I’m really enjoying the old-school mechanics of Clive Barker’s Hellraiser: Revival. There’s a very Resident Evil-like simplicity to progressing through […]
I’m really enjoying the old-school mechanics of Clive Barker’s Hellraiser: Revival. There’s a very Resident Evil-like simplicity to progressing through this nightmare with limited resources, trying to survive cult members, demons, and other horrific creatures you don’t necessarily understand. Your weapons run out of ammunition or break, things come out of places you weren’t expecting, and you’re constantly trying to figure out how to get through the next room alive.
But as I worked my way through it, one question kept coming back: What normal person could be convinced to do this kind of stuff?
You’re seeing cult members commit horrific acts of violence in the name of their church. One of the antagonists, Bruno, creates art out of people, and his work is everywhere. It’s some of the most disgusting, depraved, fucked-up shit I’ve ever seen in my entire life. You can really feel Clive Barker’s soul living through this game. It’s spectacular.
The scope is unbelievable, too. As Aidan, you’re trying to understand this cult because it holds the key to finding your girlfriend, Sunny. But you’re also moving between worlds, interacting with the Cenobites and sometimes running from them through the Labyrinth, Leviathan’s realm. Hell is stunning and gorgeous, even as the game throws you down narrow hallways with traps and Cenobites seemingly at every turn.
It’s suffocating and scary, and it can be incredibly difficult. You can dial the difficulty down, but that constant pressure on your resources is a huge part of what makes it so engaging. Truth be told, the game is legitimately fucking scary.
Still, the violence alone wasn’t answering my question about the people participating in it. That started to happen when I met people who had boundaries.
There’s a woman you encounter in a secret sex club, dressed in full leather, who wants to be chained up and asks you to retrieve certain devices for pleasure. Once you do and begin the process, she realizes Aidan isn’t really into it and dials things back.
During their conversation, she also makes it clear that she has her own limits. She has kinks, but she isn’t willing to go behind closed doors to find out just how crazy shit can get.
That distinction is so incredibly important. Enjoying what’s happening in this room doesn’t mean she’s signed up for everything happening elsewhere in the building. She’s not complicit. Whispers circulate about what goes on beyond those doors, and she doesn’t need to find out or experience it for herself.
Then there’s the mysterious merchant. We don’t exactly know who she is, but she serves a couple of purposes. You can buy and sell weapons and artifacts, helping you progress through the game without dying. She also helps you understand the world you’re moving through.
One of the most important things she suggests when entering the sex club is that some of the people here are innocent. They don’t really understand how deep the depravity goes. Not everybody is fully bought into what the Scarlet Church is selling, even though they appear to be hardcore devotees.
All of this adds layers of believability to a world that’s so fantastical and so ridiculous. These people aren’t interchangeable. Some are curious. Some have limits. Some may have wandered into something they don’t understand. Others are already doing things I can barely stand to look at.
And then I reached the scene that made the devotion click.
Spoilers follow for the Scarlet Church ceremony inHellraiser: Revival.
Aidan needs to sneak into the church to retrieve the Genesis Configuration. He puts on its robes and joins the congregation, watching what unfolds with his own disbelief.
The cult leader, Marlowe, uses the Configuration to summon the Cenobites. They appear in a flash of lightning and create a new Cenobite in front of the followers.
You’re watching this in first person, from inside the robe. You feel like you’re in the room. It’s immersive and frightening and crazy, and instantly, at that moment, you’re like, I get it.
They’re witnessing a miracle. And standing there among them, so are you.
If I were a cult member in this room, I would believe in it too.
If this is what I wanted, if I believed these were gods, and these were the pleasures and delights I was seeking, I can understand why I would take this as confirmation. The beings this church has been talking about have physically appeared. I’ve just watched them transform a human being into something like themselves.
All of a sudden, it all makes sense.
Imagine attending a religious service and watching the being you worship actually appear in the room. Then imagine watching it transform someone from the congregation. For someone already receptive to those promises, how could that not change their relationship to what they believe?
These people are being offered pleasures and delights. That doesn’t necessarily mean everybody understands those promises as pain, mutilation, or the complete destruction of the person they were before.
From the outside, what I’m watching is horrific. A committed believer might see ascension, a reward, or proof that some unimaginable experience is within reach. I don’t know what the person being transformed understood or wanted. But I can understand how someone watching could see everything they had hoped for.
That doesn’t prove the church is morally right. It doesn’t mean its leader is trustworthy or that anyone will get what they were promised. It proves the Cenobites exist. A person who already wants to believe could take that evidence and apply it to everything else the church has told them.
The game lets me experience that from inside the congregation. Nobody has to stop and explain why this religion could attract followers. I’m standing there, watching the reason.
The movies have explored related territory before. Hellraiser: Deader has Winter and his death cult, with Winter believing he can claim power over the Cenobites before Pinhead rejects him. That’s a useful reminder that access to these beings doesn’t give a cult leader authority over them. Revival didn’t invent Cenobite worship; this particular ceremony is what made it feel believable to me.
So much of Hellraiser begins with something forbidden and private: somebody opens a door they shouldn’t have opened. But what happens when people start sharing what they’ve witnessed? You can imagine an encounter becoming a story, a story attracting followers, and those followers developing rituals around the hope of experiencing it themselves.
After standing in that church, I could understand how this could grow beyond a handful of people following a charismatic leader.
The game gets even more transgressive as you continue, pushing further into disturbing, sexual, violent, and depraved territory. You encounter these disgusting, mutant-like, zombie-like figures that I didn’t fully understand when I first saw them. And the whispers about what happens behind closed doors become harder to separate from what you’ve now witnessed.
I keep coming back to that woman who knows her limits, and the merchant suggesting that other people don’t understand what they’re getting into. There’s a difference between wanting pleasure, believing a promise, and understanding what fulfilling it might actually mean.
But if I were already in that mindset – if this were what I wanted – I can understand witnessing a miracle and feeling like I had to follow that path, no matter how horrific it became.
Clive Barker’s Hellraiser: Revival is out now on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, PC, and Nintendo Switch 2.
