Event Horizon (1997)
Directed by Paul W. S. Anderson
In 2047, a group of astronauts are sent to investigate and salvage the starship Event Horizon which disappeared mysteriously seven years before on its maiden voyage. However, it soon becomes evident that something sinister resides in its corridors.
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9 films that influenced Event Horizon
What critics say influenced Event Horizon
If the writer, Philip Eisner, drew inspiration for his screenplay from any single picture, it would easily be Andrei Tarkovsky’s “Solaris.”
The obvious inspiration for "Event Horizon'' is a much better film, Andrei Tarkovsky's " Solaris " (1972), where a space station orbits a vast planet.
The basic concept has been done before in Forbidden Planet and more recently Event Horizon would steal some elements from it.
The reason: I sense the movie is more interested in exploiting its players in the same way that the “Hellraiser” films did: by torturing them to no purpose of dramatic enhancement or tension, but just for, you know, the heck of it.
What starts out as The Haunting around Neptune degenerates into Hellraiser in spacesuits.
More of a horror movie than a science fiction movie, Event Horizon is a cross between The Shining and Hellraiser set in deep space.
"Event Horizon" is little more than a cross between "Alien" (everything jumps out at you except the cat) and "Hellraiser" (although it owes something to "Stargate" and a dozen other sci-fi and horror flicks).
Even the deservedly-maligned Pinhead Goes to Space, or whatever the fourth film in the Hellraiser saga is called, shows more chutzpah in its fright pieces and execution.
The movie looks great; the design work by Joseph Bennett (who cut his teeth on Richard Stanley’s maligned Hardware and Dust Devil ) combines the ominous atmosphere of a looming cathedral with dark art deco.
We’re not talking Alien territory here, nothing that tangible, but the residue of some otherworldly hell that has infested the hulk of the ship and imbued it was a hideous life of its own.
15, 1997) -- In the early going, Event Horizon looks like it might be among the best of the several sci-fi/horror films to follow in the ever-widening wake of Alien.
"Event Horizon" is little more than a cross between "Alien" (everything jumps out at you except the cat) and "Hellraiser" (although it owes something to "Stargate" and a dozen other sci-fi and horror flicks).
But in "Event Horizon," a pathetic, gratuitous gorefest posturing itself as the heir to the "Alien" sci-fi/horror throne, this line belongs to a Sam Neill, a perfectly good actor who gets steady work.
I haven't seen atmospheric buildup of tension this good since Alien and, well..., The Shining, both of which were released nearly twenty years ago.
Anyway, after the rescue team's initial exploration, we get an endless amount of "Alien" type creeping around in the labyrinthine spaceship, with folks dying in various gruesome ways.
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The new science-fiction/horror thriller "Event Horizon" has a title that instead suggests a quotient of Stephen Hawking -- whose bestselling introduction to quantum physics, "A Brief History of Time," is where the public is most likely to have encountered this term.
Still, it's quite beautiful, though the beauty highlights that Anderson is mainly interested in sexy and not the slightest bit interested in the texture of the medium: any examination of the dark side of the '90s digital revolution would benefit from a discussion of this film, as visually sterile, as it happens, as Tony Randel and Clive Barker's geometric inferno from Hellbound: Hellraiser II .
It is a looong list: The Shining, Alien , Hellraiser, Solaris , In the Mouth of Madness, Aliens , 2001: A Space Odyssey , Star Trek VI - The Undiscovered Country , Forbidden Planet , Poltergeist, The Blob, Rambo and Dark Star are only a few I can remember right now.
More of a horror movie than a science fiction movie, Event Horizon is a cross between The Shining and Hellraiser set in deep space.
Biggest surprise might be that he wanted to remake The Shining in space; biggest non-surprise is that he's a lot surer than anyone else that he succeeded.
"Event Horizon" invokes "2001: A Space Odyssey" more than once, not only in its plot about a ship with a mind of its own but also in its best action sequence, in which a spacesuit-less crew member is rescued from a decompressing airlock.
It has the detailed space vessels moving majestically against the background of stars, it has the deep rumble of the powerful drives, it has sets displaying persuasive technology, and it even has those barely audible, squeaky, chattering, voice-like noises that we remember from "2001: A Space Odyssey," which give you the creepy feeling that little aliens are talking about you.
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Doesn't anyone in the future watch The Exorcist?