Hellraiser 2022 Ending Explained- The Lament Box, How Living Is The Worst Pain, And What Riley Chose

Hulu’s remake of Hellraiser is a serviceable stand-in for yet another addiction metaphor. The film has the gritty look of the original Candyman but without the inherent nastiness. Riley is a recovering addict with a dirty-hot loser boyfriend whose sole purpose seems to be to have sex with her and get her into trouble. She lives with her sweet brother and his boyfriend, and her roommate. Her brother is the yen to her boyfriend’s yang. Short on rent money, Riley’s boyfriend Trevor convinces her to steal something from a storage facility. Instead of finding piles of cash or jewelry, they find one single item—a metal puzzle box. The two take the box home, and that’s when things go south.

For those unfamiliar with the 1987 Clive Barker classic, the box is a problem. Everyone who solves the puzzle comes face to face with some of the most inventive BDSM demons of all time. Seen primarily in low light and shadows, Pinhead and his fellow Cenobites revel in others’ pain. Their focus is on the thin line between pain and pleasure. Clad in peekaboo black leather designed to showcase a wealth of horrific body modification, they were called when our hero Kristy got inadvertently sucked into a messy plot with her Uncle Frank. They want their pound of flesh, and she has to figure out a way to satisfy their appetites. She is able to escape by reversing the puzzle and returning it to its original position.

It is a genius movie based on Barker’s short story, The Hellbound Heart. Doug Bradley made a career out of playing the gravelly-voiced haunter who will always and forever have the ability to freak me out. Hulu’s version supplants Bradley for Jamie Clayton as The Priest. She’s good but is almost too pretty to be soul-crushingly terrifying.

Some of the set pieces would be cooler if not for the fact that I’ve already seen them in previous Hellraiser sequels. The building that’s really a puzzle box thing has been done before. So has the addiction as horror and billionaire occultist angle. What does set this Hellraiser apart is the box itself which is interesting. The Lament Box gets some extended mythology that is sequel bait if I ever saw it. I could easily see another movie explaining that each of the Cenobites stems from a specific box variation. The ending of Hellraiser finds its home here in the many iterations of the Lament Box. Riley has to make a choice. Which version of the box will she choose, and will it be the right one to save her brother?

The ending of Hellraiser

After Riley accidentally opens the box, her brother gets pulled into the Cenobites’ realm leaving Riley behind to save him. Riley tracks the box’s origins back to an eccentric billionaire with strange appetites because there aren’t any other kind. She goes to his Berkshire house, which we first see in the opening sequence. The box’s owner Voight an inexplicably ageless Goran Visnjic, along with his broker(Hiam Abbass), lure an unsuspecting young man into his trophy room and feed him to the demons. Colin, Trevor, and Nora follow her there.

They find drawings and books depicting the box’s purpose and powers. Unfortunately, Nora gets taken first by the Cenobites, and through her death, we get the first extended look at Clayton’s Pinhead, The Priest. The Priest tells Riley she needs to feed the box two more lives for a chance to escape and see her brother again. At first, Riley refuses, but The Priest tells her she doesn’t have any other choice. They will get their payment one way or another.

The box has six variations. Each one unlocks something different. The different versions unlock Life(Lament), Knowledge(Lore), Love(Lauderant), Sensation(Liminal), Power(Leviathan), and Resurrection(Lazurus). Riley will be granted an audience with a God in another realm if she unlocks all six. In this reboot of Hellraiser, the box needs a victim, and it could be of the human or Cenobite kind, so when it tries to attack Trevor, she fed the box the Cenobite attacking them. That set off another variation, though, and this one cut Riley.

Voight hired Trevor to bring the box and victims to him in his house. Voight initially chose Liminal wanting every sensation the Cenobites had to offer. They gave him more than he bargained for and implanted a device ensuring he never goes numb. He wants to confront them about what he believes to be their deception. He tells Riley it is all a trick and the Cenobites won’t give her what she really wants. Trevor and Voight let all of the Cenobites into the house, and Voight demands retribution. He designed the house to trap the Cenobites, and as he is ranting at them that he is a genius who trapped them, Riley unlocks the gates, and they descend on Voight and poor Colin.

Pinhead explains that Voight can not have his gift taken back, but he can have it exchanged for another. Unfortunately, he chooses unwisely yet again. He chooses power and is taken to another realm where he is turned into a Cenobite. Meanwhile, Riley has to choose between Colin and Trevor and sacrifices her boyfriend to save her brothers. She stabs Trevor with the box and now holds the last version in her hands.

The Priest tells her the choice is now hers. Which gift does she want? She is shown her brother alive again but refuses to accept Resurrection. The Priest says she has chosen Life or Lament, which will mean a life of regret for her decisions and the pain she has caused others. The box is left in the house in the cube configuration we are most familiar with. Colin and Riley leave the house, hoping she has made the right decision. Because the Cenobites are all about pain, Riley’s decision to live should appease them. Living with the guilt of knowing she caused her brother’s and Nora’s death and the pain of maintaining sober should be enough to appease them. She will not get her brother back, but maybe he can find peace in a better place.

Hellraiser is currently streaming on Hulu.