I enjoy how Hellraiser: Revival's 'real-life' bondage club makes the rest of Hellraiser: Revival feel kind of embarrassing

The opening of *Hellraiser: Revival* immerses players in a grotesque murder dungeon inspired by Clive Barker’s films, blending BioShock’s macabre aesthetics with Amnesia’s oppressive atmosphere. The Scarlet Church’s cultists mutilate themselves in devotion to the Cenobites, their rituals rendered absurd by over-the-top gore and all-caps dogma. Aidan, the protagonist, navigates this world with little humor, embodying a sincerity that clashes with the game’s otherwise pretentious tone. The dungeon’s design prioritizes visceral shock over narrative coherence, leaving players to piece together lore from scattered, disjointed materials.

After escaping the dungeon, players enter a real-life BDSM club founded by the cult as a recruitment front, offering a stark contrast to the preceding chaos. The club’s atmosphere is deliberately mundane, with patrons chatting casually and engaging in consensual activities like crafting and recovery. Signs about safe sex practices and NPC dialogue underscore the club’s ironic detachment from the game’s earlier brutality. The manager distinguishes between the club’s ‘innocent maniacs’ and the dungeon’s ‘batshit maniacs,’ though the reviewer finds neither label entirely apt.

The club’s most striking feature is its use of mundane mechanics to subvert the game’s violent gameplay. Players must craft sex toys—a paddle, spreader bar, and dildo—to gain access to the VIP area, using the same right-trigger input employed for stabbing enemies moments earlier. The scene’s awkwardness stems not from the act itself but from the juxtaposition of mundane and grotesque, highlighting the game’s tonal whiplash. The reviewer notes the club’s chill demeanor, with NPCs resembling those in *Hitman 2016*, further emphasizing its disconnect from the surrounding horror.

Ultimately, the BDSM club serves as a meta-commentary on *Revival*’s over-the-top violence, framing the rest of the game as performative and unserious. The reviewer suggests the club’s presence makes the preceding eight hours of gore feel contrived, akin to artists ‘goofing around’ rather than crafting genuine horror. While the game’s developers may intend the cult’s earnestness to be off-putting, the club’s grounded realism exposes the rest of the experience as hollow spectacle. The reviewer hints this moment could mark a natural endpoint for the playthrough.