A new short film inspired by the Hellraiser universe has been released and it’s pretty damn awful. Directed by Darren Orange, What’s Your Pleasure? is a short film that follows Kim, a student working on a thesis that somehow has to do with piercings, body modifications, and body suspensions. Super edgy stuff, right?
Meanwhile, her friend Nick surprises her with a birthday present that happens to be a Lemarchand box that he’s been working on for a while. Clearly he’s a thoughtful and nice guy, wanting Kim to experience only the best and most cheerful of birthdays ever.
I’m going to be honest here and tell you that the acting is INCREDIBLY wooden and the timing of the actors’ delivery is utterly atrocious. The camerawork becomes unstable in many scenes, leaving me to wonder why a tripod wasn’t used (I did a super quick Google search and found them as cheap as $7.99). The Cenobites themselves look cheap, like something ripped straight out of a Spirit Halloween magazine. And they also couldn’t even get their own “Pinhead” to say his own lines. They just put the camera over his shoulder and ripped Doug Bradley’s audio from the original films. Lazy, lazy, lazy.
I will say that there is an old-school horror kinda vibe at some points. For instance, when Kim is opening the box, they cut to dark night skies that flash with lightning. Very Universal horror of them. Additionally, the endless screaming baby in the background of “Hell” would be pretty horrifying to hear throughout eternity.
If you’re at all interested, you can watch the short below.
