Now that’s a puzzle we want to solve!

The following piece contains spoilers for the 2022 Hellraiser. Continue at your own risk.

David Bruckner's Hellraiser brings Pinhead (Jamie Clayton) back to torment a new cast of characters who get involved with the Lament Configuration Box. The mysterious puzzle opens rifts to a hellish dimension known as The Labyrinth, sucking human sacrifices to be tortured by the Cenobites, disfigured human-like creatures who are incapable of distinguishing pleasure and pain. At first glance, the Hellraiser reboot sticks close to the main elements created by Clive Barker’s bestselling novel The Hellbound Heart and his beloved 1987 film adaptation. However, the reboot also brings something new to the table, as it reimagines the rules that bind Cenobites to the service of humans and expands the functionality of the Lament Configuration Box, giving five new shapes to the bloody puzzle.

The Lament Configuration Box is a cubic puzzle that people need to solve to summon the Cenobites. Since the Cenobites come from a dimension of unbounded pleasures and pain, people solved the Lament Configuration Box hoping to experience things unknown on Earth. That’s why in the original Hellraiser movie, Pinhead, the Hell Priest (Doug Bradley) says that the Cenobites might be angels or demons, depending on who you ask. In the reboot, things are not so simple.

In Bruckner’s reboot, solving the puzzle grants an audience with Leviathan, the god who rules over the Labyrinth. In this audience, the current owner of the puzzle may ask for a gift between six possible choices: “life,” “knowledge,” “love,” “sensation,” “resurrection,” or “power.” However, to fully solve the puzzle, solving the Lament Configuration is not enough in the reboot. An audience with god is only granted after the owner solves five Configurations, leading the puzzle to take a sixth and final Configuration. The catch? Each new Configuration demands a human sacrifice. Every time someone solves a Configuration, a blade comes out of the puzzle, cutting the owner's hand. The cut marks the person to be hunted by the Cenobites, and the only way to get out alive is to stab another person with the puzzle. So, the final prize is only available to someone who sacrificed five human lives to get what they want.

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After a new Configuration is solved and the Cenobites claim a new victim, the puzzle changes shape automatically, presenting a new challenge to the owner. Each shape of the puzzle box corresponds to a Configuration. And each Configuration represents one of the gifts that can be granted by Leviathan. The first shape, the cube, is the Lament Configuration, representing “life.” In the reboot, that also means choosing to live free from the Cenobites, always regretting the more exciting choices you never picked.

After the first puzzle is solved, the box takes the shape of a dodecagon, a twelve-sizes polygon. This shape, also known as the Lore Configuration, represents “knowledge.” The third shape looks just like a star, is named Lauderant, and represents love. The fourth step in the puzzle, the Liminal Configuration, is thin, long, and with star-shaped bases. It represents “sensation.” The fifth puzzle, the Lazarus Configuration, represents “resurrection” and is the more extended box of them all. Finally, once all five sacrifices are offered to the Cenobites, the box takes the shape of a diamond, or The Leviathan Configuration, a representation of “power.”

As the reboot reveals, choosing power means turning yourself into a Cenobite, a being who draws power from the domination of people in suffering. And while the multiple Configurations are something new for the reboot, the diamond-shaped puzzle actually traces back to Hellbound: Hellraiser II. In that movie, the Lament Configuration Box becomes diamond-shaped to mimic Leviathan, trapping the protagonist Kirsty Cotton (Ashley Laurence) in the Labyrinth. And when the puzzle is solved and the box is back into its cubic shape, Leviathan itself bends over and apparently dies. Yep, the original Hellraiser movies are wacky, but they are also very entertaining.

While the Hellraiser reboot introduces new Configurations to the cursed puzzle box, the movie still echoes Barker’s original work. It’s not random that the first and last steps of the complex puzzle are based on the boxes introduced in the first two movies of the franchise. And in doing so, Bruckner’s Hellraiser both pays homage to everything we love in the franchise and paves the way to a dark and gloomy future filled with Cenobites and their twisted games.

Hellraiser is available right now on Hulu. Check out the movie’s trailer below:

Marco Vito Oddo is a writer, journalist, and amateur game designer. Passionate about superhero comic books, horror films, and indie games, he works as a Senior News Writer and Features Writer for Collider.

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