could have been a damn sight better. The story follows Philip Merchant/L’Merchant (Bruce Ramsay) through history. From his creation of the original Lament Configuration box without knowing what it was, to what may be at least a temporary end to the Hell Priest aka Pinhead (Doug Bradley) in the far future.

I’m rather glad creator Clive Barker gave us the Scarlet Gospels which ignores the cinematic mess that the franchise became.

L’Merchant delivers the box to a pair of French dandies, one of them played by Adam Scott, who use the box to summon a seductive demon, Angelique (Valentina Vargas) from Hell. She travels through the ages with Scott’s Jacques for decades, until she discovers that L’Merchant bloodline still exists.

He lives in New York and is an architect, and he has a plan to use light, something one of his ancestors planned to destroy demons. He has a wife (Kim Myers) and a son (Courtland Mead), but neither Angelique nor Pinhead will be stopped.

But not everything will be resolved on Earth, the climax will take place in space, and hopefully Merchant’s plan will finally, after centuries, come to completion.

There’s some interesting effects work. Some of the practical stuff and makeup work is solid, even if constrained by a budget, and I like a lot of the space stuff. There’s other stuff that doesn’t work so great, and that also includes some of the acting, which in some cases is horrendous.

Bradley has Pinhead down, and I love his delivery, but even he feels a little wasted here. I would love a solid reset on this franchise, and get back to Barker’s source material. The suggestion of pain and pleasure mixing with horror worked for the first pair of films, and seems to be losing it’s way.

These could be dark and moody pieces with lots of eros, blood and gore. I don’t mind the expansion of the mythology for the franchise, I just wish it could have been handled and executed better. Sure, Barker gets a ‘Presents’ at the top of the film, but I honestly think he should have been consulted in terms of story, and direction of the narrative.

It’s his creation, and sure it’s a different beast on screen, but Barker has a singular vision. The series should have had his involvement through the entire run.