From rec.arts.sf.reviews Fri Aug 22 15:22:38 1997 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lejonet.se!linkoping.trab.se!malmo.trab.se!newsfeed2.luth.se!news.luth.se!eru.mt.luth.se!news-ge.switch.ch!news.grnet.gr!news-feed1.eu.concert.net!news-peer.bt.net!btnet!infeed1.internetmci.com!newsfeed.internetmci.com!192.220.251.22!netnews.nwnet.net!news.u.washington.edu!grahams From: James Berardinelli Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Event Horizon (1997) Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 18 Aug 1997 15:48:42 GMT Organization: None Lines: 117 Approved: graham@ee.washington.edu Message-ID: <5t9qsq$4tb@nntp5.u.washington.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: homer23.u.washington.edu NNTP-Posting-User: grahams Summary: r.a.m.r. #08632 Keywords: author=berardinelli X-Questions-to: movie-rev-mod@www.ee.washington.edu X-Submissions-to: movie-reviews@www.ee.washington.edu Originator: grahams@homer23.u.washington.edu Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:8037 rec.arts.sf.reviews:1500 EVENT HORIZON A Film Review by James Berardinelli RATING (0 TO 10): 4.0 Alternative Scale: ** out of **** United States, 1997 U.S. Release Date: 8/15/97 (wide) Running Length: 1:37 MPAA Classification: R (Violence, gore, profanity, brief nudity) Theatrical Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1 Cast: Laurence Fishburne, Sam Neill, Kathleen Quinlan, Joely Richardson,=20 Richard T. Jones, Jack Noseworthy, Jason Isaacs, Sean Pertwee Director: Paul Anderson Producers: Lawrence Gordon, Lloyd Levin, and Jeremy Bolt=20 Screenplay: Philip Eisner Cinematography: Adrian Biddle Music: Michael Kamen U.S. Distributor: Paramount Pictures I went into EVENT HORIZON expecting an ALIEN clone. However,=20 although this film has successfully recaptured some of the look and=20 claustrophobic feel of Ridley Scott's science fiction classic, that's=20 where the similarity ends. Because, while ALIEN was tautly paced and=20 deftly scripted, EVENT HORIZON is a mess. This is one of the most=20 chaotic movies that I have seen since 1996's nearly-incomprehensible=20 MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE. Half of what's going on is never explained, and=20 what is explained, doesn't make much sense. And that's just the=20 beginning of the problems encountered in director Paul Anderson's=20 (MORTAL KOMBAT) poorly executed endeavor=85 August is traditionally the month when studios dump their least- attractive summer prospects into the market, so EVENT HORIZON has plenty=20 of company. This is the kind of motion picture that would be killed in=20 a direct competition against a LOST WORLD or CONTACT, but stands a=20 chance against such second-rate opponents as SPAWN and MIMIC. And,=20 because the film is extremely light on intelligent dialogue and heavy on=20 gore-laden action and superficial shocks, it should play well in a=20 dubbed version overseas, so the producers have a chance to make back=20 their money.=20 EVENT HORIZON takes us to the year 2047 and onto the deep space=20 rescue craft LEWIS & CLARK as it departs from Earth orbit on a two-month=20 journey to Neptune. On board are the usual suspects, a group of outer=20 space military veterans: Captain Miller (Laurence Fishburne) and=20 crewmembers Starck (Joely Richardson), Peters (Kathleen Quinlan), Cooper=20 (Richard T. Jones), Justin (Jack Noseworthy), D.J. (Jason Isaacs), and=20 Smith (Sean Pertwee). There's also the mysterious and elusive Dr.=20 William Weir (Sam Neill), who's the only one aware of what's truly going=20 on. The primary mission of the LEWIS & CLARK is to go into a low orbit=20 around Neptune and make contact with the deep space research vessel=20 EVENT HORIZON, which was initially thought destroyed seven years ago. =20 The would-be rescuers are to search for survivors and salvage anything=20 that's reclaimable, but no one is prepared for the horror that lurks=20 deep within the dark corridors of the dead ship. The crew of the EVENT=20 HORIZON may have had their innards splattered over the bulkheads, but=20 something aboard the ship is very much alive. Sadly, despite what seems to be a promising premise (a haunted=20 house in space), EVENT HORIZON misfires badly. Those who thought the=20 minor technical slip-ups in CONTACT were egregious will be floored by=20 the slipshod "science" embraced by this film, where "miniature black=20 holes" are created with little effort and ships are sucked through=20 singularities without even the slightest bit of gravity distortion. =20 When it comes to labeling EVENT HORIZON as a science fiction film, put=20 the emphasis heavily on the "fiction" portion of the term. For movies like this to work, we have to develop a rooting interest=20 in at least one member of the crew, otherwise the film becomes a=20 pointless exercise in watching men and women get cut down one-by-one. =20 ALIEN was effective because we cared about Sigourney Weaver's Ripley. =20 Here, however, none of the characters are remotely sympathetic or=20 interesting. They're a bunch of familiar types thrown onto the screen,=20 most of whom