EVENT HORIZON (1997)
Directed by Paul Anderson
Starring : Lawrence Fishburne
Sam Neill
Kathleen Quinlan
Running Time : 1hr 50mins
Rating : ***1/2 out of **** (at your own risk!)
EVENT HORIZON is dreadful horror.
No, it is not a bad film, in fact it is so good in achieving its purpose, I actually wished for the film to end itself quickly. EVENT HORIZON is not your run-of-the-mill sci-fi film, I'm sure many who have watched this will agree with me. It is not even original in that sense, and it does borrow heavily from films like ALIEN, HELLRAISER and even BLADE RUNNER. The magic of this film lies in its unorthodox setting and methodical build-up that makes it wonderfully horrifying.
The story brings us to the year 2050, where space travel have since enormously progressed. The EVENT HORIZON is actually a ship built for a secret experimental purpose; it has the ability to fold time and space thus making it possible for travelling distances not reachable in a man's lifetime. The ship disappeared as soon as it went into operation but after 7 years, it reappeared again within the orbit of Neptune. A search and rescue team led by Miller (Fishburne) is given the task to check for survivors of the EVENT HORIZON. The designer of the ship, Dr. Weir (Neill) follows along to satisfy his curiosity on what actually happened to his otherwise technologically impressive ship.
EVENT HORIZON is a sci-fi horror film, much truer to the word than say, ALIEN would ever be. While in ALIEN, the crew has to cope with a ferocious creature while encased within tight spaces, in EVENT HORIZON, the forces which goes against the crew is undefined but yet so powerful and horrifying. The story unfolds itself slowly and the suspense buildup is superb, up till the point where I really felt like saying out loud `enough! I can't stand this anymore!'. There are more than enough jolts to send your adrenalin pumping overtime. The story in itself is not exactly something very exciting and also, the acting is only at most, average by most commercial standards. Even so, the essence of horror is carried out very well in this film, thanks to its well-paced storytelling, disturbing set designs and some really gory sequences (which incidentally, has been quite generously removed by our censorship board).
Director Paul Anderson (who did MORTAL KOMBAT) and his team of `atmosphere' creators have done well in keeping EVENT HORIZON within the bounds of the term `horror'. This picture did not do very well in the US box-office most probably for the dread-factor impact it has on most audiences; people will not see it again and not many would recommend their friend to watch this. Although on the face of it, EVENT HORIZON is mostly molded for mass-entertainment; many thrills, spills and suspense to keep audiences in focus. However, the offbeat horror element which it ultimately convey audiences is very disturbing. My friend and I could not say a word to each other for quite a while after going through the `experience' of EVENT HORIZON. I guess it was just the immense feeling of dread which the film had cast upon us.
Be forewarned, this film is not for the faint-hearted nor for pure entertainment. Be prepared to be disturbed if you should decide to watch this film! EVENT HORIZON is highly recommendedààbut at your own risk! It has been a long time since good-horror embraced the big screen, and EVENT HORIZON is one.
Reviewed by Jack Choo chooea@mbox3.singnet.com.sg
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