Event Horizon

Event Horizon (1997)

Directed by: Paul W.S. Anderson
Written by: Philip Eisner
Starring: Laurence Fishburne, Sam Neill, Joely Richardson, Richard T. Jones, Kathleen Quinlan, Jason Isaacs, Sean Pertwee, Jack Noseworthy (whatever the hell that means), Holley Chant, Barclay Wright, Peter Marinker, Noah Huntley

Alright, so, from the director of Resident Evil and Alien Vs. Predator and the writer of Firestarter 2 and the upcoming film Mutant Chronicles... that's a great recommendation right there, neh?

Okay, seven years after its mysterious disappearance, folks receive a distress signal from the ship Event Horizon (hey! That's the name of the movie! I just got that!), the ship which was supposed to achieve faster than light travel by bending the fabric of the Universe or something, but instead vanished into thin air. Woooo. So then these people go out to rescue the crew or whatever and find that (!) the ship is, I dunno, possessed by the Devil or something weird. It sort of fits into the "hell/Satan/666 is a math problem" category along with, like, Prince of Darkness.

There are some major logic problems here (the first of which being the age old question "What the fuck was that?!"), but there are some even simpler ones. Like, when the distress call from a ship is the sound of people screaming "Save Yourself from Hell" in Latin, why the crap would you want to go see if they're okay?

The movie is actually a big pie made out of Alien, Solaris, The Shining, 2001, any John Carpenter movie (except of course, in that the ship would have been built by the Catholic church or something) and your choice of slasher flick, with little bits of, like The Haunting and that retarded movie The Black Hole which I watched by accident one time cos I thought it was a PBS documentary.

Oh yeah, and Omen 3. Can't forget Omen 3. Sam Neill is a creepy, creepy guy.

Anyway, the movie looked pretty good - it had reasonably high production values a good cast and some decent art direction. The CG sucked, but I got used to it, and it was mildly creepy once I stopped laughing (I'll laugh at anything, I really will).

It's interesting that it was made pre Matrix because a lot of the set design, music and, well, Larry Fishburne, seems like it came from this movie, among other things. Ah, the cycle of ripping stuff off. Beautiful.

But we eventually must deal with the Big Problem. What the fuck was that? I didn't get it. For example, why does the universe of pure chaos and pure evil even exist? How do they get anything done? Why do they have a fixation with eviscerating people? If you want to lure somebody to the dimension of blood and torture and horror and screaming, doesn't it seem like a bad idea to tell them about it?

In short, the movie was fucking retarded, and I kind of have to feel bad for Sam Neill. I mean, having crosses drawn all over you once should be enough, but no, he comes back for having crap on his face again... poor bastard.

The other big problem I had with it was after about forty five minutes, I started thinking "If the Doctor was here, the problem would be solved by now". Same problem I had with Sunshine. That's the problem I have with most sci-fi movies nowadays, unfortunately... ah well.

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