"Event Horizon": I Stand Guilty Of Finding It A Pleasure

Another review another write/off. I dunno what it is with these things, but I seem to get more enjoyment out of writing stuff based on a specific theme that I do with any of the other stuff. But either way you lot should all be damn grateful that I let you know what I think about films, so I expect nothing in the way of comebacks. This particular posting is part of minorthreat78’s “Guilty Pleasure W/O”.

Anyone who needs this one explaining really does need a slap, but just so that all bases are covered, here’s the criteria: everyone has a film that they publicly scorn, a film that really by all means they should hate, a film that it’s really unacceptable to like, but a film that no matter what you can’t help but love. A film that you secretly pop into the videotape at night when no one’s around and allow to draw you in, despite it’s undeniable crapness.

You all know what I’m talking about, and we all have these guilty little pleasures. I have my own little weakness, and I call this weakness Event Horizon, a film that I have regularly slammed to high heaven (“a confused, messy and rather laborious affair” I recall labelling it in my Resident Evil review) when surrounded by my intellectual peers. But away from the glare of the outside world, I hold my hand up and say “Hello, my name is Chris and I’m an Event Horizon-aholic”

Thing is, despite having a plot filled with holes bigger than the one created by the titular spaceship itself; some of the most disgracefully cheap scares of all time; and a level of logic that not only breaks the laws of physics, but outright sneers at them, Event Horizon is everything it sets out to be. It’s The Shining in space, it’s Solaris with eviscerated eyeballs, it’s the legend of the Marie Celeste for Generation X, it’s... oh hell, it’s a bloody good film okay?

Set in the distant(ish) future, the events kick off in the year 2047. A rescue mission has been dispatched to the vicinity of Neptune, where seven years earlier a deep space research vessel named The Event Horizon disappeared into space itself during its maiden voyage. And now, just as inexplicably, it's reappeared. It’s whereabouts over the years remains nothing less than a mystery itself, and so the authorities send out the rescue ship ‘Lewis And Clark’ – operated by Captain Miller (Laurence Fishburne) and his highly experienced crewmembers Starck (Joely Richardson), Peters (Kathleen Quinlan), Cooper (Richard T. Jones), Justin (Jack Noseworthy), D.J. (Jason Isaacs), and Smith (Sean Pertwee) - to bring back any possible survivors and find out where in hell it’s been all this time.

‘Where in hell’ indeed. For as the crew set about their reconnaissance mission, and their equipment begins to indicate that all does not seem right on board the vessel, it becomes very clear that the lifeforms on board the ship are not human, but… something else.

So what happened to the Event Horizon then? Cue the obligatory layman terms explanation from the ships designer Dr Weir (Sam Neill) of what may have caused its disappearance: the ships gravity drive, an eerie looking mechanism surrounded by three metal rings whirling around a central core. Aside from being an ominous piece of machinery, it’s also one so powerful that it can manipulate time and space itself, bending and distorting the Universe in such a way that it allows two different areas of space to co-exist within the same area, creating a black hole that enables a space craft to travel vast distances in a matter of seconds and rendering the usual process of actual travelling completely redundant.

Event Horizon opens with a lot of class. It has detailed space vessels moving majestically against the background of stars, it has the deep rumble of the powerful drives, it has sets displaying convincingly flashy technology, and it has all those barely audible whistles and clicking that all these creepy looking monoliths thrive on. As soon as the camera peers around the desolate Event Horizon, circling Neptune's storm ravaged atmosphere in a decaying orbit, it's pretty obvious that director Paul Anderson spent his youth swotting up on all the right directors. Superbly styled in techno-Gothic space-grunge chic, this sci-fi horror crossbreed is a directorial triumph of reference and homage.

At first, this conjures up some of the most visceral tension seen in a movie since Ridley Scott first let a spiky insectoid go walkabout on the Nostromo, as the crew tries to fathom who or what now inhabits the mysterious spacecraft.

Anderson wonderfully makes the most of his awe-inspiring sets, be they huge and sprawling corridors, offal-strewn control rooms, and rooms that look like ‘giant meat grinders’. The Event Horizon is allegedly modelled on the Notre Dame cathedral, its interior filled with cruciform shapes and medieval walls etchings, and boy does it make for a frightening monolith.

Satisfyingly, the film has the scares to match its interiors, with Anderson fooling us all into believing that he can handle fraught tension and heart-wrenching scares with ease, using everything from massive religious subtext, stroboscopic visions of hell, and Latin phrases screamed through distress signals that’ll leave any self-respecting horror fan with a warm and tingly feeling in their crotch. The manner in which the build-up is handled is superbly subtle, with characters exhibiting the same sort of reluctance to find out what really happened as the audience amid their dark and unforgiving surroundings, and while some of the scares are absolutely genuine – Dr Weir’s venture into the ships ventilation ducts mere seconds prior to a power failure is a moment of hair raising proportions – there are times when you feel almost annoyed at that you allowed yourself to be duped so easily. Gloves fly across our field of vision, shutters suddenly snap open into life, and eerie hallucinations haunt our protagonists every move. Yes, it’s cheaper than a third-rate Soho hooker but Christ its effective.

Of course, Anderson can’t be expected to keep the horrors hidden in the shade for too long, and when the gore gets unleashed he’s pretty difficult to hold back. You want disturbing imagery, then you’re sure to be more than satisfying when you finally get to see the grisly fate that befell the original crew members via an onboard video diary, and you’re sure as hell aren’t going to find a scene as nerve-shattering in any space movie as the one in which a catatonic crew member throws himself out of an airlock.

Placing Fishburne at its heart is also a fine move; the man oozes credibility, giving the potentially schlocky hellhouse nastiness an unnerving element of real fear. One specific monologue about the grisly death of a former crew member delivered more or less to camera would have been totally lost on inferior actors, but Fishburne manages to forgo its potential cheesiness and turn it into something resoundingly spooky. The rest of the cast are just as brilliant, with Richardson a refreshingly brave heroine and the always-enjoyable Pertwee snarling it up big style. Only the comic relief from Jones sticks out like a sore thumb, the script unnecessarily breaking up the tension at key moments in order to give the hopelessly arrogant Cooper time to blurt out the odd one-liner or two.

Of course, there are times when the horror inevitably sags: invisible forces sucked from other dimensions allow too much in the way of corner-cutting, and the lack of any credible explanation leaves you unsatisfied. The whole ‘alternative life form onboard the ship’ element is never actually resolved, leaving us to wonder if the ship itself has been turned into a living creation, or if it’s merely inhabited or possessed by demons from the netherworld. And the last reel deviations turn into nothing more than a clichéd bogeyman on the rampage set-up in which characters are randomly picked off in a variety of unimaginative styles that leave you feeling a little cheated: we’ve spent the whole of the movie with these people and yet their deaths come about in a matter of seconds, refusing to give them the pay-off they deserve.

This, though, is never at the expense of the visual craft. Event doesn't just borrow from a fine background of classic movies; it takes their shock value to new heights, using genuinely original FX (the first time CGI had been effectively used in horror) and creepy camerawork to great effect. A sharper script with a slightly more coherency and a more credible solution could have turned this impressive hokum into a mainstream favourite. But as it is, it’s nothing less than a true guilty pleasure. Watch it and mock it out loud to your friends, but deep down you’ll be counting the seconds until you get to see it again.

OTHER CONTRIBUTORS:

panguitch, voxpoptart, treeseed, yourcloud, beckytcy, jordan_tar, pduval69, skbreese, thegeniusx, anvrill, gatorgirlie, pmills1210, disinclined, cryptosicko