have neither past nor future. We are given some background=20 information about a few of these individuals (one lost a wife, another=20 has a son she left back on Earth, and another made a tragic command=20 decision that cost a life), but it's hardly enough to flesh them out. =20 Even a solid actor like Laurence Fishburne (Ike Turner in WHAT'S LOVE=20 GOT TO DO WITH IT?) can't rescue such a poorly-developed character. The=20 likes of Joely Richardson (the live-action 101 DALMATIANS), Kathleen=20 Quinlan (BREAKDOWN), and Sean Pertwee (the son of the third DR. WHO, Jon=20 Pertwee) blend into the background. Sam Neill manages to develop the=20 semblance of a personality, but that's because he's given a little more=20 to work with than the others. The most memorable performance belongs to=20 Richard T. Jones (THE TRIGGER EFFECT), whose eccentric Cooper provides=20 most of the comic relief. There are a few means by which it's possible to relieve the tedium=20 of sitting through a screening of EVENT HORIZON. The first is to=20 identify rip-offs of other horror and dark science fiction films (most=20 notably THE EXORCIST, THE SHINING, and the ALIEN series). The second is=20 to count the number of times that the film uses a nightmare sequence to=20 "shock" us (with a plot device as overused as this one, even once would=20 seem to be too much). Another possibility would be to start a betting=20 pool for which of the cardboard cut-out characters will die first.=20 (Note: blood gushing out of certain orifices does not count as "dead"=20 unless the heart stops pumping.) The bottom line is that EVENT HORIZON=20 isn't particularly effective as a horror, adventure, or science fiction=20 film, and, to enjoy it, you're going to have to resort to something more=20 creative than sitting passively in your seat and absorbing the=20 atmospheric confusion that transpires on screen. =20 Copyright 1997 James Berardinelli - James Berardinelli e-mail: berardin@mail.cybernex.net ReelViews web site: http://www.cybernex.net/~berardin "A film is a petrified fountain of thought." - Jean Cocteau From rec.arts.sf.reviews Fri Aug 22 15:25:22 1997 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!eru.mt.luth.se!feed1.news.erols.com!europa.clark.net!204.127.161.1!wnfeed!204.127.130.5!worldnet.att.net!news.u.washington.edu!grahams From: Phil Brady Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Event Horizon (1997) Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 19 Aug 1997 04:02:56 GMT Organization: Concentric Internet Services Lines: 50 Approved: graham@ee.washington.edu Message-ID: <5tb5tg$gts@nntp5.u.washington.edu> Reply-To: PHILBRADY@BIGFOOT.COM NNTP-Posting-Host: homer08.u.washington.edu NNTP-Posting-User: grahams Summary: r.a.m.r. #08639 Keywords: author=brady X-Questions-to: movie-rev-mod@www.ee.washington.edu X-Submissions-to: movie-reviews@www.ee.washington.edu Originator: grahams@homer08.u.washington.edu Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:8031 rec.arts.sf.reviews:1498 The year is 2047, and spaceship Lewis & Clark is on its way to Neptune. Upon arrival, the search-and rescue crew finds out that they are looking for the Event Horizon, an exploration vessel that supposedly exploded seven years earlier. A tag-along scientist who built that ship explains that the cover story concealed the ships's sudden disappearance..it was actually an experiment in faster-than-light travel. Now radio signals from Neptune suggest it's back. The ship is found in a decaying orbit, and things don't look good. The inside temperature is too cold to support the crew, and scans for life prove inconclusive. Boarding the ship, the rescue crew finds grisly remains of a few EH crewmen, but the rest is a mystery. Soon, the hallucinations start, attacking the deepest fears of the rescuers. Now the evanescent life readings make sense: this spaceship is alive, and it's not clear whether it is scaring them off or playing with them. The Event Horizon proves to be a more malevolent cousin of the Hotel Overlook, from The Shining. "Infinite Space, Infinite Terror." That's your basic setup..the movie starts like Alien or 2001, but finishes like The Shining or Hellraiser. Along the way, you can see borrowings from those films and others. That could show a lack of originality, but director Paul Anderson shows that he has learned from those movies, and he has crafted something altogether his own. The production shows great imagination and the art direction is nothing short of brilliant. The Event Horizon has an odd look, like something out of Jules Verne in the 19th century. The interiors appear medieval (in fact, much of it was copied from the ancient cathedral of Notre Dame). Surfaces look like they are made of unfinished iron, and the engine room has ugly studs and spikes..this ship can hurt you. The cross shape of the ship doesn't look like a crucifix, because "elbows" make the ship look more like the victim of a crucifixion. Laurence Fishburne does a good job as the hard-nosed captain of the rescuers. Both he and Kathleen Quinlan (as a medical tech) are making their first sci-fi film and