Film Review: Event Horizon

Director: Paul W.S. Anderson

A 1997 science-fiction horror movie which marked a flurry of mid-90's sci-fi movies which investigate strange occurrences in deep-space. The movie was directed by Paul W.S. Anderson who is from Newcastle and unfortunately this marked probably his most high profile movie with many other B-movie type productions following of a similar genre.

The Gravity Drive inside the Event Horizon

In 2047, the rescue vessel Lewis and Clark is dispatched to answer a distress signal received from the Event Horizon, a starship that disappeared during its maiden voyage to Proxima Centauri seven years prior. The crew is lead by Captain Miller (Laurence Fishburne) and also has on board Dr. Weir (Sam Neill) who designed the Event Horizon. Once they arrive they find strange goings-on surrounding the gravity drive which generates an artificial black hole to use the immense gravitational power to bridge two points in spacetime, greatly reducing travel time over astronomical distances.

The film is quite formulaic in plot, with the premise generally setup by the long explanation by Dr. Weir to the crew (that is really just an explanation for the audience) before we have the tense middle section where we are unsure what is happening before the final act slowly reveals what happened to the original crew. In its defence it does avoid falling into the lazy slasher genre like the later film Sunshine.

A hallucination?

Naturally most science fiction movies tend to fall into two brackets for me, the Alien bracket focused more on tension and action or 2001: A Space Odyssey based more around special effects and aesthetic beauty. Event Horizon falls into the former category with much of the relationships between the crew having similarities to that of Alien whilst the plot itself seems to be a slight re-working of the Russian film Solaris (discounted the George Clooney remake).

The links to religion and the concept of heaven and hell add a depth to the film but its just not that engaging throughout. The characters don't seem to share much rapport which means the moments when they try to help and save each other feel forced. The ending itself was different than I expected but a certain character going rogue was far too predictable and it left the film feeling stretched in terms of plot.

1.5/4 Ambitious but ultimately disappointing sci-fi horror flick.