Also, check out the "written by" credit. Although the first draft was by Philip Eisner, A-list writer Andrew Kevin Walker penned the final draft. You may remember him as the screenwriter of "Seven", "Eight Millimeter", and "Sleepy Hollow."


Hell is only a word. The reality is much, much worse. 94%   May 11, 2009
Duckman (Drifting in the Cosmic Sea)
10 out of 11 found this review helpful

Before I go off reviewing this cult classic, I'll share my personal history with this movie, which dates back nearly eleven years ago.

I remember finishing up the forth grade back in June of 1998 and my brother rented Event Horizon from the local video store at the time and I watched it with him. When it was over, I was scared s***less the whole summer break. Oddly enough, I kept watching the movie throughout the summer, despite the fact that it was the most terrifying movie I've ever seen (and remains so to this day). I remember everyday from that summer, constantly fearing that a deranged Dr. Weir would break into my room and ritualistically end my existence. Even worse, I vividly remember my brother reenacting the infamous "video transmission" scene by holding golf balls covered in fake blood (to look like eyeballs) and covered himself with fake blood as he was saying "Liberate tutame ex inferis." Summer break eventually ended and with school starting up, I was finally able to dispose any memories I had of the movie. Sam Neill advertised for MCI at the time and even though I knew it wasn't really Dr. Weir, I still freaked out at the sight of those commercials. I would stay away from this movie for about seven years. In March of 2005, me and my friends held a "movie night" at my best friend's place over the weekend and I quickly saw Event Horizon on the video store shelf and I told my friends "You want to see a really messed up movie? Watch this." We rented Event Horizon and all of the deliciously evil and terrifying memories flooded back to my head that night; I couldn't sleep for days.

PLOT:

For those of you new to Event Horizon, here's the lowdown. In the year 2040, a space ship called the Event Horizon was launched to reach Proxima Centauri (Earth's nearest star) by using an artificial dimensional gateway to create a black hole, bridging the two points in space to drastically reduce journey time. When the ship goes about on its mission, it disappears without a trace. It's currently 2047 and the Event Horizon has returned off the orbit of Neptune. The Lewis and Clark rescue shuttle is dispatched to investigate and salvage the ship. As the Lewis and Clark docks with the Event Horizon and the rescue crew probes the ship, things start to go awry.

SETTING:

To me, this is the perfectly executed sci-fi/horror hybrid movie. Why? Event Horizon has many things going for it, but one of the best aspects is the perfect setting. Think about it; not only does the Event Horizon have a creepy gothic interior, the ship itself is surrounded by stormy conditions in space, you're stranded because your boarding ship was heavily damaged, the Event Horizon's communication functions are shot (not able to contact for help), and the only transmission you have of the ship's original crew truly sounds like screams out of hell. If you were aboard the Event Horizon, wouldn't you be scared? I sure would!!

CHARACTERS:

The actors do an excellent job with their roles; particularly Lawrence Fishburne as Captain Miller, Sam Neill as Dr. Weir, Kathleen Quinlan as Lt. Peters, and Jason Isaacs as D.J. To me, Dr. Weir is one of the best and most evil villains I've ever seen in film; so much so, I had to namedrop him on my review of Morbid Angel's "Altars of Madness" to describe how evil that album is. Dr. Weir isn't some one-dimensional character that's evil and nothing else; he was originally a man of scientific ambition with his Event Horizon project but his work would cause his wife, Claire, to commit suicide from loneliness. This would haunt Weir and when he boards his long lost creation, it would mentally torment him with his sins and drive him into a state of evil madness. Even prior to Weir's transformation as the antagonist, you can tell there was something messed up about him when he's aboard the Lewis and Clark, playing an intercepted transmission from the Event Horizon with a straight face, despite it sounding so hellish. Lt. Peters and Captain Miller also have interesting back stories involving Peters having to abandon her crippled son and Miller having to abandon one of his crew members on a burning space ship several years prior. Along with Weir's sins, the Event Horizon would use the sins of Miller and Peters to torment them. Rescue tech Cooper (Richard T. Jones) does a good job at providing a little humor in the movie to keep the audience from spiraling into states of madness; I particularly like him telling X.O. Starck as he was giving crew members coffee "Want something hot and black inside you?"

