Event Horizon (1997)

Movie Info

Welcome to the Event Horizon…

The Event Horizon is a special ship.  Meant to bend space through dimension travel, the Event Horizon disappears on its maiden voyage…showing up seven years later on the outskirts of Neptune.  Captain Miller (Laurence Fishburne) is brought in with his team of pilots to escort the Event Horizon’s creator Dr. William Weir (Sam Neill) to the Event Horizon and bring it home.  The Event Horizon houses a mystery:  who killed the crew and what lead to their deaths?  The Event Horizon is still alive and the horror is continuing.

Directed by Paul W. S. Anderson, Event Horizon is a blend of science-fiction and horror.  The movie was met with largely negative reviews and fared poorly at the U.S. box-office (though it did well overseas).  Since its release, Event Horizon has gained a rather large cult following and has moved up a bit with re-evaluation.

Red Rum! Red Rum! Red Rum!

I didn’t like Event Horizon much the first time I saw it and still find it rather ho-hum.  Sadly, it is probably the best film of Paul W. S. Anderson who seems to always direct rotten pictures.  The movie is a strange combination between Solaris, The Black Hole, and The Shining.

The story of Event Horizon is interesting but poorly executed.  The ship taps into what could be considered Hell for its dimension of transportation and brings things back from it.  This is kind of interesting, but the movie doesn’t really seem to have much direction in the story.  The atmosphere built by the film is strong, but it squanders it on cheap scares, a bad looking “monster”, and a weak ending.

Wow, this tunnel is neat…I wish I had made the whole ship a bit cooler looking

The cast of the movie is quite strong and fun but also seem to struggle with a script that just isn’t quite there.  Sam Neill’s struggles with the loss of his wife never really develops in my opinion and could have been utilized better.  Laurence Fishburne is good as the leader of the rescue ship and main opposition to Neill who is rapidly cracking.  Other fun cast members include Jason Isaacs, Joely Richardson, Sean Pertwee, and Kathleen Quinlan…but unfortunately, all of these actors are criminally underused by the plot which actually could have benefited from being a bit longer.

You will bow to my disappointing finishing move!!!

Visually, Event Horizon is good at points and awful at other points.  The standard space special effects are solid (though leaning toward the cheap side), but the visuals inside the ship are rather generic.  I wish that the ship had been a bit more distinctive like the actually visually compelling tunnel of green lights that Neill enters to reboot the computer.  Instead, we get a ship that looks just like every ship since Alien was released.  In addition to average interiors, we have a final monster with Neill that is really bad looking and not very scary.  I wanted pure terror and a scarred body beating up on Laurence Fishburne doesn’t live up to this.

Event Horizon is one of those movies that could have been good with a better director and some story tweaking to get the pacing and style down a bit better.  I want to like this movie, and I don’t quite understand why many have latched on to this movie which seems half-baked.  It isn’t the worse movie out there, but with so many great supernatural horror films, Event Horizon just isn’t one of them.