Popular horror writer Clive Barker successfully transfers his trademark perverse chills to the screen in his directorial debut - a surreal, claustrophobic and graphic shocker about the consequences of opening a Chinese puzzle box. The film allows Barker to introduce a dark new mythology to the genre as well as the Cenobites - leather-clad, disfigured angels from hell with intriguing concepts of dimensional pleasure and pain. Despite his uneven direction, and the odd Cricklewood locations, this absorbing sado-masochistic chiller really delivers the gruesome goods.

A hedonistic man finds a mysterious puzzle box that summons a group of gruesome beings known as the Cenobites. These otherworldly entities open the doors to a dominion where pain and pleasure are indivisible.