Stephen King hailed Clive Barker “the future of horror” after reading Books of Blood, his pre-Hellraiser anthology book series that Hulu has adapted into a feature-length film. For someone who writes horror stories, that’s like Mike Trout complimenting your swing or Julia Butters giving you props for “the best acting I’ve ever seen in my whole life” (Julia > Leo). Speaking of Quentin Tarantino, he also once raved about Barker, calling him “the great imaginer of our time. He knows not only our greatest fears, but also what delights us, what turns us on, and what is truly holy in the world. Haunting, bizarre, beautiful.”
Based on the trailer above, Books of Blood is not lacking in the bizarre. There’s naked mediums, bloody words scrawled on the wall (“i’m not sleeping mommy”), bugs, bumps in the night, unwanted guests in the bedroom, carved skin, and the most terrifying scare of all: someone drinking their tea too loudly. I’d rather play Seven Minutes in Heaven with Pinhead than spend an extra second around that guy, thank you very much.
The Seth MacFarlane-produced Books of Blood, which stars Britt Robertson, Rafi Gavron, Anna Friel, Yul Vazquez, and Freda Foh Shen, premieres on Hulu on October 7.