Movie Defense Force: Event Horizon - You Won't Need Eyes To See
- Thread starter Jimothy Sterling
- Start date
Also Jim I know hoe much you love Dead Space, I haven't really played it myself. However I feel I must encourage you to check out System Shock 2. I played it recently and it truly is like Event Horizon meets Aliens. It even has the whole space ship that can travail faster then light thing with a smaller ship maned by Marianas to piggy back on it (reminds me of the Lewis and Clark)
On top of that, the main enemy force is the creepiest thing ever. I won't go into spoilers but lets just say they get into your head and under your skin.
On top of that, the main enemy force is the creepiest thing ever. I won't go into spoilers but lets just say they get into your head and under your skin.
One of the few legitimately scary movies in the history of horror (for me). I saw this in the theater, as a teen who was obsessed with space travel and wanted desperately to become an astronaut. This movie opened my eyes to the idea of the Unknown as it pertains to all the horribad shit we don't know about, but with a little effort can come up with if we really think about it... basically we've not a damn clue whats out there besides gases and matter and energy, and its as real a possibility that something we could conceivably call "hell" is lurking at a point somewhere in this vast universe or sideways in another dimension.Jimothy Sterling said:
More or less the whole damn movie scared me so bad I don't wanna be a space explorer any longer. Fuck that noise.
Skipped all of the comments as I have yet to see it but I certainly plan to now. It's been on my "interesting" to-watch list since I heard of it near its release date and now I should really get to it.
Sometimes you find those movies you wished you had seen from Jim's Movie Defense Force. Finally watched Alien 3, and found it rather entertaining to boot, because of him. Thank God for Jim!
Sometimes you find those movies you wished you had seen from Jim's Movie Defense Force. Finally watched Alien 3, and found it rather entertaining to boot, because of him. Thank God for Jim!
The video log was originally over 20 minutes long but they had to cut it to avoid getting an NC-17 rating.RJ 17 said:
There was talk of releasing the footage on dvd but it's apparently gone and never coming back.
I've seen still pictures from it and they featured things like crucified people with their guts hanging out, someone tearing the skin off of his own face and other wonderful things.
The 40k prequel idea is great, it fits in some many ways. The gravity drive on the Event Horizon is a bit like a 40k warp drive to begin with, a warp drive is a heavily shielded and contained warp rift. Its locked behind energy fields and reinforced armour and technology to keep the warp from spilling out, when they activate it it opens a rift that the ship flies through. They have special shields that create a bubble of anti warp energy to create a bubble of reality around the ship to protect it, when they fly through a warp storm sometimes the shields get pushed back and damages the hull.SnakeoilSage said:
In stories of a Geller Field failure its often like the scene in Event Horizon, the crew go insane and attack and eat each other. Sometimes lesser daemons possess the crew and when there is a critical failure they manifest in the ship directly, the warp is fickle though. Sometimes an unprotected ship is torn apart in seconds, other times it gets cast away in a random direction an creatures slip in and terrorise the crew but eventually let them escape. In some instances the whole crew have had their souls merged with the ship to create a gigantic living entity, a bit like the Event Horizon being "alive".
So event Horizon could easily fit into the 40k lore as the first Human ship fitted with a warp drive but no Geller Field.
Ughh, Event Horizon. According to my IMDb I've given it 2/10 stars and I remember it was for the longest time one of my most hated movies ever. I remember thinking it was cheesy and stupid (and not in the good way). I wonder if I should give it another chance... I liked the visuals.
My biggest issue with this movie is the advertising never made it apparent it was a horror movie, at least not the commercials on TV. I went to see this with my cousin when we were young, and about peed ourselves in terror, we were like 14 at the time. The other problems I have are how goddam stupid the ending becomes and the ridiculous non-physics at work, like the airlock scene. I'm not a fan of horrendous gore in the first place, so I'm not a fan, but I also won't judge others for appreciating it, just not my thing.
The metal band/group ZAO sampled almost an entire album from this movie, and it's one of the creepiest albums I've listened to. Even the sound bites are that distressing.
