Hellraiser recap: the story so far

No. 01 · 1987 · Film

Hellraiser recap

Hellraiser (1987) follows a woman who kills men to rebuild her lover, a man torn apart by the demons he summoned with a puzzle box. Clive Barker writes and directs from his novella The Hellbound Heart. In Morocco, the hedonist Frank Cotton (Sean Chapman) buys the box, solves it in an empty attic, and is ripped apart by hooked chains. His brother Larry (Andrew Robinson) later moves into the house with his second wife Julia (Clare Higgins), who once had an affair with Frank. When Larry cuts his hand, his blood soaks the attic floor and brings Frank back as a skinless wreck. Julia lures men home so Frank can drain them and regrow his body. Larry's daughter Kirsty (Ashley Laurence) finds Frank, escapes with the box and opens it in hospital, meeting the Cenobites and their leader, later known as Pinhead (Doug Bradley). She bargains to give them Frank. It starts the series.

How Hellraiser ends

Hellraiser ends with Frank killing Larry and wearing his skin, then accidentally stabbing Julia and draining her. When he admits killing Larry, the Cenobites tear him apart, then turn on Kirsty, who reverses the puzzle to send them back. She throws the box on a fire, but a vagrant who has followed her pulls it out, turns into a winged creature and flies off; the box ends up for sale again.

Post-credits scenes

No. Hellraiser has no mid- or post-credits scene.

No. 02 · 1988 · Film

Hellbound: Hellraiser II recap

Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988) puts Kirsty Cotton in a psychiatric hospital, where the doctor in charge secretly brings her stepmother back from Hell. Tony Randel directs from a story by Clive Barker, with Ashley Laurence back as Kirsty. Dr. Philip Channard (Kenneth Cranham), obsessed with the puzzle box, takes home the bloodied mattress Julia died on and has a disturbed patient cut himself on it; the blood frees a skinless Julia (Clare Higgins), who feeds on more patients. Kirsty sees a flayed figure write that he is in Hell and asks for help, and believes it is her father. A mute patient named Tiffany (Imogen Boorman) has a gift for puzzles, and Channard uses her to open the box. Channard, Julia and then Kirsty enter Hell, a labyrinth ruled by Leviathan, a vast rotating diamond. A prologue shows Pinhead was once Captain Elliot Spencer, a British officer. It follows Hellraiser directly.

How Hellbound: Hellraiser II ends

Hellbound ends with Channard turned into a monstrous Cenobite who kills Pinhead and the others after Kirsty reminds them they were once human. Kirsty, wearing Julia's discarded skin as a disguise, distracts Channard while Tiffany solves the box in reverse, and the girls escape Hell. At Channard's house, a pillar of tormented figures rises from the mattress, the pillar that holds Pinhead in Hellraiser III.

Post-credits scenes

No. Hellbound: Hellraiser II has no mid- or post-credits scene.

No. 03 · 1992 · Film

Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth recap

Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth (1992) frees Pinhead, split from his human half, from a carved pillar in a New York nightclub. Anthony Hickox directs, with Doug Bradley as both Pinhead and Captain Elliott Spencer. Club owner J. P. Monroe (Kevin Bernhardt) buys the Pillar of Souls, and Pinhead, embedded in it, persuades him to feed it clubgoers. A television reporter, Joanne "Joey" Summerskill (Terry Farrell), sees a young man torn apart by hooked chains in an emergency room and takes in Terri (Paula Marshall), the homeless girl who pried the box from the pillar. In Joey's dreams, Spencer explains that without his humanity Pinhead answers to no rules, and only rejoining the two halves and using the box can stop him. Once free, Pinhead massacres the club and turns Monroe, Terri and others into new Cenobites. Ashley Laurence cameos as Kirsty on videotape. It follows Hellbound.

How Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth ends

Hellraiser III ends with Joey, chased through the city, solving the box and sending the new Cenobites to Hell. In limbo Pinhead tricks her by appearing as her dead father, but Spencer's spirit fuses back into him, and Joey stabs him with the box, which has changed into a blade. Returned to Earth, she buries the box in wet concrete; the finished building rising on the site is later shown to mirror the box's design.

Post-credits scenes

No. Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth has no mid- or post-credits scene.

No. 04 · 1996 · Film

Hellraiser: Bloodline recap

Hellraiser: Bloodline (1996) traces the puzzle box from the French toymaker who built it in 1796 to his descendant's space station in 2127. Kevin Yagher started it and Joe Chappelle finished it after studio reshoots; Yagher took the pseudonym Alan Smithee. Bruce Ramsay plays all three men of the bloodline. In 2127, engineer Paul Merchant seizes his own station and is arrested, so he tells his story. In 1796 Paris, Phillip LeMarchand makes the box for the Duc de L'Isle, who uses it to call up the demon Angelique (Valentina Vargas), and LeMarchand's line is cursed. In 1996, architect John Merchant has built a Manhattan tower shaped like the box; Angelique and Pinhead (Doug Bradley) come for him and his family before he can finish a box made of light that would close Hell. It is both a prequel and a sequel.

How Hellraiser: Bloodline ends

Hellraiser: Bloodline ends in 2127, after Pinhead's Cenobites, Angelique now among them, slaughter the crew. Merchant escapes in a pod with the guard Rimmer and triggers the station itself, revealed as the finished light-trapping configuration. Lasers fill it with perpetual light that destroys Pinhead. It was the last Hellraiser film to reach cinemas, and later sequels are set in the present day despite its ending.

Post-credits scenes

No. Hellraiser: Bloodline has no mid- or post-credits scene.

No. 05 · 2000 · Film · optional

Hellraiser: Inferno recap

Hellraiser: Inferno (2000) follows a corrupt Denver detective who finds the puzzle box at a murder scene and opens it, after which his life comes apart. Scott Derrickson directs his first feature, released straight to video. Joseph Thorne (Craig Sheffer) uses drugs and cheats on his wife while on duty. After solving the box, he has nightmarish visions: two mutilated women seducing him, a legless creature chasing him. He links the case to a killer called the Engineer, who has kidnapped a child and leaves one of the child's fingers at each new crime scene. The Engineer starts killing people close to Thorne, and Thorne's psychiatrist Dr. Paul Gregory (James Remar) tries to help him make sense of it. Pinhead (Doug Bradley) appears only briefly. It stands alone from the earlier films.

How Hellraiser: Inferno ends

Hellraiser: Inferno ends with Dr. Gregory revealing himself as Pinhead. He tells Thorne he has been in the Cenobites' realm since he opened the box: the Engineer is Thorne's own cruelty, and the child is his innocence, which he has been killing for years. As chains take him, Thorne learns his punishment is to relive this torment forever. Inferno began as an unrelated script and was the first Hellraiser film released straight to video.

No. 06 · 2002 · Film · optional

Hellraiser: Hellseeker recap

Hellraiser: Hellseeker (2002) follows Trevor Gooden, who survives a car crash that seems to have killed his wife, Kirsty Cotton, and cannot trust his memory. Rick Bota directs, with Dean Winters as Trevor and Ashley Laurence returning as Kirsty for the first time since Hellbound. Police divers find both car doors open but no body. A month later Trevor wakes in hospital with a head injury and learns he is the main suspect in a murder case. Two detectives, Givens and Lange, keep questioning him but never appear together. Scenes he lives through turn out to be imagined, and he watches his friend Bret kill himself. It follows Hellraiser and Hellbound, picking up Kirsty years later, and is the first sequel to bring her back.

How Hellraiser: Hellseeker ends

Hellraiser: Hellseeker ends with Trevor finding the body in the morgue is his own. Pinhead (Doug Bradley) explains that Trevor plotted with Bret to have Kirsty reopen the box so they could take her money. Kirsty traded five souls for her own: three of Trevor's mistresses, Bret and Trevor, whom she shot as he drove. He has been in Hell since the crash, and Kirsty walks away with the box.

No. 07 · 2005 · Film · optional

Hellraiser: Deader recap

Hellraiser: Deader (2005) sends a reporter to Bucharest to investigate a cult that kills its members and brings them back to life. Rick Bota directs, with Kari Wuhrer as Amy Klein and Doug Bradley as Pinhead; it was filmed in 2002 and released straight to video. Amy's editor gives her a videotape of a ritual murder and revival by a group called the Deaders. She traces it to a flat where the sender lies dead holding the puzzle box, and opening it pulls her into visions of Pinhead. The cult's leader, Winter LeMarchand (Paul Rhys), descends from the toymaker who made the box and believes he can master the Cenobites, but he needs someone broken enough to open it. He kills and revives Amy, and she relives the abuse she suffered from her father and the night she killed him as a child. It stands alone, linked to the others only by the box and its maker's bloodline.

How Hellraiser: Deader ends

Hellraiser: Deader ends with Amy opening the box and Pinhead slaughtering the Deaders, scorning Winter's claim that a mortal could command them. When Pinhead says her father is waiting for her in Hell, Amy kills herself; the box closes, the Cenobites are banished and the compound explodes. Her editor sends a new reporter on the story, and the box is recovered from the ruins.

No. 08 · 2005 · Film · optional

Hellraiser: Hellworld recap

Hellraiser: Hellworld (2005) invites five players of an online Hellraiser game to a mansion party, two years after their friend Adam killed himself. Adam was so consumed by the game that his friends blame themselves. Rick Bota directs, with Lance Henriksen as the party host; Henry Cavill plays one of the friends, Mike. Chelsea, Jake, Allison and Derrick round out the group, and Jake still blames himself for Adam's death. The host gives each of them a phone, tells them the house was built by Phillip LeMarchand, the box's maker, and slips them a drink. One by one the friends are trapped in separate rooms and killed by the host, Pinhead (Doug Bradley) and the Cenobites, while Jake and Chelsea find no one at the party can see them. Chelsea finds Adam's belongings and learns the host is his father. Unlike the other films, it treats Hellraiser as a fictional franchise inside the story.

