Hellraiser
New World Pictures | Release Date: September 18, 1987 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
56
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 17 Critic Reviews
Positive:
10
Mixed:
4
Negative:
3
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
80
EmpireBob Mccabe
With Hellraiser, Clive Barker created one of the most genuinely disturbing movies of the last 20 years. Read full review
80
The GuardianPeter Bradshaw
Utterly bizarre and entirely ridiculous – and yet effective, an imaginative Guignol festival, like the goriest of soap operas, in which one wrong move opens a portal to hell. Read full review
80
Time Out LondonNigel Floyd
A serious, intelligent and disturbing horror film. Read full review
80
The A.V. ClubKeith Phipps
Pinhead barely appears in Hellraiser, a film that, with its intense and uncomfortable family drama, might have even worked without him. With him, however, it becomes one of the most innovative and memorable horror films of the '80s. Read full review
80
EmpireWilliam Thomas
A slicky edited, white knuckle ride to the depths of depravity. Read full review
78
Austin ChronicleMarjorie Baumgarten
This skillfully creepy film tells the story of some housemates who experience unwelcome visits from a partially decomposed former resident who rises from beneath the floorboards. Seems he wants the flesh and blood of the new residents in order to settle some old scores. Read full review
75
Tampa Bay TimesThomas B. Harrison
An unwholesome but entertaining blend of Grand Guignol and High Tech. Hellraiser is ghastly fun, for the most part, but it is unconscionably silly. [21 Sep 1987, p.1D]
70
Los Angeles TimesMichael Wilmington
Clive Barker's Hellraiser is one of the more original and memorable horror movies of the year: a genuinely scary, but also nearly stomach-turning experience by a genre specialist who seemingly wallows in excess and loves pushing conventions to their ghastly limits. [18 Sep 1987, p.18]
70
VarietyStaff (Not Credited)
Hellraiser is a well-paced si-fi cum horror fantasy. Pic is well made, well acted, and the visual effects are generally handled with skill. Read full review
63
Slant MagazineEric Henderson
Barker’s vision cribs equally from the mythos of vampires and zombies, but Hellraiser‘s overriding ridiculousness (and nagging budgetary shortcomings) can’t disguise the fact that the movie is at least unwittingly a product of the AIDS crisis. Read full review
60
Washington PostRichard Harrington
Hellraiser is certainly a cut or two above the slasher films that seem to proliferate on Friday the 13ths and Halloweens. It's a decidedly adult picture, with some disquieting sexual tensions that simply wouldn't work with the usual teen crew. It's also a treatise on the thin line between pleasure and pain and how easily crossed it can be. Read full review
50
Chicago ReaderJonathan Rosenbaum
Minor grisly fun, but don't expect the movie to linger when it's over. Read full review
50
Chicago TribuneDave Kehr
Though overexplicit and underdeveloped, Clive Barker`s Hellraiser is a horror film with enough personality and ambition to rise slightly above the run of the genre. Read full review
40
The New York TimesStaff (Not Credited)
Mr. Barker is no more successful in making the big leap from literature to film than Norman Mailer. He's cast his film with singularly uninteresting actors, though the special effects aren't bad - only damp. Read full review
38
Miami HeraldRyan P. Murphy
You may not be able to keep your lunch down after viewing his film, but you'll at least be momentarily intrigued. [24 Sep 1987, p.C6]
38
LarsenOnFilmJosh Larsen
Overall, the movie seems impatient to get to the gory set pieces, which read less as horrifyingly inevitable consequences of the story at hand and more like standalone, gross-out art installations. Read full review
12
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
This is a movie without wit, style or reason, and the true horror is that actors were made to portray, and technicians to realize, its bankruptcy of imagination. Read full review
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