All 11 Hellraiser Movies in Order
In this article, we are bringing you a cult horror franchise, Hellraiser sorted in the right watch order. The Hellraiser is a British horror sequel written and directed by Clive Barker based on his book, The Hellbound Heart, in 1987. Barker decided to produce the movie after he was disappointed at the initial cinematic adaptations of his novella. It turned out well since his own adaptation of the book turned into a cult classic movie that has been scaring is for generations. In honor of that, let’s see what are the Hellraiser movies in order and, how many are there!
How many Hellraiser movies are there?
There are eleven Hellraiser movies in total. The First movie was released in 1987 and it was followed by 9 sequels over the span of 31 years. The latest entry into the franchise is the reboot of the original movie released in 1987 titled simply “Hellraiser”.
Hellraiser movies in order at a glance
With eleven installments in the Hellraiser series, this is going to be a longish order. It’s important to mention that the following order is simply the release order as the movies do not follow a simple chronological timeline. The following are the Hellraiser movies in the order of release:
- Hellraiser (1987)
- Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988)
- Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth (1992)
- Hellraiser: Bloodline (1996)
- Hellraiser: Inferno (2000)
- Hellraiser: Hellseeker (2002)
- Hellraiser: Deader (2005)
- Hellraiser: Hellworld (2005)
- Hellraiser: Revelation (2011)
- Hellraiser: Judgement (2018)
- Hellraiser (2022)
The latest entry was released full 6 years after Hellraiser: Judgment and is considered to be a reboot of the original movies released in 1987.
What is the best way to watch Hellraiser movies?
You should watch Hellraiser movies in chronological order which does not coincide with the order of release. The timeline of Hellraiser movies is somewhat messy, only the first few installments followed a straightforward timeline. To immerse yourself in the story fully we recommend you watch the Hellraiser movies in chronological order.
Hellraiser Movies in Chronological Order
The first movies of the series are synced strictly in chronological order, but the last six are somewhat less sequential in the storyline. But the entire collection still makes a good horror movie. And now the simple watch order of Hellraiser:
1. Hellraiser (1987)
The movie begins with a sure Frank Cotton, who buys a puzzle box and rushes home to solve the box’ puzzle. He climbs into his attic when he gets home and tries many combinations until he solves the puzzle. But, just as he waits, watching in excitement to see what mystery of the Box will unfold, chains with hooks come flying out of it and tear him apart.
Out of the dark, a strange figure emerges and resets the Box, turning the room back to normal. A few weeks later, Frank’s brother Larry moves into Frank’s house to work things out with his wife, Julia, who cheated on him with Frank just before their wedding. Larry’s daughter, Kirsty, decides to stay with them to avoid being part of the “madness.”
As Larry tries moving his things into the house, he gets a cut on his hand, and the blood drips to the floor even. Unknowingly, the blood of Larry resurrects Frank but not entirely as he is without flesh. Julia stumbles upon Frank and learns he can return to his former self by draining the life forces of living people.
She still has feelings for him, and she helps him get complete by luring men for Frank to regenerate them. However, a later discovery comes out that Frank bought the Box to escape this world as he has lost his passion.
Kirsty suspects Julia and follows her, but she narrowly escapes with the Box. She deals with the Cenobite leader, Pinhead, to catch Frank, who has evaded them for her freedom. She returns home to find her dad dead with Frank in his stead.
As Frank chases her to kill her, the Cenobite appears and rip him to shreds, and then they decide to go back on their deal with Kirsty, but she takes the Box and sends them back to their realm with the Cenobite gone. Kirsty tries destroying the Box in a fire, but the disguised creature steals it back, having the cycle to start all over again.
2. Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988)
The story continues as Kirsty Cotton is admitted into a psychiatric hospital over the events in Hellraiser. Channard, her doctor, secretly has an obsession with the Lament Configuration that opens the hell-like world of the Cenobite and Pinhead. He gets the mattress Julia died on and sacrificed a mentally ill patient to revive Julia from Hell.
He continues to let her feed off more mentally ill people from his hospital to get her completely regenerated. Finally, after receiving word from his assistant McRae, Kirsty arrives at Channard’s house, who later dies to complete Julia’s regeneration.
They enter after the Lament Configuration is unlocked by a child named Tiffany. Kirsty pursues to rescue Tiffany and bumps into Pinhead and the Cenobites, who later guide her on. Julia tricks Channard and gets turned into a Cenobite by Leviathan, i.e., the Devil. Kirsty finds Tiffany heads out as she solves the Lament Configuration to close the gates of Hell.
3. Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth (1992)
After Pinhead reveals his human self in Hellraiser II, he splits into two personalities; his former self Captain Spencer Elliot and Pinhead, who was trapped in a pillar seen at the end scene of the last movie along with the Box.
A nightclub owner, J.P. Monroe, buys this pillar and accidentally releases Pinhead but decides to work for him, bringing people to feed on until he regenerates. A journalist, Joey Summerskill, learns about the Box and Pinhead after encountering a witness to the Box’s power.
She later has a vision of Spencer, and he reveals to her the only way to stop Pinhead is to get them fused back together as his human nature can get the vicious demon under control, but she has to use the Box to send him back to Hell.
Joey heads over to the nightclub with the Box, where Pinhead has caused a bloody massacre but has to run away when Pinhead brings all he has killed in the club back to life as Cenobites to be his army.
When cornered in a church by the Cenobites, she uses the Box to send them to Hell but is also taken along but to Limbo. At Limbo, Spencer’s spirit fuses with Pinhead and is sent back to Hell by Joey, after which she returns to earth and buries the Box in concrete.
4. Hellraiser V: Inferno (2000)
Joseph Thorne is a police officer that often gets involved with illegal businesses and harasses women on the job. While investigating a case, he finds a mysterious box at the crime scene and takes it home to have a little fun as he likes puzzles. He solves the puzzle and begins to receive hallucinations, and gets a revelation of the killer is known as “The Engineer.”
Trying to find the culprit, he finds out the Engineer has a hostage child whose finger he leaves at each crime scene. As he tries to receive therapy, his psychiatrist turns out to be Pinhead, who reveals that everything going on with Thorne was his punishment for all his shortcomings and ends up killing him.
5. Hellraiser VI: Hellseeker (2002)
Hellseeker begins with Trevor Gooden, who escapes a car accident as his car plunges over a bridge and into a river, but his wife, Kirsty Cotton (from Hellraiser I), doesn’t make it yet her body is not found.
However, waking up after a month in a coma, an investigation is on to find the cause of the accident by detective Given and Lange. Trevor also experiences some hallucinations and watches his friend commit suicide.
When the detectives summoned him to the police station, he found out they were actual demons and fled to the morgue. There, Pinhead appears to him and reveals to him that he was being punished for being disloyal to his wife, and in reality, he was dead, and Kirsty pinned some murders on him. It ends with Kirsty walking away from the original accident of Trevor with the Box in her hand.
6. Hellraiser VII: Deader (2005)
A reporter Amy Klein is on a case in Bucharest, Romania, to investigate a ritual killing of a cult who call themselves “The Deaders.” She heads to the address of her lead to find her dead with the Box in her hands. She takes the Box back to her hotel and opens it. She later bumps into Joey (from Hell on Earth), who warns her about the activities of the Deader.
Later on, Amy is captured by the leader of the Deader, Winter LaMarchand, who believes it’s his bloodline’s destiny to rule Hell, making him form the Deaders.
She uses the Box to summon Pinhead and the Cenobite, who arrive to kill Winter and decide to take Amy with them to punish her for invoking them, but she takes her own life in an attempt to save herself. The movie ends with the news reporter who takes over from Amy finding the Box.
7. Hellraiser VIII: Hellworld (2005)
Many teenagers are addicted to a computer game, Hellworld, causing Adam to commit suicide. The five remaining friends blame themselves for not stopping Adams’s suicide ever since. Finally, after two years, they all reluctantly attend a Hellworld-themed party and are offered drinks on arrival by the Host, who turns out to be Adams’s dad.
After that, a series of scary events haunt all of them, which later turn out to be hallucinations of their consciences from the onset. First, however, as they were now buried alive in a casket by the Host, with three of them already dead, leaving just Chelsea and Jake, who is later rescued by the police on receiving an anonymous phone call.
The Host sits in Adams’ room and comes across the Lament of Configuration and opens it, therefore, summoning Pinhead and his Cenobites who kill him. It ends with the police walking into the Host’s room and finding it covered with blood.
8. Hellraiser IX: Revelations (2011)
Steven Craven and Nico Bradley run away from home and are soon missing, leaving behind a video that shows their last appearance and the Box. A year later, their families have dinner, but a commotion breaks out with Steven’s sister, Emma. Emma complains that the contents of the video are revealed.
Later, Emma goes through Steven’s things and finds the Box, and recognizes it from the video. As she plays with it, Steven appears all covered in blood, because Nico killed Steven and took his skin. Then, he shoots Emma’s dad and holds the rest of the family captive.
Emma uses the Box to summon Pinhead, who appears with Steven, who is now a Cenobite. They take Nico, who has escaped them before but is killed by Emma’s dad in a dying act of revenge, and they take Emma’s mom instead, leaving Emma alone with the Box.