their first horror film. Sam Neill was a good choice for the enigmatic scientist. He was the center of 1995's Lovecraftian "In the Mouth of Madness." His intelligent, dark look keeps you guessing. You never quite know what secrets (and/or madness) are rattling around in there. The rest of the cast is filled out with other capable actors who make their characters distinct, much like the Alien ensemble. And I have to say that I wasn't distracted by any of the normal idiocies, where a character does something incredibly stupid, just to advance the plot. Only the most compelling illusions drive them to their demise. With all this in the plus column, the movie is something of a dud. The sci-fi front end would have looked cool on a real sci-fi story, like Stormship Troopers, but we go to all the way to Neptune for what? Another visit with Hellraiser's Pinhead. Why bother? What's wrong with rending good old Terran flesh? Tarantino's Dusk 'til Dawn did a better job, merging bankrobber killers with a vampire flick. For me, Event Horizon just didn't deliver. From rec.arts.sf.reviews Fri Aug 22 15:25:33 1997 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lejonet.se!linkoping.trab.se!malmo.trab.se!newsfeed2.luth.se!news.luth.se!eru.mt.luth.se!feed1.news.erols.com!howland.erols.net!wnfeed!204.127.130.5!worldnet.att.net!news.u.washington.edu!grahams From: "Rick Ferguson" Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Event Horizon (1997) Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 19 Aug 1997 16:03:45 GMT Organization: None Lines: 107 Approved: graham@ee.washington.edu Message-ID: <5tcg51$q4b@nntp5.u.washington.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: homer35.u.washington.edu NNTP-Posting-User: grahams Summary: r.a.m.r. #08642 Keywords: author=ferguson X-Questions-to: movie-rev-mod@www.ee.washington.edu X-Submissions-to: movie-reviews@www.ee.washington.edu Originator: grahams@homer35.u.washington.edu Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:8041 rec.arts.sf.reviews:1501 EVENT HORIZON Starring Laurence Fishburne, Sam Neill and Joely Richardson Written by Philip Eisner Directed by Paul Anderson The year is 2047. The weary crew of the salvage and rescue vessel "Lewis and Clark" return to Earth only to learn they have to postpone shore leave for another mission: find and explore the experimental starship "Event Horizon", which disappeared seven years earlier and which has now mysteriously returned in low orbit around Neptune with no sign of survivors. Captain Joe Miller (Laurence Fishburne) doesn't like it one bit, and he doesn't like his new passenger Dr. Wier (Sam Neill), who designed the "Event Horizon" and who seems to know more than he's letting on. The crew set course for Neptune and hop into their stasis tubes for the journey. A couple months later, they emerge in Neptune space. From Dr. Wier they learn that the "Event Horizon" is more experimental than they knew— it's designed for deep interstellar flight. Its "gravity drive" in essence creates its own black hole and then slips through it, thereby allowing it to travel to any point in the known Universe instantaneously. Seven years ago the ship vanished on its maiden voyage; now it's back. Where it has been is anyone's guess. When the "Lewis and Clark" crew dock with the Horizon and board her, they discover only corpses, and a copy of the ship's log on CD which may hold the answers to the fate of her crew. The easy shot against this picture is that it's yet another ALIEN rip-off; on the surface this is certainly the case. You have the same band of misfits who grudgingly function as crew, you have the derelict spaceship and the claustrophobia and fear which mount as they realize that Something Else is on board. The spaceships are grungy and retro (this look owes more to the "Millennium Falcon", which came first, than to the "Nostromo", which followed), the crew members chain-smoke and could use a bath. Same old story. But EVENT HORIZON isn't a monster movie— it's a ghost story. The crew find not venom-spewing aliens in the deserted vessel, but rather physical manifestations of their own inner demons. Captain Miller sees the crewman he left behind to die in a zero-G fire on his previous assignment. Wier sees his wife, who committed suicide. Peters (Kathleen Quinlan) sees her dead son. Suffice it to say that nobody sees any trippy lights or groovy acid flashbacks. The ship knows their weak spots, and knows how to exploit them. This plot too is nothing new; as other critics have pointed out, it's been done in outer space before in the 1972 Russian sci-fi film SOLARIS, and underwater in shameless hack Michael Crichton's SPHERE (also now a major motion picture, due in December). HORIZON's twist is to propose that the ship in question literally went to Hell and back— and has returned sentient, and hungry. It needs new souls upon which to feed. Despite a sketchy set-up and a cast of characters to which the term "two-dimensional" is a compliment, I rooted for this picture, and pretty much stuck with it to the end. This was due in no small part to the stunning visual effects, which