Event Horizon

 

I'm hard pressed to find many Sci-Fi movies that combine horror and supernatural as well as Event Horizon. Paul W.S. Anderson does something different than your typical aliens or creatures in space. This is more of a ghost story and finding out what haunts someone the most on a spaceship. The movie toys with the idea of hell really being another dimension where your greatest psychological fears and traumas are realized and relived. It's also exceptionally well made. Anderson has never paid as much attention to detail in things like set and costume design as he does in this movie. The sound design and Adrian Biddle's stylish cinematography also make Event Horizon a great watch as well as scary and atmospheric. 

Synopsis: "When the Event Horizon, a spacecraft that vanished years earlier, suddenly reappears, a team is dispatched to investigate the ship. Accompanied by the Event Horizon's creator, William Weir (Sam Neill), the crew of the Lewis and Clark, led by Capt. Miller (Laurence Fishburne), begins to explore the seemingly abandoned vessel. However, it soon becomes evident that something sinister resides in its corridors, and that the horrors that befell the Event Horizon's previous journey are still present."

The movie opens with some pleasant music, while the camera zooms in on a person floating in a ship. The camera zooms in the person screams while you see his eyes have been removed and he has scars all over his face. That camera angle then zooms into his mouth and transitions to Sam Neill's eye as he wakes up. This is the start of some dazzling camerawork. There are many close ups on people's eyes but they do a great showing objects reflecting in people's eyes throughout. This scene exits with an upside down camera angle that slowly spins right side up as the shot zooms out of the spaceship into space. 

The next scene is the mission briefing where a ton of exposition happens about both the crew of Lewis and Clark on the mission and the mission itself. Dr. Weir explains that he created the Event Horizon and the ship has a gravity drive to fold space-time to create a wormhole that can transport the ship to any place and time at faster-than-light speed. This scene is charming as Dr. Weir uses scientific lingo none of the crew can understand. He then grabs one of the pilot, Smith's (Sean Pertwee) centerfolds and pokes pieces of paper in it to explain. While there is some small talk among this crew and they introduce themselves one by one, it is very quick exposition. There was supposed to be a cut of this movie that was around 30 minutes longer and introduced the characters and Dr. Weir to develop their characters more. At the same time, have the exposition this quickly allows this movie to move at a fast pace. Compare this to Alien where there is not only more time before they go to the planet to get to know the characters but it they have more time with characters splitting up. What is great though is Anderson's attention to detail. All the characters have shirts, outfits, and dogtags with their names on it. The ship itself is much more industrial looking than pretty. It looks more practical than Sci-Fi. The miniatures are all well done. The gravity drive set is incredible to look at. 

Once on board the ship people's attitudes change. Not only do their attitude's change but they all see things that haunt them in one way or another. Things that they fear, things they are guilty of and some secrets no one else knows. There is one scene where Captain Miller (Fishburne) and Dr. Weir go to fix something in one of the ship's vents. The lighting is this bright green, almost Matrix like color. The light suddenly starts blinking on and off and Weir keeps hearing and seeing his dead wife, who is revealed later to have committed suicide. The scariest thing about Event Horizon is that people may know these hallucinations aren't real but the ship knows exactly how to make them not think about the reality. For Dr. Weir specifically the theme of this film could be seen as the difference between reality and supernatural and how the supernatural is a seduction into this world's hell. There are many times throughout this film where Weir hides what he has been seeing and denies the ship's supernatural power, yet he is first one to give into that. 

Each character is interesting, though Captain Miller specifically is great. Fishburne brings some great range as a strict, but caring Captain who is ultimately so strict because of his fear of losing another person. Richard T. Jones shines as the rescue guy for the ship who brings some much needed levity with his comedic timing and humor. Every person's fear is relatable and I think some of them would have been elaborated on more in the longer cut. While there is some blood and gore, especially in the second half, Anderson does a good job of making this a scary story through things like sound and found footage. The ship's recording heard well before the movie really gets going is scary and disturbing but also mysterious which is a good way to sum up the experience of this movie. Michael Kamen's score is also great. It's classic Michael Kamen making the exciting moments even more scary. If you're a fan of Alien or Hellraiser this movie borrows things from both. Alien in terms of plot and look, Hellraiser in terms of exploration between supernatural and reality. It stands on its own as a great Sci-Fi horror movie because of it's ideas and set pieces that haven't been replicated since. 

Rating: 8.5/10

Trivia: The scene in which Weir explains how to bend space and time in order to travel huge interstellar distances is paraphrased in Interstellar (2014). Romily uses the exact same demonstration to illustrate the theory - folding a piece of paper and pushing a pen through it while explaining it to Cooper.

Trailer: