The Hellraiser movies have long espoused the ethos that pain and pleasure are indivisible, which probably explains why all the straight-to-video sequels are pretty hard to watch. Maybe it’s all very meta, and we’re supposed to enjoy not liking them.
Hellraiser started out as a slimy saga of supernatural sadomasochism and it quickly developed a complex mythology over the four theatrical releases. But from the fifth film onward all the selling points of Hellraiser – the monstrous Cenobites and the blurred lines between eroticism and agony – fell by the wayside. The majority of the straight-to-video installments have played like completely unrelated screenplays which had little bits and pieces of Hellraiser iconography clumsily grafted on after the fact. And none of those screenplays were particularly interesting. (Heck, two of them have the exact same twist ending.)