Need gore and body horror in your fright fests? Event Horizon has that covered, too. As with Alien, the isolation of deep space makes for a good fit with a haunted-house scenario, especially since there's nowhere you could possibly escape to.
While the movie has flaws, what it does perfectly is pay tribute to traditional horror themes, tweaking and reinventing them through the lens of science fiction.Įvil often enters the world in horror movies via a portal to hell that is accidentally opened or through the use of black magic, but the portal in Event Horizon is opened using experimental technology - a metaphor for humans' tendency to unleash powers they don't fully understand. If you're a horror buff and you dismissed Event Horizon as a "space movie" because of its title or the marketing's emphasis on a space ship in orbit, you did yourself a disservice.
Passage of time has proven just how adept Anderson was at merging genres to present a vision in which the arcane mysticism of demonic possession coexists with a world of gravity wells and wormholes. Impervious to pain and able to "see" even without eyes, Weir becomes a classic slasher villain, even popping up for one last scare post-demise.
When Weir succumbs to the will of the ship, he goes full Cenobite, gouging his own eyes out before turning on the crew. In classic haunted house fashion, the sinister, quasi-alive ship targets each of the crew members when they're alone and vulnerable, teasing them with their heart's desire or antagonizing them for past sins.
The crew discovers the ship didn't just jump to the other end of the universe, but into a different dimension altogether - possibly hell itself. Once the crew enters the Event Horizon, the movie shifts into horror mode: The starship becomes one massive haunted house, invading the minds of the protagonists to haunt them with visions of their worst fears. Theoretical physics and future tech are used to set up the premise, but once explained to the audience and to the characters on screen, the sci-fi elements fade into the background and serve mainly to facilitate the plot rather than drive it. William "Billy" Weir (Sam Neill) that they've been sent to investigate the mysterious reappearance of the lost starship Event Horizon, which disappeared seven years prior while testing an experimental "gravity drive" that creates black holes and warps space and time, allowing faster-than-light travel to the stars. Dispatched to Neptune on a top-secret mission, the crew of the rescue ship Lewis and Clark learn from their passenger Dr. Event Horizon has all of the hallmarks of a classic slasher flick, but takes the carnage into a near-future, lived-in world where space travel is still dangerous, yet somewhat routine and mundane. Take a look back at this terrifying '90s flick and you'll see why Event Horizon deserves another chance. Today, the movie is more popular than ever, with plans in the works by Amazon and Paramount to adapt it into a series. Audiences and critics alike were underwhelmed, with some likening it to " Hellraiser in space." But it developed a cult following thanks, in part, to debuting on home video the same year DVDs hit the market and Netflix launched its online service. The final result was a gory, hard-R movie with a great cast that suffered from rushed editing, unfinished effects, and a summer release date crowded with more family-friendly fare. The resulting tale of a ragtag space rescue crew, on a mission to salvage an experimental starship that disappeared into a black hole, elegantly married the science fiction and horror genres.Īnderson borrowed heavily from movies like 2001: A Space Odyssey, Alien, and The Shining to create a world that felt lived-in and believable, but he was driven by the studio into an accelerated production schedule and forced to cut huge chunks of the movie. Anderson, a junior director five years from launching the Resident Evil movie franchise, who decided to fuel his third feature, Event Horizon, with as much gore and gusto as he could muster and the studio could stomach. Sam Neill was widely recognized as the kid-friendly paleontologist with a passion for dinos in Jurassic Park, while Laurence Fishburne had yet to play Morpheus in The Matrix and was still primarily known as "Furious" Styles from Boyz n the Hood. Sci-fi cinema was bright, slick, and more than a little silly, with movies like Men in Black, The Fifth Element, Independence Day, and Starship Troopers dominating the box office.