Quite fittingly, Selena Menaker acquired the notoriously evil puzzle box for her wealthy boss, Roland Voight, in the sinister-looking city of Belgrade, during the prologue. Despite his desire to master its infernal secrets, he disappeared from the world under mysterious circumstances and his estate was mothballed. A few years later, Riley McKendry, a recovery drug addict, agrees to help her low-life boyfriend Trevor steal the last remaining box in his old storage unit. Of course, that holds the Rubik’s cube from Hell, which she accidently activates.
However, it draws the blood of her infinitely more responsible brother Matt instead of hers. When he inevitably disappears, to suffer the demonic Cenobites’ torments in their Netherworld (known as the Lament Configuration in previous films), she immediately makes the connection with the box. However, Trevor and Matt’s boyfriend Colin assume it is the crazy junkie in her, coming out again. Nevertheless, she convinces Trevor to help her research Voight’s lurid past, starting with the infirm Menaker.
The reboot got a lot of cheerleading publicity from the announcement a woman had been cast as the Hell Priest (a.k.a. Pinhead). Jamie Clayton is certainly makes a scarier, more interesting Pinhead than Paul T. Taylor in Judgement, but she still cannot match Doug Bradley regal wickedness as the original.
To compensate, Goran Visnjic contributes some colorful human villainy as Voight, while Haim Abbas performance as the guilt-wracked Menaker is unusually complex for the horror franchise. In general, the Cenobites look more Giger-esque this time around—so British action star Selina Lo is nearly unrecognizable as “The Gasp.” The real trouble is Odessa A’zion and Drew Starkey have to carry a large portion of the film, but their portrayals of Riley and Trevor completely lack charisma and common sense. It is hard to picture a less appealing on-screen couple.
