Pandora's labyrinth : the Hellraiser puzzle box

Abstract

This essay will focus on a case study, a particular fictional game that has given rise to variants across both literature and film: the Hellraiser puzzle box. We focus on Clive Barker’s short story The Hellbound Heart and two films from the film franchise: the 1987 Hellraiser and its reboot, the 2022 Hellraiser, which fleshes out (pun intended) the mythos. In addition to dis-cussing the overt horror genre framing and themes through the lenses of literary analysis and film studies, we also propose an analogy with the literary genre that most notably straddles the same nexus of body-puzzle-space, closely intertwining the three: that of detective fiction. Its similarities with and differences from the Hellraiser puzzle box will be used to elaborate the interpretation of its design, functioning, and (il?)logic.