The year is 2047. Years earlier, the pioneering research vessel Event Horizon vanished without a trace. Now a signal from it has been detected, and the United States Aerospace Command responds. Hurtling toward the signal's source are a fearless captain (Laurence Fishburne), his elite crew and the lost ship's designer (Sam Neill). Their mission: find and salvage the state-of-the-art spacecraft. What they find is state-of-the-art interstellar terror.

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::AMAZON REVIEWS::

No worse for the wear.
This movie was extremely ahead of its time. Once you watch it in high definition it really brings that point home. The sound is amazing. The video holds up well and the transfer is excellent. Worth the bump to HD.

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Same Story
A poor story with a lot of physics and astronomical mistakes, the usual rescue mission of a previous lost spaceship that headed for an incredible assignment to a black hole and ended in a very terrestrial looking situation.

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Haunted Space...
Yes, EVENT HORIZON is a horror movie. It's basically a haunted mansion tale set in deep space. So, if you're looking for a lesson in astrophysics, you're out of luck. On the other hand, if you want to be scared and filled w/ that delightful sense of dread, then EH is your nightmare come true! Filled to bursting w/ bleak, suffocating atmosphere, this grabber is a nice, cold hand on the heart. It's also one of the few films by Paul Anderson that I will actually watch. He utilizes paranoia and unknown horrors to build this monster piece by grusome piece. Laurence Fishburne (The Matrix trilogy, "CSI") and Sam Neill (Omen 3: The Final Conflict, Jurassic Park, In The Mouth Of Madness) do most of the heavy lifting, w/ Joely Richardson, Sean Pertwee (Dog Soldiers), and Kathleen Quinlan (Twilight Zone: The Movie) filling in most of the gaps. So, if you are in the mood for chills, EVENT HORIZON should get those shoulders shaking...

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Disturbia
E.H. came and went in movie theatres in about a week, the victim of an un-evocative title, under-budgeted marketing campaign and needless confusion about what genre it belonged to. The truth will generally out, however, even in Hollywood; and so this flick has achieved a kind of cult status among fans of classy sci-fi/horror.

E.H. is the story of Dr. Weir (Sam Neill), a scientist who designs the first-faster than light spaceship, the Event Horizon. Obsessed with his creation, he so neglects his wife that she commits suicide, leaving him half-mad with grief. To make matters worse, the ship, disappears on its maiden voyage, presumably lost with all hands. Seven years later, however, a signal is suddenly received from the vicinity of the planet Neptune which indicates the Event Horizon has survived after all. A rescue ship from Earth is launched under the command of the hard-nosed Captain Miller (Lawrence Fishburne), with Weir joining the small crew (including Kathleen Quinlan and the excellent Joely Richardson) as scientific advisor. Arriving at the planet, they find the Horizon intact, but seemingly empty, which poses our heroes with two questions: where has the ship been all these years, and what has happened to the crew? Exploring the tomb-like ship, the mystery deepens. Frozen bodies...or parts of them...are discovered, but not enough to account for the crew. Records are half-destroyed. Inexplicable sounds emit from everywhere, and one by one the crewmembers begin to experience horrible hallucinations that may not be hallucinations at all. Before you know it, the rescue ship's been sabotaged and the whole lot of them are stuck on board the ghost ship with no way off and only 24 hours worth of air. All that in the first half hour. Then the murders begin...

EVENT HORIZON is a combination of many influences; stylistically it is reminiscent of Gothic horror films crossed with ALIEN (especially the "S.O.S." which is discovered, too late, to be a warning) but there are classic themes as well. Wier's gravity-drive represents Forbidden Knowledge, the stuff you tamper with at your peril. The ship itself is the classic Haunted House and/or Cursed Tomb, and the crew the Ten Little Indians, each of whom possesses dark secrets that are forced to the surface by the pressure of events. However, in most horror, there is a very clear dividing line between Who Is Safe and Who Isn't; in EVENT HORIZON, this line is totally obliterated. No sooner do you invest emotionally in one of the characters than they suffer a horrible and gory end. And some of those gory ends are tough to watch. While hardly a splatter-fest, E.H. isn't sparing on the red stuff when push comes to shove: we get glimpses of flaying, cannibalism, open sores, patricide, burned flesh, and decompressed eyeballs. When Captain Miller promises his crew "Everybody goes home!" he might have added, "but not necessarily alive or in one piece."

The real star of the movie is not Fishburne, Neill, or Richardson, however, but the Event Horizon herself. If I am a fan of one thing in my horror movies, it is atmosphere, and E.H. has it in spades. The production designers used an old Gothic cathedral as the basis for the ship, and between its green-lit, gray-stone-like interiors, echoey hallways and deep, brooding shadows, it has the worst elements of haunted house, hedge maze, and Dracula's castle.

The downside of E.H. rests largely in things that happen during the climax; there is some ridiculously unnecessary exposition and some badly-timed humor which really undermine the ending. I sense the interfering hand of a Studio Suit in some of Sam Neill's final dialogue. Despite this, however, E.H. is a disturbing, brutal, well-acted, beautifully designed film with a first-rate cast, and it deserves your attention.

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Grab-bag of 'supernatural' horrors in space

EVENT HORIZON

(USA/UK - 1997)

Aspect ratio: 2.39:1 (Panavision)
Theatrical soundtracks: Dolby Digital / DTS

In 2047, an interstellar rescue team boards a spacecraft in orbit around Neptune which has been missing since disappearing through a black hole, and they're stalked by an alien presence which uses their worst fears against them.

Paul Anderson's overblown space shocker has a great cast (including Laurence Fishburne, Sam Neill, Joely Richardson and Kathleen Quinlan) and some eye-popping space vistas, but the storyline doesn't amount to very much, and the set-pieces are variable in quality and effectiveness. Fantastic visual effects, gruesome HELLRAISER-style imagery in places. Well made, and certainly watchable, but equally missable.

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