Hellraiser director flays open the movie’s wicked ending

polygon.com:

Hulu’s new Hellraisermovie ripped and tore its way onto the streaming platform this week, bringing Pinhead back to life with new delights of pain and pleasure alike.

The reboot-ish horror film arrives just in time for Halloween movie season and continues a storied tradition of Pinhead making people’s lives more filled with pain and pleasure. Jamie Clayton walked us through what it takes to become a Hellraiser and the intense makeup and prosthetic process to get into Pinhead mode.

But what about that shocking ending? We talked with director David Bruckner and Clayton about how it got made and what it means.

[Ed. note: This post contains spoilers for the end of Hellraiser 2022.]

In the final stretch of Hellraiser, protagonist Riley and her friends have made their way to the reclusive billionaire Voight’s compound, with the Cenobites close behind. They’ve set up shop and blocked out Pinhead and her pals, until it’s revealed that (1) Voight is still alive (although he has a giant nerve-rending machine sticking out of his torso, my favorite part of the movie) and (2) Riley’s boyfriend has been working for Voight the entire time.

There’s a whole sequence that plays out between Voight, the Cenobites, and Riley’s friends, but that’s not what we’re here to talk about. We’re here to talk about what happens next — Voight gets his “reward,” which is a gnarly display of skin-flaying in a stark-white room, transforming him into a Cenobite himself. It’s one of the most memorable and jarring sequences in the movie.

According to Bruckner, a number of practical elements were used to construct the sequence. The Hellraiser team created a skin suit and built a “real torture table,” using monofilament fishing line to pull apart the skin on