SPOILERS ARE UNMARKED! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!
"It's time."
A new league of Cenobites have plenty of new, horrific sights to show you...
Previews:
- Pinhead's new form, as seen in the trailer. In comparison to the clean appearance of the character in prior films, here her chest is scarred and cut open, and what seems to be flesh hanging from her arms.
- The Cenobites. A particular scene in the trailer shows them emerging from the shadows to torment one of their victims. Special mention goes to the reappearance of the Chatterer, who ends up looking like a Xenomorph of all things.
Film:
- The film opens with a man getting used as a sacrifice by Roland Voight. At first, he simply moves the pieces like with any other version of the puzzle box. Suddenly, as it's solved, a blade shoots out and impales him through the hand.
- Voight locks him into the room with the puzzle box, a portal opens up, and a metal chain shoots out and impales the man backwards through the kneecap. As it tries to drag him off, the man grips one of the room's pillars and pleads for mercy. Voight chillingly ignores him and the chains drag him off. Voight then prays to the Leviathan as the man is hoisted up into the air by his wounds in the background and pierced over and over again by more chains until his screams of agony and terror become more and more incoherent. The catastrophic damage to his organs that is no doubt being done makes it sound more and more like he is gargling than anything else. Oh, and he's still alive and screaming by the time the scene ends, making it crystal clear just how drawn out his death was.
- The kills. Good lord, the kills...
- Matt's death. Nothing Is Scarier is in full effect as all we see is a faucet leaking blood and then hear him scream. However, whatever happened is implied to not be pretty at all as we later see a hallucination of him completely skinned.
- Nora's death is the first time we see an extended moment of what the Cenobites deal out to their victims. The Priest strings Nora up in an uncomfortable position with chains that hook into her flesh, before then taking a pin from her head and stabbing Nora in the throat. The Priest then twists the pin around to listen to Nora's screams before the Chatterer basks in her dripping blood and tears her free from the chains, also relieving her of her back skin.
- It bears noting the Priest isn't just listening to the screams: It's piercing her vocal cords in order to tune them, twisting and adjusting the needle so her helpless shrieks rise and fall in pitch.
- The new Cenobites. Unlike their previous incarnations, these absolute angels are all flesh, with biomechanical workings thanks to the Leviathan. In fact, we later see how a Cenobite is made after Voight is taken and it is not pretty, as we watch his skin stripped away and his lips torn off.
- Pinhead's new androgynous form gives her a new Uncanny Valley edge which makes her seem more ethereal and eldritch compared to the design of the original. What's scarier is the implication that she's more sentient and aware than the other Cenobites, and she still goes along with it all out of pure pleasure.
- Voight's fate in the present. Rather than the reward he hoped for, he was afflicted with a device in his chest that tugs on his nerve endings, keeping him in constant pain. It starts and stops unpredictably so that he never becomes numb.
- There is something deeply unnerving about the idea that almost everyone who cares for you could be brutally tortured and murdered all because you made some poor choices, or even just touched a random box. Riley may earn a Redemption Earns Life in the end, but the Priest notes that having to live with this every day for the rest of her life is its own kind of torment.
- Voight’s ultimate fate - having his skin flayed in Hell, forced to look straight at the Leviathan’s true form, as he transforms into a Cenobite.
