Event Horizon

Starring Laurence Fishburne and Sam Neill
Screenplay by Philip Eisner
Directed by Paul Anderson

IN SHORT: A very cool looking SF thriller, but it's manipulative and derivative.

Event Horizon may have yearned to be a horror flick in the classic Hitchcock mode, since by now we're all used to horror flicks with regulation macro body piercings and slice 'n' dicings. Short of ripping a couple of pair of eyeballs out, Event Horizon fails on the macro piercings front, so we'll relegate it to thriller and leave it at that.

Right off the bat I'll tell you that this is not Cranky's favorite type of flick (though I do love a good non-slice n dice SF story) so I lugged along a fellow eDriver, Trent Haaga, who revels in this stuff. His review is a couple of graphs down. Never let it be said that Cranky ain't fair.

"Event Horizon" was the christened name of the first faster than light spaceship, based on similar technology to that which sent solo scientist Jodie Foster out into the stars earlier this summer. (Let's get it out of the way quickly; the production time required for movies like these is way to long for there to have been a direct cop. Contact's engine was based on current scientific theory, so let's say minds think alike and move on.) After launch, somewhere on the other side of Neptune, the ship vanished and was never heard from again.

Until seven years later. A team of rescue-nauts, led by Laurence Fishburne takes EH designer Sam Neill on a trip to the far side of the solar system, where the empty ship waits. Various body parts are pasted along the walls of the darkened ship -- we see 'em, the rescuers don't -- and things tend to get real interesting as the living crew is trapped among the remains of the dead.

What is waiting in the wings is an engine compartment lined with very large, very sharp and pointy potentially body piercing thingies. Right off the bat we discover that somewhere inside the engine is a link to another dimension filled with nasty stuff. All well and good.

What Event Horizon falls back on is the jolt in the chair by getting VERY LOUD after being very quiet for a long time. Composer Michael Kamen aids this process with his score. It's a basic by the book manipulation, and it works fine the first couple of times it shows up. It's overused.

Our rescue-nauts begin to suspect that something ain't kosher with the abandoned ship. Previously suppressed fears become dangerously real, but they're nothing compared to what you've come to expect. The living begin to think that the ship is alive and trying to kill them. They run perilously through darkened corridors and are continually drawn back towards the engine room and those large pointy things. You wait for the body piercing...

Which is fine by me, since I prefer the anticipation to the gore. But if you're gonna imply it's coming, you may as well go whole hog.

Then again, I'm an old fogey. Herewith the opinions of my co- worker (and half my age, so he's no fogey) Trent Haaga, an aficionado of the genre. Trent?

Event Horizon is not the first time I've seen a horror movie in space. Nor, I suspect, will it be the last. But I'm a sucker for a horror movie no matter where it takes place! Event Horizon features a handful of characters stranded someplace with a malevolent entity picking them off one by one. Like a early 80s slasher flick - I love those! Not to mention unseen forces banging on the other side of a squealing metal door. Like the classic sequence in The Haunting - I love that movie!

It all comes down to the source of all evil emanating from a strange satanic goo. Like in John Carpenter's Prince of Darkness - I love that movie. In a possessed ship that manifests your worst fears. Like the hotel in The Shining - I love that movie! And the last idea, Hell in space. Like in Hellraiser IV: Bloodline - Okay, that one was a piece of junk. But it wouldn't stop me from watching another Hellraiser flick.

So you see, it's difficult for me to not like Event Horizon. Derivative? Certainly. But they picked (mostly) good movies to steal from.

Damn. He's

On average, a first run movie ticket will run you Eight Bucks. Were Cranky able to set his own price for Event Horizon, he would have paid . . .

$5.00

Trent's rating was $5, too. We hit it for different reasons, though.

	Click to buy films by Paul Anderson
	Click to buy films starring Sam Neill
	Click to buy films starring Laurence Fishburne

The Cranky Critic® is a Registered Trademark of, and his website is Copyright © 1995 - 2012 by Chuck Schwartz. Articles by Paul Fischer are Copyright © 1999 - 2006 Paul Fischer. All images, unless otherwise noted, are property of,©, ®, ™ their respective studios and are used by permission. All Rights Reserved. Not to be used or copied for any commercial purpose. Academy Award™(s) and Oscar®(s) are registered trademarks and service marks of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.