So, Is The Hellraiser Series Worth Watching? [Fright-A-Thon]

So, you want to watch the Hellraiser series. But where do you start? Where do you go after the famous movies? WIth this series, there’s not too much of a question about how you should watch the movies, but moreso about if you SHOULD watch the movies after the famous ones. With Hellraiser taking over Halloween Horror Nights on both coasts with haunted houses based on the first three movies, there are plenty of others after that for people interested in learning about the Cenobites. Now the quality and subject matter of those movies after Hellraiser III: Hell On Earth are all of massively varying quality.

The question remains, is the Hellraiser series worth watching today?

Let’s find out.

Movies Made To Keep The License, Baby Henry Cavill, And Space Cenobites

So with almost every other horror franchise out there, they’ve gone through peaks and valleys with popularity and quality. However, Hellraiser is the one that might have the worst movies. They’ve had multiple situations where they either told their main actor, Doug Bradley, that they wouldn’t let him read the script for the movie before he signed on or that they had to make a movie in a ridiculous amount of time to keep the license. Both times did not make a great movie and not even in a horrific kind of funny way. Just in a horrible way.

However, there are some brighter spots like Hellraiser: Inferno which was directed by Scott Derrickson. Or there’s Hellraiser: Hellseeker that brings back Ashley Laurence as Kirsty Cotton. That film might be a bit messy, but it does do some interesting things. The idea that Pinhead and the Cenobites are this group that latch onto evil people to punish them is interesting. They’re kind of like the Jigsaw for demons. Through it all, except for possibly Hellraiser and Hellbound: Hellraiser II, the Cenobites and Pinhead are the villains.

But that leads to interesting things where they’re playing villains but screwing with humanity. To think that the Cenobites get bored and just shapeshift into someone else to mess with people is also inherently funny. Hellraiser: Inferno sees Pinhead shapeshifting into the protagonist’s therapist. If anything, there are still things that writers can do with Pinhead.

So, Get To The Point, Is It Worth Watching Through?

With the release of Hellraiser (2022) we got to see a new generation take on the series to pretty decent results. Jamie Clayton played a fantastic Priest/Pinhead and the rest of the designs were pretty inspired. We might not end up getting a sequel to it, but the Hellraiser legacy is alive and well in 2026. Between the Horror Nights haunted houses and the new video game, people are still interested in what the Cenobites are up to.

With the first two movies being classics, the third being a fun-ish slasher movie with Pinhead taking the reins of the series, and the fourth film being a nice lesson in how a movie can get sabotaged when idiot film execs cut their budget, we have the rest of the series after that. There are some truly horrific movies in that stretch between Inferno and Hellraiser (2022).

My short answer is still yes, the series is worth a watch for horror fans out there. My long answer is also going to be yes, but take each part with what it was at the time and now. They’re direct-to-video installments in a long-running horror series. Some of them have better ideas than others. Some of them were made to make a good Hellraiser movie, and others were made to keep the license.

A lot of the films are harder to find than some on streaming and physical media, with most DVD packs of the series only going up to the sixth film, Hellseeker. You might have to do some digging to get the rest of the series.

For more on Horror, make sure to check out Fright-A-Thon, the Halloween content marathon.