Hulu’s Hellraiser reboot is just a month away, promising the gruesome return of the Cenobites and their fearless leader, Pinhead. On Thursday, we got a clear (but faithfully dark) peek at the iconic Hell Priest, who will be played by actor Jamie Clayton in director David Bruckner’s take on Hellraiser — and it appears that the servants of Leviathan are trading glossy PVC fetish wear for flayed skin.
The first clear look at the new Pinhead was tweeted out by Clayton herself, hyping up Hellraiser’s Oct. 7 release date. Clayton’s Pinhead is, from the neck up, similar to the Cenobite leader portrayed by Doug Bradley in previous Hellraiser movies and as described in Clive Barker’s The Hellbound Heart novella. She has a grid sliced into her flesh, and at every intersection of horizontal and vertical axes, a nail has been driven through to the bone. Her eyes are similarly disturbing — fully bloodshot. Below the neck, Pinhead’s sadomasochistic design appears to be one of negative space; her skin appears to have been flayed away in intricate patterns.
That design choice appears to carry over to another Cenobite from the new Hellraiser revealed through Entertainment Weekly. A new Cenobite creation, named The Masque, stands seemingly naked, his genitals apparently removed and layers of flesh cut, folded, and refastened to his body to mimic a costume. Suffice it to say, a closer look at The Masque should be considered NSFW.
Joining Clayton in the new Hellraiser are Odessa A’zion, who plays Riley, a young woman struggling with addiction and compulsion who discovers the series’ iconic puzzle box; and Goran Visnjic, who Bruckner describes as an “elite, one-percenter” who is “also an educated occultist” obsessed with the Lament Configuration, the formal name of that puzzle box. “He’s educated, he’s sinister, he’s an important human component in the moral fabric of Hellraiser,” Bruckner told EW.