Event Horizon

Rating:
Summary: Heckraiser 5, holes in plotline, a new sci fi terror
Review: Basically stated, a team of rescuers are sent out to the orbit of Neptune to save a crew aboard the vessel Event Horizon. The interesting thing about this vessel the Event Horizon is that it is capable of creating a black hole in space to travel wherever it wants in a matter of minutes. Upon getting there they find that the ship itself is alive and proceeds to mess with their minds. Another trick to this movie is that the black holes just do not take them to the other end of space, but also into a place full of fire and brimstone! The cast consists of a stereotypical space team, of the hard nosed captain, the comic relief, the bald bad dude, the shaved head medic that thinks everyone else is crazy and eventually the guy that ends up going insane and turning on them all. There are lots of twists, turns, and holes in the plotline that make no sense. This movie would be a great 3D flick, because of the visual effects and everything that flies right at the camera.

Rating:
Summary: Flawed but Provoking
Review: I think why most people and even myself at times give this movie such a hard time is that it establishes such a fantastic quandry full of mystery and trepidation and just doesn't reaally pay off with any real substance. I remember feeling in the theatre when it ended "no, don't end now, there's so much more we were meant to see". I'm not talking about effects or gore as they are abundant and very well done but more so story and development of the fantastic idea presented. It's like the kid who has an amazing talent and is killed in an accident before they can reach. You feel robbed of something that doesn't come along too often.

BUT, there is still enough atmosphere and tension left over to make this movie very enjoyable on a pure scare factor. The rag tag crew is very one dimensional and obviously they are there as fodder for the body count. The movie does establish an incredible sense of menace and danger. In a way the loose ending is effective in hindsight. It provokes thought and imagination after the fact on what was on the other side of that gateway. The best horror often is the horror imagined. To show it to us may have lessened the impact.

I think a sequel with a different director could be rife with possibilties, but as the movie didn't do too well that will never happen. Even though the movie is flawed I still enjoy it because it makes me feel something every time. Dread, fear, wonder, excitement. So many movies today are forgotten by the time the credits role but this one definitely stays with you. I'll take an imperfect movie any day if it makes me feel something. ....

Rating:
Summary: Possibly one of the best Sci Fi and Horror Movie Ever
Review: At the start, I thought it would be a another stupid Sci Fi movie like Supernova where you have to go and find a derelict ship and rescue it. Boy was I wrong, the twists and turns of the plot certainly grabbed my attetnion. Also, the realism and suspense is also great. The movie was scary for people who know a bit of physics because <i>this can happen</i>. The realism made this movie one of the most enjoyable and scariest movie ever.

Rating:
Summary: Event Horizon: Satan in a metal box
Review: The ship designs both internally and externally are interesting enough to provide a proper stage for a sci-fi horror flick of high caliber. But very soon even the ship designs reveal themselves to be portentous and overwrought satanic props you might find in a Spinal Tap concert. In the central bridge Larry Fishburne sits in command of his ponderous vessel. His chair mounted to a mechanical arm that slowly carries him about the room to see his crew members and deliver his orders. Visually its neat but you quickly realize if he would turn his head to the left and right and speak in a normal voice he could speak comfortably to everyone. Imagine if Captain Kirk floated the bridge chair around to Spock and Uhura every time he wanted to make a command and you have a fair idea of how cumbersome and silly it would seem. This in itself does not destroy the movie but it is symbolic of how the director had difficulty letting go of ideas that were visually interesting but made no sense in the real world...or a future world.

Event Horizon is encumbered by a lot of heavy handed religious symbolism. The ship encounters a derelict space ship orbiting Neptune. The derelict vessel, an enormous metalic framework, is designed to resemble a crucifix. It is sometimes shot upside down to hint that some evil is already present . Boarding the ship, crew members are found flayed in spectacularly bloody and gorey fashion with obvious satanic overtones. We discover the evil being done on the ship is causing physical manifestations of the darkest corners of the crewmen's minds. Perhaps Event Horizon was following the lead of Forbidden Planet where advancements in harnessing the mind's power through technology failed to figure in the dark corners of man's subconscious. Thereby unleashing a violent genie that could not be contained. If true it would explain the odd choice to set Event Horizon in outer space instead of a haunted house where it better belongs. Forbidden Planet borrowed the intriguing concept of monsters from the mind from Shakespeare's Tempest and used it to great effect. But Event Horizon abandons it quickly. The only question Event Horizon tries to ask is what if Hell were a specific place in a space ship parked around Neptune? The answer is no deeper than "everyone who goes there would go mad, kill everyone and die." Event Horizon becomes a gore shocker and the crewmen go crazy and start gouging out their eyes and other outrageous stuff. People can enjoy a gore flick but the absurd choice in Event Horizon was to make mediocre Sam Neil the centerpiece of the film and leave Larry Fishburne the thankless role of to react to the setpieces and Neils incomprehensible character. To quote Chris Mc Callister "Sam Neil's character is sometimes clearly good, sometimes thoroughly evil, sometimes a good man tempted by evil, sometimes a good man possessed by evil, and sometimes an evil man who has been masquerading as good." In the end you don't know what he was and don't really care. But Event Horizon also doesn't know how to select what is best about its story and what doesn't fit. Its a theological revelation tale, a sci fi bug hunt, a psychological haunted house flick and a slasher film all at once or maybe its none of the above. By being complex and infathomable perhaps it hoped someone would think it deep. People that dig H.P. Lovecraft, satanic symbolism, or the '60s films the Haunting or Hell House might find something to like in Event Horizon. But I found it to be one of the most unwatchable films of the last several years.

Rating:
Summary: Wasted potential
Review: In the mid-21st century, a rescue ship called the Lewis and Clark is sent out near Neptune to investigate the sudden re-appearance of the Event Horizon, a mammoth experimental craft. The Horizon had vanished seven years earlier. A small crew, led by captain Laurence Fishburne and physicist Sam Neill, will check for survivors, and answers. What follows is one of the most chaotic and messy films I've seen in some time. Half of what's going on is never explained, and what is explained, doesn't make much sense.........As a horror film, it's like Alien and Hellraiser -- without the thrills or intelligence. As a science fiction film, it's all fiction and no science, where "miniature black holes" are created with little effort and ships are sucked through singularities without even the slightest bit of gravity distortion. Indeed, it's sad that the film can be summed up by the character who shouts at scientist William Weir, "Don’t start in with that physics ....!" Kind of scary to think about highly trained aerospace officers who understand none of the theory behind space travel. With all the possibilities the venue of space offers filmmakers, we get stuck with Event Horizon.

Rating:
Summary: A remarkably effective frightfest
Review: The science fiction style under which this film was marketed was a delightfully misleading prelude to one of the scarier movies to come out in recent years. A number of factors contribute to the overall suspense of this movie: good acting and directing, an unseen and unknown assailant (no "funny" catch-phrase-killers) and intentional vaguaries surrounded the question "Why?" Rather than lessening the horrors by explaining them away , Event Horizon wisely avoids simplifying, and by doing so allow an element of mystique and imagination to further the menace of it all. This movie is definitely worth watching... alone... at night... in the dark.

Rating:
Summary: What a Piece of a poor Film.
Review: This is really a chessy horror/science fiction film about a haunted starship that has returned from being in a black hole, it's crew is dead, and the rescue team send to find out what happned is it's next victums. Needless to say no clear explanation of exactly where this ship has been and what it's brought back is ever given. But the bad language and the needless gore should cause anyone watching this film to turn it off right away.

Rating:
Summary: This is really a no star movie
Review: Event Horizon is the worst film I have ever seen. Period. But the really sad thing is that there was a kernel of a good film here. That kernel was the classic Russian movie Solaris. Solaris tells the same story with taste, intelligence, and restraint, all of which were missing in this blood and guts worthless film.

Event Horizon is only of value to the seriously disturbed and one should be distrustful of any person who actually enjoyed it.

Rating:
Summary: An adventure of terror and suspense!
Review: This movie was rather unappreciated in its time, and is not too well known. It really is a shame, because this is a great movie.

Dr. Weir(Sam Neil),a scientist who, in the not too distant future has created a revolutionary method of space travel. The Warp Gravity drive was intended to punch a hole in space, a hole that the Event Horizon would be able to travel through, and end up on a completely different side of the universe. A journey of several years would become a journy of mere minutes.....

After the drive's initial activation, the ship disappears. Years later, a distress signal from the Event Horizon is picked up, and the brave Captain Miller(Fishburne), his rescue crew, and Dr. Weir are sent out to search for survivors. When they get there, they find that the ship had indeed been somewhere...and when the ship itself seems to know what their worst fears are, where the ship has actually been becomes that much clearer.....

Extremely terrifying, this movie will definitely play on your nerves and make you jump! Do not watch this alone, especially in the dark!! Seeing this movie for the first time, you will definitely be scared, but even after you've seen it, it maintains a steady aura of terror and suspense. Definitely a silent hit.

Rating:
Summary: unoriginal? Who cares!
Review: Throughout these interviews I have heard people say this film is unoriginal which it may be. But when I first saw this movie I was not looking to watch a completely original movie. I wanted to see a good movie and that is what I saw. This movie took place in space which a lot of other movies did too but does that stop us from watching this movie. I don't think so. This movie was a well acted movie with a lot of good special effects. The bottom line was that the movie was fun to watch wether it had ideas from other movies or not.