"Suggest, don't show" is IMHO the best horror because your imagination can do a far better job then special effects can. That is what made The Haunting (1963) so good. Even the campy stuff like House on Haunted Hill (1959) holds up because of this.Oskuro said:
Well, I got the impression they did kind of answer the question of where the ship went: Hell.
My opinions of "Event Horizon" are kind of mixed. The basic premise is that they were working with what amounts to a Jump Drive system which allows you to rapidly cover a lot of distance by crossing over into someplace else where relative distance is different and then jumping back into your initial dimension when you reach the point where you want to be. The old question of "what is in Jumpspace" is something that has been around since the concept first started to appear in science fiction, with it generally being portrayed as an empty void where ships occasionally get lost, and which has created some odd legends among veteran space hands but for all intents and purposes it's just bunk. Things like "Warhammer 40k" decided to take the premise of "well, what if those tall tales in those fictional settings were not only true, but things were even worse than that". The idea of ships also jumping from one world to another, rather than just entering a parallel void has also been explored both by way of intentional travel, or occasional malfunctions leading to stories similar to say Star Trek's "Mirror Universe" (in their case they mostly access it with transporters though rather than through the drive system, since Trek uses a space warping technology as it's basic concept rather than jumpspace). Event Horizon is more or less "what happenes if the only other dimension is hell, or if for whatever reason that happens to be the one you punch a hole into".
To be honest for all of the things it did right, there were a lot of details that bugged me. They were trying to be a smart movie, but rather than explaining the concept of jump space, they decided to do that hokey thing (mentioned here) with Sam Neil folding a piece of paper, probably because the director thought that looked cool when he saw it before, and felt nobody would notice. The problem is that when your dealing with a movie that's trying to be smart you can't also direct it assuming the audience is dumb, especially when the whole premise revolves around the nature of the technology being used.
That said, I think the movie probably could have also used some better pay off. See it did the whole "facing your innermost fears" thing pretty well, but that's already happened in movies, both good ones, and rather bad ones. I mean heck "Full Moon Entertainment" has even gone there with Shadowzone if I remember, and this approach to a supernatural occurance has become almost a haunted house clique... and that's kind of the problem with Event Horizon, it's a clique haunted house story set in space.
This does not mean that the movie is bad, I think it's okay (my opinions have waffled over the years, I tend to have a slightly different opinion when I review it). It has some really good ideas and concepts.
While many people would call heresy (especially those for whom this is a favorite movie) I think it's one of those films that could stand with a remake. They have the creepy atmosphere right, but could do better with the explanation and elaboration, and I think that if they are going to do a haunted house story in space they need to pace themselves a little better, a lot of successful stories in that genera tend to start out minor but ramp up the crazy (and wild effects) as time goes on. Event Horizon does this, but I never really feel there is enough of a payoff or they get
quite crazy enough towards the end. What's more when it does go from cereberal to having an actual physical horror aspect I don't think it transitions well... not the worst I've seen, but it didn't seem to flow perfectly.
Of course I'm picking. Other people have mentioned John Carpenter here, and to be honest two of my favorite horror movies are "In The Mouth Of Madness" (also with Sam Neil) and "Prince Of Darkness" (which I think went over the heads of too many viewers). Neither of which are without their flaws.
That said, I'm not sure if Event Horizon needs a huge amount of defense despite my criticism. While it was reviewed badly it's also been highly inspirational. When I look at horror novels, RPGs, and even some video games and read comments from the creators or "suggested material" this movie seems to come up a lot. For all it's critical failures it's atmosphere, which is great, impressed people, and it sold the idea of science fiction horror to a lot of people. One of my favorite small press RPGs for whatever reason is one called "Abandon All Hope" which features the PCs as prisoners exiled from earth on a giant colonial prison ship which happens to get dropped through a dimensional hole into hell (in some of the adventures it's revealed this was done intentionally as part of an experiment). The demons in that are just as physical as psychological though... it still has a rather brutal system about watching both your guilt and your insanity ratings as things happen. It's sort of like a crossover between "Alien 3" and "Event Horizon" with maybe a bit of "Pitch Black" thrown in. Of course being small press... it's full of flaws... but without things like "Event Horizon" crazy works like this would probably never have been made.
