Event Horizon (1997)
Or, the movie even people who don't like Paul W.S. Anderson concede is actually pretty decent.
Event Horizon is a Science-Fiction Horror movie following the crew of captain Miller (Laurence Fishburne) trying to salvage the titular deserted space ship that suddenly disappeared and reappeared sans crew after trying out an experimental hyperspace engine invented by scientist Weir, played by Sam Neil, who's along with them.
In essence, it is very much an Alien inspired horror movie on a space ship, what makes it unique, though, is that there's no clearly defined monster that's picking off the crew, rather, the ship is haunted by something less clearly defined that gets into the heads of the people on it, something not corporeal that drives them to do horrible things to themselves and each other. What that adds up to, is a movie with a rather ambitious, psychological premise, directed in a very mid budget action blockbuster fashion.
While it's interesting to theorize what a version of Even Horizon directed by a more arthouse director would look like, Anderson does his characteristic blend of fast paced, mildly sleazy and surprisingly ambitious. So what comes out of it is this movie that's too juvenile to be prestige horror and too ambitious to be an exploitation flick, occupying an awkward but overall appealing middle ground of elevated exploitation fare that critics at the time didn't really fuck with but I honestly kinda do. What makes Event Horizon more than the sum of its parts are for one, Fishburne and Neil's extremely committed portrayals of their characters, pulp science-fiction archetypes they may be, the slightly ridiculous but also surprisingly effective futurist gothic set design and, perhaps to some extent, a sense of restraint that might not have been entirely intended.
There's a sorta well known anecdote, that about 20 minutes of footage was deemed to be too violent and too gruesome to make it into the theatrical cut, footage that has since been lost and degraded in storage. And while I'm certainly curious what that may have been, I'd argue that having to pull its punches when it comes to gore might have worked out in Event Horizon's favour. The fact that its scenes of Hellraiser-esque torture are only alluded to and shown in short spurts, but never dwelled on, might just be the thin line seperating it from actually turning into the exploitation movie it narrowly avoids being. The way it is now, it still maintains a certain sense of class, or as much class as something that ends on a sing by the Prodigy will ever have.
That said, I did like Event Horizon. It's fluctuating between the much smarter and the much dumber versions of itself that it could have been but it averages out at something that honestly stands as one of the better space horror movies by far. It's the sort of thing that takes a rather out there premise and spins it into something genuinely appealing. I'm not sure how the much the fabled uncut version (or, to get into that can of worms, the officially licensed Warhammer 40K version it was originally supposed to be) would have turned out but I feel what we got is as good as it could have ever been. Like all of Anderson's best movies, I think that thin veneer of shlock covers something quite compelling and quite ambitious.
Or, the movie even people who don't like Paul W.S. Anderson concede is actually pretty decent.
Event Horizon is a Science-Fiction Horror movie following the crew of captain Miller (Laurence Fishburne) trying to salvage the titular deserted space ship that suddenly disappeared and reappeared sans crew after trying out an experimental hyperspace engine invented by scientist Weir, played by Sam Neil, who's along with them.
In essence, it is very much an Alien inspired horror movie on a space ship, what makes it unique, though, is that there's no clearly defined monster that's picking off the crew, rather, the ship is haunted by something less clearly defined that gets into the heads of the people on it, something not corporeal that drives them to do horrible things to themselves and each other. What that adds up to, is a movie with a rather ambitious, psychological premise, directed in a very mid budget action blockbuster fashion.
While it's interesting to theorize what a version of Even Horizon directed by a more arthouse director would look like, Anderson does his characteristic blend of fast paced, mildly sleazy and surprisingly ambitious. So what comes out of it is this movie that's too juvenile to be prestige horror and too ambitious to be an exploitation flick, occupying an awkward but overall appealing middle ground of elevated exploitation fare that critics at the time didn't really fuck with but I honestly kinda do. What makes Event Horizon more than the sum of its parts are for one, Fishburne and Neil's extremely committed portrayals of their characters, pulp science-fiction archetypes they may be, the slightly ridiculous but also surprisingly effective futurist gothic set design and, perhaps to some extent, a sense of restraint that might not have been entirely intended.
There's a sorta well known anecdote, that about 20 minutes of footage was deemed to be too violent and too gruesome to make it into the theatrical cut, footage that has since been lost and degraded in storage. And while I'm certainly curious what that may have been, I'd argue that having to pull its punches when it comes to gore might have worked out in Event Horizon's favour. The fact that its scenes of Hellraiser-esque torture are only alluded to and shown in short spurts, but never dwelled on, might just be the thin line seperating it from actually turning into the exploitation movie it narrowly avoids being. The way it is now, it still maintains a certain sense of class, or as much class as something that ends on a sing by the Prodigy will ever have.
That said, I did like Event Horizon. It's fluctuating between the much smarter and the much dumber versions of itself that it could have been but it averages out at something that honestly stands as one of the better space horror movies by far. It's the sort of thing that takes a rather out there premise and spins it into something genuinely appealing. I'm not sure how the much the fabled uncut version (or, to get into that can of worms, the officially licensed Warhammer 40K version it was originally supposed to be) would have turned out but I feel what we got is as good as it could have ever been. Like all of Anderson's best movies, I think that thin veneer of shlock covers something quite compelling and quite ambitious.
