EVENT HORIZON (1997) ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Is Paul W.S. Anderson the Bram Stoker of sci-fi? Stoker famously spent a lifetime writing pulp novels, save for one: Dracula, a great work of fiction. Anderson has traced a similar path, directing one artistic dud after another, except for his single well-deserved claim to fame, "Event Horizon."
What could account for this isolated stroke of genius? "Event Horizon" was a box office flop when it was released, but gained traction in the video rental market. This led to Paramount begging the director for a longer cut, so they could make the most of its VHS afterlife. The request was denied because executives had slashed Anderson's editing window from the usual ten weeks to a mere six, and in the ensuing chaos the crew had lost all of the snipped footage.
Why the rush? Paramount expected their upcoming James Cameron drama, "Titanic," to be a super-expensive fail, and figured they had to get Anderson's picture in theaters before that happened, or his $60 million project would never see the light of day. That's right, $60 million. An unprecedented budget for a horror film. For perspective, that's $109 million in today's shells. It's also the first clue as to why "Event Horizon" is so good. With that kind of money, even a schlock film director has a chance at greatness.
The second clue is filming conditions: just this once, Anderson had England's Pinewood Studios at his disposal, and in 1997 that meant building massive sets with pyrotechnics and other dynamic effects (like endless oceans of blood). He took full advantage of this. The sense of realism I felt while watching scene after scene play out in highly detailed spacecraft interiors reminded me of "Alien," even if some locales were aided with CGI. The kinetic nature of one of Event Horizon's interiors was startling to me, and quite special to behold. No expense was spared.
The final piece is Anderson himself. Clearly an intelligent filmmaker who loves movies, he cites as inspiration great horror classics like Robert Wise's "The Haunting" (1963) and Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining" (1980). He understands that suspense arises from our collective fear of the unknown, and that what we don't see is terrifying in exact proportion to what we don't understand. This is the key to "Event Horizon's" success as a horror film. The source of its fears is veiled, and the veil never drops.
The story is relatively uncomplicated, which is also a plus, thanks to Philip Eisner's lean script. In 2047, a rescue crew is sent to investigate the reappearance of the recently lost experimental interstellar ship, Event Horizon. Among them are Captain J.S. Miller, played by Laurence Fishburne. Miller is a by-the-book guy, and aims to keep his team, which happens to be an ensemble cast of A-Listers (also bizarre for a horror film), on schedule. He calls a meeting with Kathleen Quinlan, Sam Neil, Joely Richardson, Sean Pertwee, Richard T. Jones, and several other capable players. This guy means business.
Neil plays Dr. Bill Weir, the designer of the gravity drive that powers Event Horizon. He's there as resident Event Horizon expert, and explains how the drive works. The craft doesn't travel faster than light. It bends space and time, and thereby pulls its destination to it. But when the crew arrives and boards the ship, they find a single corpse and the desiccated gore of the rest of the crew. It soon becomes apparent that Weir's sinister ship has traveled beyond the bounds of our dimension, possibly to Hell and back.
What follows are a series of unsettling hallucinations experienced by the crew, all of which are drawn from their past traumas, and Weir inexplicably leans into his. Perhaps it's because they involve visitations by his late wife, who committed suicide sometime before the movie's events. The film is peppered with scenes that stay with you - the discovery of a video log in which Event Horizon's crew fornicate and self-mutilate, the attempted suicide of Ensign Justin, played to uncanny effect by Jack Noseworthy, the blustery finale in which Fishburne and Richardson convincingly pit their will to survive against Neil's portrayal of demonic nihilism - all of which are frightening enough to make any movie memorable.
The thing that clinches this story's effectiveness for me is the idea of human technology accidentally going far beyond humanity's purview, as Weir's ship does. The very thought of a machine sending its makers to Hell is the stuff of nightmares. After seeing "Event Horizon," it stayed with me for a decade, and I was uneasy about seeing it again. I'm glad I did.
--- Bill Fontaine