My opinions of "Event Horizon" are kind of mixed. The basic premise is that they were working with what amounts to a Jump Drive system which allows you to rapidly cover a lot of distance by crossing over into someplace else where relative distance is different and then jumping back into your initial dimension when you reach the point where you want to be. The old question of "what is in Jumpspace" is something that has been around since the concept first started to appear in science fiction, with it generally being portrayed as an empty void where ships occasionally get lost, and which has created some odd legends among veteran space hands but for all intents and purposes it's just bunk. Things like "Warhammer 40k" decided to take the premise of "well, what if those tall tales in those fictional settings were not only true, but things were even worse than that". The idea of ships also jumping from one world to another, rather than just entering a parallel void has also been explored both by way of intentional travel, or occasional malfunctions leading to stories similar to say Star Trek's "Mirror Universe" (in their case they mostly access it with transporters though rather than through the drive system, since Trek uses a space warping technology as it's basic concept rather than jumpspace). Event Horizon is more or less "what happenes if the only other dimension is hell, or if for whatever reason that happens to be the one you punch a hole into".
To be honest for all of the things it did right, there were a lot of details that bugged me. They were trying to be a smart movie, but rather than explaining the concept of jump space, they decided to do that hokey thing (mentioned here) with Sam Neil folding a piece of paper, probably because the director thought that looked cool when he saw it before, and felt nobody would notice. The problem is that when your dealing with a movie that's trying to be smart you can't also direct it assuming the audience is dumb, especially when the whole premise revolves around the nature of the technology being used.
That said, I think the movie probably could have also used some better pay off. See it did the whole "facing your innermost fears" thing pretty well, but that's already happened in movies, both good ones, and rather bad ones. I mean heck "Full Moon Entertainment" has even gone there with Shadowzone if I remember, and this approach to a supernatural occurance has become almost a haunted house clique... and that's kind of the problem with Event Horizon, it's a clique haunted house story set in space.
This does not mean that the movie is bad, I think it's okay (my opinions have waffled over the years, I tend to have a slightly different opinion when I review it). It has some really good ideas and concepts.
While many people would call heresy (especially those for whom this is a favorite movie) I think it's one of those films that could stand with a remake. They have the creepy atmosphere right, but could do better with the explanation and elaboration, and I think that if they are going to do a haunted house story in space they need to pace themselves a little better, a lot of successful stories in that genera tend to start out minor but ramp up the crazy (and wild effects) as time goes on. Event Horizon does this, but I never really feel there is enough of a payoff or they get
quite crazy enough towards the end. What's more when it does go from cereberal to having an actual physical horror aspect I don't think it transitions well... not the worst I've seen, but it didn't seem to flow perfectly.
Of course I'm picking. Other people have mentioned John Carpenter here, and to be honest two of my favorite horror movies are "In The Mouth Of Madness" (also with Sam Neil) and "Prince Of Darkness" (which I think went over the heads of too many viewers). Neither of which are without their flaws.
That said, I'm not sure if Event Horizon needs a huge amount of defense despite my criticism. While it was reviewed badly it's also been highly inspirational. When I look at horror novels, RPGs, and even some video games and read comments from the creators or "suggested material" this movie seems to come up a lot. For all it's critical failures it's atmosphere, which is great, impressed people, and it sold the idea of science fiction horror to a lot of people. One of my favorite small press RPGs for whatever reason is one called "Abandon All Hope" which features the PCs as prisoners exiled from earth on a giant colonial prison ship which happens to get dropped through a dimensional hole into hell (in some of the adventures it's revealed this was done intentionally as part of an experiment). The demons in that are just as physical as psychological though... it still has a rather brutal system about watching both your guilt and your insanity ratings as things happen. It's sort of like a crossover between "Alien 3" and "Event Horizon" with maybe a bit of "Pitch Black" thrown in. Of course being small press... it's full of flaws... but without things like "Event Horizon" crazy works like this would probably never have been made.
I actually read that Paul Anderson discovered an uncut copy of the whole thing on VHS two years ago and has been trying to get an "unrated cut" approved for release... but that would require some money to clean up and restore some of the footage for a movie that bombed in the box office and the studio is dragging its feet. That's a shame; I'd love to see how twisted the original version was.HardkorSB said: