![]() ![]() You half-expect to see Cenobites hanging around in the dark corners with flesh hooks at the ready. The spikes were originally supposed to be a working part of the gravity drive, but Anderson either had technical issues or lacked the budget to make the effect work so he scrapped the idea, but kept the spikes as part of the set for the visual effect. What's up with all the spikes? As it turns out, they're literally just there because they look awesome. It always makes me laugh when the team crosses from the smooth, functional, ergonomic forward sections of the ship, walk through the "meat grinder" tunnel of whirling gears, and come out in the Gothic nightmare dungeon of the gravity drive room. Its gravity drive spins and shudders and harbours a sludgy pool, while its bulkheads are draped with fleshy pink growths. The ship itself, more than the places it's been or the people who have died on it, is the true evil here. Big screen, reclined seating, booming audio. Several of the space scenes are very disorienting and, overall, I think it's one of those movies made to be experienced in a theatre atmosphere. 'Event Horizon' looks wonderful on larger format displays. The minimal (by today's standards) CGI is as rough as you'd expect from 1997, but the production values and miniatures, like the crucifix-shaped ship, are top-notch. In 'Alien', the creature plays that role, although the haunted house feeling is still present, thanks to the use of setting. This characterisation of a ship is taken much further in 'Event Horizon', the titular ship effectively becoming the antagonist. If anything, 'Event Horizon' does the "haunted house in space" thing better than 'Alien', although both use settings (or ships) like characters. and 'Event Horizon' is too, but in a very different way. The latter genre is more often rooted in the past than the future, better suited to organic fears than technological nightmares - hence the tendency to simply use the science fiction as window dressing for an old-fashioned monster movie. ![]() Sci-fi horror can sometimes feel like an odd fit. In actuality, he took Andrei Tarkovsky's 'Solaris', Clive Barker's 'Hellraiser' and Ridley Scott's 'Alien' and unceremoniously chucked them in a blender. ![]() Anderson's literal pitch for the movie was "'The Shining' in space". 'Event Horizon' is frustrating to watch because it shoots so high and falls so hard. Worst of all is Weir, who remains obsessed with the ship he created, his workaholic ways contributing to his wife's suicide. Anyway, this means that the ship has developed the supernatural power to exploit the guilt and fears of characters who keep their feelings close to the surface, like Kathleen Quinlan's med tech, Peters, who has visions of the wheelchair-bound son she's left behind on Earth, as well as those whose hang-ups are deeply concealed, like Miller, who's haunted by a dead crew member he was forced to abandon many missions ago. It seems that the Event Horizon's experimental gravity drive has tapped into a gateway to hell. Later, they begin to experience traumas from their past that only they can see. The crew finds evidence of a massacre and some recorded rantings in Latin. However, it soon becomes evident that something sinister resides in its corridors. Accompanied by the Event Horizon's creator, William Weir (Sam Neill), the crew of the Lewis and Clark, led by Captain Miller (Laurence Fishburne), begins to explore the seemingly abandoned vessel. When the Event Horizon, a spacecraft that vanished years earlier with its entire crew, suddenly reappears in 2047, a team is dispatched to investigate the ship. The difference is that I can pinpoint why it sucks, and also identify the stuff that I genuinely enjoy about it. Now that I'm more cinema literate, I can definitely say that 'Event Horizon' still isn't a good film. Since 2020: Monster Fest announced it would be screening the film (which has since taken on "cult movie" status) in 4K, I decided to revisit it. My vague memories of the film included: the shoddiness of the computer animated effects, Sam Neill's role being a long way from Dr Alan Grant in 'Jurassic Park', and that the movie itself wasn't very scary. Anderson's gory sci-fi horror flick 'Event Horizon' back around 1997 or 1998. ![]()
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