SCARE TACTICS AND OTHER NASTY STUFF:

Unlike most horror movies that use cliché settings and scare tactics to unnerve the audience, this uses much more original ideas to scare movie fans. In Event Horizon, there's no boogeyman, no hideous aliens, and not even any physical life forms on it!! The thing that makes this movie so scary is that it perfectly utilizes the whole "fear of the unknown" concept as no one investigating the ship knows what they're dealing with. Paul Anderson's interpretation of hell is also more original, making it more unnerving. The cliché fire and brimstone imagery has been replaced with the ship's gravity drive deck filled with some of the most horrendous looking corpses ever put on film. This brings me to my next point. There's lots of gore in this movie, but unlike mediocre flicks like Hostel and The Hills Have Eyes, the gore in this movie is used to enhance the dark, unnerving atmosphere of the movie rather than relying solely on it. In other words, the violence in this movie won't bore you. The violence in this movie REALLY is disturbing; the scene where Starck and Peters unscramble the video in the ship's computer showing the original crew killing and eating each other still freaks me out to this day. The scene where Dr. Weir attacks D.J. on the medical deck is really appalling as you can see Dr. Weir's bloody, empty eye sockets and the way he kills D.J. is guaranteed to freak out movie goers. As Weir and Miller duke it out toward the end, Weir forces Miller to see Hell and trust me, it really is terrifying.

THEMES AND ESOTERIC THINGS:

Religion is a big theme in Event Horizon, as you can already tell with the constant mention of Hell and the use of Latin in some scenes. The concept of creating artifical black holes to reduce time in space travel is really neat; I just hope I'm dead before technology advances that far!! Something that I really enjoyed was when D.J.'s carcass is shown in the medical deck, there's lots of esoteric occult symbols painted everywhere. I'm really glad that Anderson didn't use something typical like the pentagram and inverted cross to represent Hell, and the mysterious nature of these creepy symbols adds to the terror in this movie. These symbols would also appear on Dr. Weir's body when he comes back as some sort of undead creature towards the end of the movie. Everything in Event Horizon isn't tied up in a neat little bow, there's several little things that aren't fully explained. I normally don't like it when movies do this as it usually comes off as laziness, but it works for Event Horizon because they do it in a manner that satisfies the viewer at the end of the movie but makes them wonder about other things. For one, you never really see the "chaos dimension," only images of people getting horribly killed aboard the Event Horizon. So that leaves your imagination to decide what this dimension really looks like.

SOUNDTRACK:

For the most part, the soundtrack is magnificent; it perfectly fuses hard techno beats with chilling classical orchestra melodies. The weird combination perfectly suits the movie. The only music track I hated was the one at the very end by The Prodigies called "Funky S***," it sounds bad and fits nowhere in the movie, even though it was only on the credits.

EXTRAS:

The current edition of Event Horizon has a second disk full of bonus features. While these features aren't as abundant as say those in the T2: Extreme Edition DVD set, they are worthwhile. There's featurettes about the making of Event Horizon along with videos of concept art. While I liked the conceptual drawings and 3D renderings provided in the DVD set, they could have added more and I would have preferred that each image was presented as a still frame rather than a video montage with commentary because with DVD programs like Cyberlink Power DVD that include "snapshot" features, I like to make "snapshots" of these art pieces so that I can quickly get ideas when I hit the drawing boards for my own creations. Still, I enjoyed what I got in this area. The "making of" featurettes are a real treat, they show the numerous difficulties filming the movie and the neat props and filming techniques used to make this film possible. After watching these, I wasn't too pleased at Paramount for terribly rushing Paul Anderson and his crew to finish Event Horizon at a certain deadline. These corporate slimeballs would also force Anderson to cut out about 40 minutes of the original edition of the movie because test audiences were too freaked out by the level of violence in it. Some scenes were put on the bonus disk, and while pretty satisfying to see, it's a shame that they couldn't be restored into the film itself. However, given that Event Horizon came out before the DVD revolution and that Paramount wasn't too pleased by the film's poor performance in the box office, the uncut editions of the movie have been lost. Infact, Anderson stated he had to go all over the world to find the lost footage included on the DVD. In short, I can't blame Anderson for this shortcoming as the blame really belongs to Paramount for their unrealistic time demands and the wimpy test audiences for their squeamishness. All in all, the bonus disk is a nice addition to the movie.

