The year is 2047, and spaceship Lewis & Clark is on its way to Neptune. Upon arrival, the search-and rescue crew finds out that they are looking for the Event Horizon, an exploration vessel that supposedly exploded seven years earlier. A tag-along scientist who built that ship explains that the cover story concealed the ships's sudden disappearance..it was actually an experiment in faster-than-light travel. Now radio signals from Neptune suggest it's back.
The ship is found in a decaying orbit, and things don't look good. The inside temperature is too cold to support the crew, and scans for life prove inconclusive. Boarding the ship, the rescue crew finds grisly remains of a few EH crewmen, but the rest is a mystery. Soon, the hallucinations start, attacking the deepest fears of the rescuers. Now the evanescent life readings make sense: this spaceship is alive, and it's not clear whether it is scaring them off or playing with them. The Event Horizon proves to be a more malevolent cousin of the Hotel Overlook, from The Shining.
"Infinite Space, Infinite Terror." That's your basic setup..the movie starts like Alien or 2001, but finishes like The Shining or Hellraiser. Along the way, you can see borrowings from those films and others. That could show a lack of originality, but director Paul Anderson shows that he has learned from those movies, and he has crafted something altogether his own. The production shows great imagination and the art direction is nothing short of brilliant.
The Event Horizon has an odd look, like something out of Jules Verne in the 19th century. The interiors appear medieval (in fact, much of it was copied from the ancient cathedral of Notre Dame). Surfaces look like they are made of unfinished iron, and the engine room has ugly studs and spikes..this ship can hurt you. The cross shape of the ship doesn't look like a crucifix, because "elbows" make the ship look more like the victim of a crucifixion.
Laurence Fishburne does a good job as the hard-nosed captain of the rescuers. Both he and Kathleen Quinlan (as a medical tech) are making their first sci-fi film and their first horror film. Sam Neill was a good choice for the enigmatic scientist. He was the center of 1995's Lovecraftian "In the Mouth of Madness." His intelligent, dark look keeps you guessing. You never quite know what secrets (and/or madness) are rattling around in there. The rest of the cast is filled out with other capable actors who make their characters distinct, much like the Alien ensemble. And I have to say that I wasn't distracted by any of the normal idiocies, where a character does something incredibly stupid, just to advance the plot. Only the most compelling illusions drive them to their demise.
With all this in the plus column, the movie is something of a dud. The sci-fi front end would have looked cool on a real sci-fi story, like Stormship Troopers, but we go to all the way to Neptune for what? Another visit with Hellraiser's Pinhead. Why bother? What's wrong with rending good old Terran flesh? Tarantino's Dusk 'til Dawn did a better job, merging bankrobber killers with a vampire flick. For me, Event Horizon just didn't deliver.
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews