Despite the fact I’m a massive sci-fi fan I rarely get to see the films actually when they come out. This was definitely the case with Even Horizon, which I’ve recently seen after its release over 20 years ago.
First of all this film disagreed with me greatly becasue despite being a supposedly science fiction movie this was definitely a horror movie set in space. I’m not a great fan of horror, in fact I don’t like it at all. However films like Alien and all that I can kind of take. This is didn’t. It was gore for the sake of gore and that really sums this film up.
The premise and film concept is sciency enough, a spacecraft developed with a revolutionary time / space drive disappeared years before around the orbit of Neptune on its way to travel to the nearest star system. Nothing is heard from it until it’s re-appears around Neptune. The only communication from it is a garbled message of evil shrieks.
A rescue team is sent including Sam Neils creator of the spacecraft. The result is harrowing and bloody with problems faced from the start. As it turns out the Event Horizon had travelled to another hellish dimension in it’s mission and had become ‘alive’ and evil. Making it’s crew kill themselves and pull their eyeballs out.
What I didn’t like
What I didn’t like about this film was almost everything. The film creators get nearly everything wrong. The scale of the spacecraft on the outside is huge, yet inside is much smaller. I found this really annoying.
The other annoying thing I found was the message received. In this it was discovered was a message (isn’t there always) and this message was in Latin. This was mis understood to mean something else but only realised once everything had gone tits up. Let me make this point clear – If you are going to deliver a clear message why send it in an obscure way? Why?!? What you say is this:
“For fucks sake don’t come here, blow up this spaceship. Seriously!”
That’s how you send a warning.
Then there was the stupid scene where the rescue team are approaching the ship in the middle of one of Neptune’s storms. Only able to see it from metres away, it was about as tense as… well it wasn’t. It was shit. If the Event Horizon was that close to Neptune it’s not in orbit, it would be dragged down and destroyed. They wouldn’t have found it. BUt this visibility wasn’t a problem for one of the team to find when they blown out into space when their own spacecraft was destroyed.
Then we get onto this ‘dimension of chaos’ that the original mission allegedly visited and this made them all pull their eyeballs out and kill each other and all that kind of thing. What utter crap! Existence has to have balance to exist or it annihilates itself.
The special effects weren’t great either, I know this was the 90’s but even for the time it was cheap.
Lastly, who designs a ship so depressing and evil looking inside and out, maybe this is really why the crew killed themselves really, nothing to do with other dimensions.
What I liked
What I liked about this film. The concept of the time space drive, things going wrong and then the mystery around it. The film makes could have done far, far better. The design of the drive was pretty cool too.
LIke I said not much, I was hoping for better with some of the big names in this film.
Summary
I really wanted to like this film, I had toyed with the idea of watching it for years, with Laurence and Sam and Joely in it I was hoping this would have been a lot better. But just as in the film the crew should never have entered onto Event Horizon – neither should I have.
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This was the last film my dad went to see at the cinema before ill health rendered him housebound (he died in 2004). I haven’t seen it since either. Not sure I want to now!
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I agree with you Simon it was little more than a haunted house in space movie with some gratuitous gore, it was moderately entertaining but I’m glad I saw it on DVD and didn’t pay cinema prices. They did at least have a decompression scene where the victim (or his head) did not explode.
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My impression of the movie was basically the same. I remember, when they explained how the ship’s engines worked, thinking that that was a really cool idea. But I felt a little cheated when the movie devolved into a cheesy horror movie and not a thoughtful Sci-Fi flick.
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That’s it, up untill the point where they actually got to event horizon the film had promise. Apart from the cheap 80s special effects it was ok. But the longer it went on the worse it got. It was cheesy as you say and the plot had more holes in it than I could make with a machine gun.
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I read somewhere that the studio forced them to change the script after they’d already shot most of the movie. If that’s true, it would explain a lot.
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It’s funny how your opinion of a movie can be influenced by the circumstance surrounding your viewing. I saw Event Horizon back when it was in the theaters. I was an usher at the time and it was an after hours employee only event. We cranked the volume way up and I heard more than a couple of my fellow male ushers scream in terror at a few of the scenes. We all laughed afterward and bonded as a team. For that reason, the film has a special place in my heart. I totally agree that it is a horror movie first and foremost that just happens to be set in space rather than a haunted house. That being said, I have no intention of ever seeing it again. A repeat viewing would never live up to the first one.
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Yeah I can totally get that and probably if I had done something similar then my opinion would be slightly different but being the film it was it wild never be a favourite.
I guess one of my biggest issues is common to most horror films where some of the details of the story are always pretty weak to make the story work.
Thanks for coming by Allie, I hope all is well 😀
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