Hellraiser is the textbook case for exponential decay through sequels. With four theatrical releases out of nine movies, it’s now more direct-to-video than film, and fully a third of them turned out to be all a dream. That’s how an IP sneaks out a distress message through its own writers while dreaming of the literary skill of fortune cookies. Knowing it’s less capable of a dignified death than its own immortal demon torturers, I’ve peeked into the future of a franchise:

• Hellraiser XIV: pinhead invents and markets the Rubix cube
• Hellraiser XIX: Pinhead discovers that the true Lament Configuration is “hunched over while reading internet comments”
• Hellraiser XXIII: the movies get into a bizarre sequel-off with the Fast and Furious
• Hellraiser XLI: Butterball fails on Biggest Loser as the other cenobites help rival contestants lose far more weight
• Hellraiser LV: the movie is set in a petting zoo of talking animal sidekicks in an attempt to create a cenobite stupider than CD. It fails.
• Hellraiser XC is just an ant scratching its exoskeleton in another extinct monkey landfill. Still better than Revelations.
• Hellraiser MMCI: a gang of perverted energosadists insist on interacting with others at sub-gigahertz oscillation frequencies.
• Hellraiser MMCMCLXII: bored cenobites hoping next sentient species evolves with something new to pierce
• Hellraiser I)))MIII Cenobification proving difficult as cold hydrogen atoms lack ability to wear black leather.
• Hellraiser I)))MIV Pinhead attempts to mutilate hydrogen atoms and is destroyed in atomic explosion

These first appeared on my twitter.

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