How Hellraiser: Hellworld ends

Hellraiser: Hellworld ends with the host revealing that the friends were drugged and buried alive in coffins with phones, and that the deaths were hallucinations; Allison, Derrick and Mike really did die underground. Police dig up Chelsea and Jake after a mysterious call. The host then opens Adam's real puzzle box, and the actual Cenobites tear him apart; as the police find his room, the box lies on the floor.

No. 09 · 2011 · Film · optional

Hellraiser: Revelations recap

Hellraiser: Revelations (2011) follows two families a year after their sons vanished on a trip to Mexico, leaving behind a video and a puzzle box. Víctor García directs from a script by Gary J. Tunnicliffe; the film was made in weeks so Dimension could keep the rights, and Stephan Smith Collins replaces Doug Bradley as Pinhead for the first time. Emma Craven (Tracey Fairaway), sister of Steven and girlfriend of Nico Bradley, watches the tape her mother has hidden and sees the boys' trip turn violent. When Emma handles the box, Steven suddenly reappears in the house covered in blood. The families find they cannot leave the house, and flashbacks show Nico murdering a girl, opening the box and being taken by the Cenobites, then speaking to Steven through it and persuading him to kill women so their blood could rebuild him. "Steven" takes the families hostage with a shotgun. It is a standalone story.

How Hellraiser: Revelations ends

Hellraiser: Revelations ends with Nico, who has been wearing Steven's skin, forcing Emma to open the box so she can be taken in his place. Pinhead refuses the trade and claims Nico, while Steven appears as a new Cenobite. Steven's dying father shoots Nico, and the angry Cenobites take Emma's mother instead. Left alone with her father's body, Emma reaches for the box.

No. 10 · 2018 · Film · optional

Hellraiser: Judgment recap

Hellraiser: Judgment (2018) follows three detectives hunting a killer who stages murders after the Ten Commandments, a case that leads into Hell. Gary J. Tunnicliffe writes and directs, and plays the Auditor, a clerk of the Stygian Inquisition, which judges sinners' souls; Paul T. Taylor plays Pinhead. Pinhead and the Auditor open by discussing how technology is making the puzzle box obsolete. On Earth, brothers Sean Carter (Damon Carney) and David Carter (Randy Wayne) and their partner Christine Egerton (Alexandra Harris) chase the killer, called the Preceptor. Sean visits an abandoned house and wakes in the Inquisition, where an angel named Jophiel stops his judgment and he escapes with a puzzle box. Heather Langenkamp plays a landlady. It stands alone, and is the first entry to bring Heaven into the story.

How Hellraiser: Judgment ends

Hellraiser: Judgment ends with Sean revealed as the Preceptor, holding his own wife hostage over her affair. He forces David and his wife Alison to open the box, and the Inquisition finds him guilty, but Jophiel insists Sean serves Heaven's plan. Pinhead has Christine kill Sean and destroys Jophiel, and as punishment God casts him out to Earth, stripped of his place and still craving suffering.

Post-credits scenes

Yes. A post-credits scene shows missionaries in Germany knocking on a door that the Auditor opens.

No. 11 · 2022 · Film

Hellraiser recap

Hellraiser (2022) follows Riley, a recovering addict who finds the puzzle box in a warehouse and has to feed it victims after it takes her brother. David Bruckner directs, Hulu released it, and Jamie Clayton plays the Cenobites' leader, called the Priest. Riley McKendry (Odessa A'zion) lives with her brother Matt (Brandon Flynn), his boyfriend Colin (Adam Faison) and their roommate Nora. After a fight with Matt, she solves the box in a park; he cuts himself on its blade while helping her and vanishes. Riley tracks down the lawyer of Roland Voight (Goran Višnjić), a millionaire who vanished six years earlier, and his journals reveal that each of the box's six shapes must mark a victim, with a gift from Leviathan for completing them. At Voight's abandoned mansion she sees Matt's flayed ghost. It reboots the series from Clive Barker's novella.

How Hellraiser ends

Hellraiser ends at Voight's mansion, where Voight, still alive in a torture device, completes the box to demand his freedom, and Leviathan grants him power and then drags him away. Riley stabs her treacherous boyfriend Trevor (Drew Starkey) as the last sacrifice to save Colin. Offered Matt back, she refuses, and the Cenobites accept her choice. Voight is turned into a new Cenobite.

Post-credits scenes

No. Hellraiser has no mid- or post-credits scene.