Seven years after it disappeared, the experimental space craft Event Horizon has reappeared. A rescue team, led by Captain Miller (Laurence Fishburne) and the ship’s designer, Dr. Weir (Sam Neill), are dispatched
Paul W.S. Anderson was such a critical punching bag for so long - and he spent so long in Resident Evil, I was never curious enough to check out his films.
I enjoyed his remake of Death Race.
After Sam Neill passed, Event Horizon kept coming up as one of the gems in his filmography.
I have seen this movie before, and I remembered snobbily thinking it was a junky riff on The Shining - nowadays, that is a selling point.
The filmmakers are taking the right lessons from its inspirations - particularly in the production design, and the focus on establishing the crew (similar to Alien). The one thing it misses is the smoky chiaroscuro utilised in the previous era of Hollywood sci-fi (like a lot of nineties movies, it seems a shade over-lit).
The cast are solid, but Laurence Fishburne is remarkable - he brings so much gravity to his role, it immediately raises the stakes.
Fishburne’s captain is an uber-professional. He makes you aware of the distance this team has to travel, the effort to get them out there, and just how perilous space travel is.
The film was famously hacked to pieces. You can feel it in the third act - Joely Richardson goes from feeling like a second lead to mostly out of the picture until the finale.
The film manages some unsettling moments - the brief video of the original Event Horizon crew, possessed crew member Justin (Jack Noseworthy) in the airlock, Weir’s final transformation - and has a fantastically bleak sense of atmosphere.
I cannot say I am a full convert to its cause, but on its own terms, Event Horizon is a solid addition to the sub-genre of intergalactic horror.
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