9. Hellraiser X: Judgement (2018)
The ending of this installment disrupts the storyline and doesn’t sync all too well with the next. Three detectives investigate a case on a serial killer known as the “Preceptor.” One of the Detectives, Sean, follows a lead to a house where he passes out and wakes up amid Pinhead and the Stygian Inquisitions. They grant judgment in Hell but hopefully escape with the Box when angel Jophiel intervenes.
On further investigation, Sean and Christine, the last of the three detectives, find the Preceptor’s hideout and she is shocked when she finds out Sean is the killer. David soon arrives at the scene and is placed as Sean’s hostage. Sean makes David and his wife open the Box, and Pinhead comes with the auditor of the Stygian Inquisitions.
His plans to offer David and his wife to replace himself fails when the auditor deems him guilty. Angel Jophiel makes another entry saving Sean once more as he is part of “God’s” plan. Stubbornly, Pinhead gets Sean killed by Christine and is Punished by “God” to roam the earth as a mortal.
10. Hellraiser IV: Bloodline (1996)
In Hellraiser IV, the story ends but dates back to the origin of the Lament Configuration. Through a series of flashbacks, we’re able to see the Box created by a French toy-maker, Philip LaMarchand, in 1796 but for a Duc de L’Isle as per order.
After the Box’s creation, L’Isle uses it to summon a demon, Angelique, to work for him but is later killed by his assistant Jacques who later kills LeMarchand as he stands to be a threat to the destruction of the Lament Configuration.
Two hundred years later, LaMarchand’s descendant, John Merchant, builds a skyscraper, like the Lament Configuration causing Angelique’s appearance in the US after killing Jacques for being difficult. Angelique tricks a guard into solving the Lament Configuration to summon Pinhead, who fights her until they become a truce and align.
Angelique kills Merchant, but his wife solves the Lament Configuration to send them back. And now in the present where Dr. Paul Merchant tries to plead innocent as he narrates this story.
Pinhead arrives on the spaceship along with Angelique and other Cenobites after Paul opens the Box. He luckily flees the ship and activates the Elysium Configuration to destroy Pinhead and the Cenobites, this time permanently.
11. Hellraiser (2022)
The story of Hellraiser resets with the release of Hellraiser 2022. Despite being named as the original movie, it’s not a remake or a sequel, in fact, it doesn’t even come close to the original The Hellbound Heart storyline. Hellraiser has a completely different story and can be considered a total reboot of the franchise.
Hellraiser (2022) was directed by David Bruckner and features stars such as Odessa A’zion, Jamie Clayton, Brandon Flynn, Goran Višnjić, Drew Starkey, Adam Faison, Aoife Hinds, Selina Lo, and Hiam Abbass.
The plot of the movie once again features a mechanical puzzle box, onto which a sex worker named Joey stumbles during one of his visits to Roland Voight’s manor. Joey is soon killed by a puzzle box in a gruesome manner. The time jump takes us 6 years into the future where a group of friends, Riley, Matt, Colin, and Nora accidentally find the same puzzle box while cleaning an abandoned storage box. Riley decides to keep the box for herself and eventually manages to solve it without cutting herself.
At that moment Cenobites appear and they demand another sacrifice since she cannot be one. Riley’s brother Matt, worried for her safety decided to look for her. He finds her passed out in the park after her unfortunate encounter with the Cenobites. As Matt tries to make sense of what is going on he accidentally cuts himself on the puzzle box, which makes his life sort of forfeited. Matt and Riley eventually leave the park, but later in the evening, Matt vanishes completely. Riley is now on a mission to make sense of the puzzle box as well as to find her brother.
Do you need to watch Hellraiser movies in order?
You need to watch Hellraiser movies in order otherwise the overall plot won’t make much sense to you. I know it has a somewhat complicated timeline but we’ve made that easier for you by presenting you with this ultimate chronological Hellraiser watch order.
Are Hellraiser movies connected?
Hellraiser movies are connected. They share story elements, and characters and they are in the same universe. The last movie release in 2022 is not directly connected to the original story shared between the previous 10 installments, but it’s in the same universe so it’s connected to the rest of the franchise as well.
Will there be more Hellraiser movies?
The latest installment in the franchise was just released and there’s no reason to think that there won’t be more Hellraiser movies coming our way. Although we don’t have any confirmed information so far, we can hope for a few more installments.
Where to watch Hellraiser movies?
You can watch the Hellraiser movies on Amazon Prime. The latest installment Hellraiser (2022) is available on Hulu exclusively at the moment.