CRITICISM:

The only bad thing I can say about Event Horizon was the song played at the end credits, which I already stated under "soundtracks." This is only noticeable flaw that I could find in this movie, but it doesn't really detract the quality of the film as a whole. Apparently, a lot of people panned this movie for being too violent and scary. That's mind-bogglingly stupid; panning an R-rated sci-fi/horror movie for being scary and violent is like panning The Ren and Stimpy Show or The Simpsons for making people laugh. For the people who didn't like the movie for these aspects, what were you expecting this to be? A family film about Shaqulle O' Neal in space rapping and playing basketball with aliens? Do your homework next time, there's ratings and content descriptions on the movie posters and DVD cases, READ THEM!!

FINAL WORD:

In Paul Anderson's filmography, Event Horizon is easily his crowning jewel. It's really sad that he'd sink to such low levels in making such junk like Alien vs Predator and Resident Evil. Event Horizon isn't a movie for everyone, but if you want a movie that will give you nightmares and weird things to discuss with fellow cinema buffs, Event Horizon will reward you greatly.


Blood chilling... The most frightening film ever made.   July 2, 2008
K. Whichard (NC)
8 out of 9 found this review helpful

Fear chills the most when you are not expecting it. When you put this film in the DVD player for the first time, you believe you are going to watch a science fiction movie that might have a bit of suspense involved. That is not the case.

Very shortly, the plot begins to subtly darken, and at first, you are invited along slowly, wondering where things are going as you begin to feel things might go wrong. As the events pick up, right when you decide to remember it is just a movie, the film siezes you by the wrist and drags you inside it's hellish world. The pace of the film picks up speed, accelerating all the time as the plot continues to darken. You are not allowed to remember it is just a movie, you are pulled even deeper as things turn horrific, pausing only briefly to hammer in the truth of the matter... There is no turning back...

You want to turn it off, but it won't let you. You want to leave, but there is no escape. This film really puts you in there with the characters, like no other film I have watched.

There is plenty of gore, but it's brief, just long enough to sink into your mind and let your imagination fill in the horrific blanks. The movie preys on nightmares.

A decent understanding of modern physics makes this film even more terrifying, as none of the plot mechanics are neccessarily fiction. The story may not be real, but nothing in it is impossible, none of the science is entirely made up for the movie, and there is no law saying this cannot happen.

Many people have given this film poor reviews. Some were expecting Star Trek, heck, lots of us were. That is one of the films biggest strengths, as you do not know what you are getting into, much like the characters. Some people say it is inaccurate, but they are misinformed. Some people say it is satanic. These people probably still think Led Zeppelin is satanic. Some say there are holes in the plot, but those holes are there for your imagination.

In the end, this is intellectual horror. You have to have a brain to understand it. You don't so much enjoy this movie as you dread it. This is not a film you watch with the family, or even a film you watch for entertainment.

This is a movie that you watch when you need to be seriously frightened, when you want to remember what it was like as a child, staring into that shadow in your closet... Knowing beyond question that something horrific was in there, waiting for you to fall asleep, and somehow, the fact that you never actually saw it... Well, that made it much, much worse.

Go ahead. Turn the lights down, and watch it alone, in surround sound, on a powerful audio system, with a nice big screen, at midnight. I dare you.


This movie scared me all throughout!!!   September 6, 2000
Paul Arellano (VA, USA)
10 out of 12 found this review helpful

"Liberate me, ex infernis..." This was the message the rescue crew from Lewis & Clark heard from the Event Horizon as they went deeper into the bowels of this derelict spaceship. The plot and story is simply fantastic. The Event Horizon (name taken from a part of a black hole) was sent on a mission beyond the boundaries of the solar system using a gravity drive, a faster than light travel system devised by Prof. Weir (Sam Neill). The gravity drive bends space to make travelling from one point to another faster than light. Simply put, the gravity drive creates an artificial black hole. Somehow, something went wrong and the Event Horizon was lost as it entered it's own black hole and was gone for 7 years. Finally, the ship came back but it came back with something in it. The spaceship indeed went somewhere but it way way beyond the boundaries of known universe. And not it brought something unseeing, something invisible yet completely evil. The rescue crew boards the ship and finds no sign of the crew. Thus, the story begins. It's more of a mental, psychological horror rather than seeing an alien being. You dont see any monsters or aliens here. The monster turns out to be the whole spaceship.

The effects are good. Lawrence Fishburne will strike you as a hard core but fair captain of the rescue ship. Sam Neill did a good job portraying himself as a obsessed scientist eager to find where the Event Horizon has gone. There are tons and tons of scary scenes. Strangely, the scariest part was when Sam Neill was shaving with a razor, as he was scraping off the cream on his neck with his razor, he hears something and then BOOM!!!! Scared the life out of me!

Get this movie.