Hellraiser Reboot's Female Pinhead Is Truer To Barker's Original Vision
The Hellraiser reboot movie includes a female version of Pinhead, but that's actually closer to the character's original depiction. Whether or not a particular prospective viewer agrees that Pinhead should now be female or not, one thing that seems beyond debate is that the Hellraiser franchise is due for a reinvention. For over 20 years, Hellraiser has been stuck in its own netherworld, that of direct to video purgatory. The most recentHellraiser films have been tiny budget, thrown together affairs unworthy of the brand name.
It's true that some longtime Hellraiser devotees wish this new movie was headed to theaters instead of Hulu, but either way, it looks to be the first entry since Hellraiser: Bloodline with actual resources behind it. Directing is David Bruckner, helmer of 2021's widely acclaimed horror film The Night House, while Jamie Clayton (Sense8), is set to play Pinhead. Unsurprisingly, casting a woman as Pinhead has led to the usual round of complaints from many about a traditionally male role being gender-flipped.
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What those complaining don't seem to realize is that, while Pinhead has always been played by a man in all prior Hellraiser movies, that wasn't necessarily true to creator Clive Barker's original book The Hellbound Heart. For one, Barker portrayed all the Cenobites as androgynous demons in his prose, with none having an apparent binary gender identity. In today's terms, they would probably be best described as gender-fluid. To that end, they weren't referred to with male or female pronouns. Additionally, Pinhead themselves is described as having a feminine-sounding voice, further demonstrating how the original depiction is not necessarily true to
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