Viking Night: Event Horizon
By Bruce Hall
October 31, 2012
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Remember this at the end. Also remember that watching Event Horizon will teach you some lessons of your own, like how NOT to make a credible sci-fi horror movie.
The captain of the Lewis and Clark is a man named Miller (Laurence Fishburne), who treats his crew like family and his ship like his mother. In fact, every single one of the cast members are fresh from James Cameron’s Wisecracking Space Jockey Warehouse, wrapped in plastic with the tags still on. Sam Neill is William Weir, the Out of Place Scientist/Company Tool who designed the Event Horizon. He also pulls double duty as the Guy Who Can’t Get Over His Dead Wife. And you know that in the movies, nobody ever mentions their Dead Wife unless it’s going to turn out to be important. Rounding things out are Smith the Wisecracking Pilot (Sean Pertwee), Starck the Tough Chick (Joely Richardson), and Cooper the Wacky Black Stereotype (Richard T Jones).
Before you accuse me of hating, let me point out that when one of the first things you notice about a film is that it feels like spare parts from other, better films, that’s usually not a good thing.
Allow me to explain.
As the Lewis and Clark disembarks, the crew members bark at each other about how stupid their mission is because they don’t know WHAT it is, but they do know there’s no trouble in the sector where they’re going, even though they just said they didn’t know where they were going. The Captain snarls that they’re in the business of following orders, because they’re the best, and that’s how people who are the best at things roll. Yet even though this is a rescue mission, nobody bothers to ask Dr Weir where they’re going, what they’re doing, what to expect, or how many survivors there might be. That is, until they stir from cryogenic sleep three billion miles away, orbiting Neptune.
Yes. They wait until they are months away from any kind of supply or reinforcement to begin planning their daring deep space rescue mission for the first time. This allows us an excruciating scene where Sam Neill gets to give one of those “what I’m about to tell you is BEYOND top secret” speeches. And it’s so inanely derivative that it makes everything else in the movie up to that point feel like Shakespeare. Nonetheless, Weir explains that a mysterious signal was received from the Event Horizon, the first ship meant to travel faster than light, using something called a Black Hole drive. Don’t worry about what that is, just know that something called a Black Hole drive sounds dangerous because it is, and that it is not so much a propulsion system for the ship as it is for the movie.
That’s good, because up to this point the film is powered entirely by laziness. It’s lazily edited. The dialogue sounds lifted from other scripts. The camera wastes a lot of time lingering on gimmicky (though quite good) effects shots for so long you can smell the money burning, and feel your mind wandering. And during Weir’s expository mission speech, the location abruptly changes for no reason, almost literally mid-sentence. Some of the characters even change clothes. I realize that in most respects, the movie is economizing time and setting a mood. It’s trying to establish a sense of urgency and tone. But since it was done so poorly, it makes the film feel awkwardly self aware - which is the first step toward parody.
It also doesn’t help that our supposedly crack team of experts makes a series of inexplicably dumb mistakes that will clearly haunt them later, along the lines of what you usually see in a low budget horror movie. The first third of the story is just dumb people making dumb decisions designed to put them into a situation where they can get themselves killed off one by one. And that’s exactly why Event Horizon usually loses people early on, because when things finally get interesting, you realize you’re not watching a bad science fiction movie; you’re watching a bad horror movie!
So when an unfortunate series of events leaves the Lewis and Clark stuck right alongside its larger cousin, you don’t exactly find yourself all choked up about it. But the heart of Event Horizon isn’t the Black Hole Drive, it’s the second act. It’s the part of the film where we have a bunch of people trapped in a cabin in the woods except here, the cabin is a derelict starship and the woods are represented by, you know...infinity. It’s a good idea, and luckily Event Horizon has a good cast, great looking sets and (yes, still quite good) special effects with which to carry it out. By the midpoint of the story, when shit finally gets real, you’re riveted, and you begin to regret despising these characters and their plagiaristic little lives.
The middle 30 minutes of Event Horizon remain Paul W.S. Anderson’s best work best work. He knows what to do with a camera in the confines of a lost space ship, and as the story evolves it begins to get in your head. The movie feels like it’s set in a tomb, mirroring some of the things that are happening on screen. Anderson’s point of view is not unlike being inside a videogame, with long, moody cut scenes punctuated by fits of horribleness, as though the movie itself was having a tantrum. This is fitting, because the story shakes itself right apart again near the climax, and the rest plays out like a bunch of outtakes from Hellraiser: Bloodline.
This is a film that spends its first act insulting your intelligence, the second redeeming itself, and the third stabbing you in the back with gimmicks again as soon as you turn around. And it’s unfortunate, because there’s a good story in there somewhere, and it’s a very simple one to tell. Anderson claims that the theatrical version of the movie was not his vision, and I wish he would prove it by releasing a director’s cut. Until that happens, I can’t recommend Event Horizon for anything other than a few cheap scares and a heaping helping of painful lessons.