did a lot to overcome my doubts. I try not to recommend a film strictly on the basis of its value as eye-candy, but this summer I've done it twice: first for THE FIFTH ELEMENT, the lame-brained plot of which is overcome by its HEAVY METAL visual appeal; and now for HORIZON. The set design and special effects are staggering in their beauty. The clouds of Neptune are awe-inspiring, the spaceships elegant and majestic, both inside and out. The core of the "Horizon", in which is housed the giant concentric rings of the gravity drive, looks like a medieval torture chamber. If it is possible for a spaceship to look evil, then production designer Joseph Bennett has succeeded admirably. But does the film deliver in the scare department? Well, yes and no. The pernicious influence of Oliver Stone rears its ugly head again in Director Paul Anderson's use of rapid-fire subliminal editing techniques to deliver most of the shocks. No expense is spared in the gore department; when X.O. Starck (Joely Richardson) finally decodes the ship's log, the images of what transpired with the former crew will raise the hackles on the most jaded of Clive Barker fans. But there is precious little edge-of-your seat suspense. Movies like ALIEN and HALLOWEEN scare so efficiently because they delay the payoff and leave the carnage mostly to the imagination. HORIZON trades suspense for shock value. While the gore is creative and some of the scenes harrowing to watch, the result is a film of lesser quality. Even so, I kept watching. The premise of the film grabbed me, and the visuals kept me hooked even as the execution proved disappointing. Sadly, the film looks pared to the bone, as if some crazed editor crept into the studio at night and hacked off about a third of the footage. Despite sturdy work from the cast, particularly Fishburne and Richard T. Jones as Cooper, the gung-ho security officer, none of them are given enough screen time to flesh out the characters. The key transformation of one character from good guy to villain is handled so abruptly that we're left wondering exactly when it happened, or why. The climax occurs twenty minutes too soon. When the lights came up I was left wanting more— which is normally a good thing, but in this case it's not that I wanted the film to go on, I just wanted to go back and flesh out the film I'd already seen. Too bad. A little more suspense, a little more hellfire and damnation, and EVENT HORIZON might have become a horror classic. Still, if great set design and dazzling special effects are your bag, then it's close enough for jazz. Grade: B- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------- Please visit the Film Geek website at: http://www.filmgeek.com From rec.arts.sf.reviews Fri Aug 22 15:25:37 1997 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!eru.mt.luth.se!www.nntp.primenet.com!globalcenter0!news.primenet.com!nntp.primenet.com!infeed2.internetmci.com!newsfeed.internetmci.com!192.48.96.125!in3.uu.net!140.142.64.3!news.u.washington.edu!grahams From: Doug Skiles Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Event Horizon (1997) Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 21 Aug 1997 16:09:14 GMT Organization: Performance Motors, Ltd. Lines: 68 Approved: graham@ee.washington.edu Message-ID: <5thp7a$95j@nntp5.u.washington.edu> Reply-To: rskiles@mail.win.org NNTP-Posting-Host: homer36.u.washington.edu NNTP-Posting-User: grahams Summary: r.a.m.r. #08656 Keywords: author=skiles X-Questions-to: movie-rev-mod@www.ee.washington.edu X-Submissions-to: movie-reviews@www.ee.washington.edu Originator: grahams@homer36.u.washington.edu Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:8048 rec.arts.sf.reviews:1502 EVENT HORIZON Starring: Laurence Fishburne (Captain Joe Miller), Sam Neill(Dr. William Wier), Kathleen Quinlan (Peters) Directed by: Paul Anderson Written by: Phillip Eisner Reviewed by: Doug Skiles The event horizon is the boundary of a black hole... and, in the future, it's also the name of a spaceship that vanished when it tried to go faster than the speed of light by traversing through its own portable black hole. Naturally, this is the setup for the other EVENT HORIZON... the movie. When the ship suddenly appears at the point that it vanished at, just outside of Neptune, the crew of the ship called the "Lewis and Clark" has to go to investigate, and Dr. William Weir, the creator of the "Event Horizon," gets to come along for the ride. If you've glanced at a poster for this movie, you know that, supposedly, what follows is "Infinite Terror." Well, I don't know about the "Terror" part, but "Infinite" certainly seems to qualify... EVENT HORIZON is a mean-spirited, gory, sick excuse for a film. It starts off as an ALIEN rip-off, and then degenerates into a pointlessly bloody slasher flick after about 40 minutes. At least for those first 40 minutes it's an *interesting* rip-off of ALIEN. That's a lot more than can be said for the rest of them movie, which seems to go on forever. It not a scary monster movie, nor is it a psychological thriller. It is simply a movie which tries again and again to make the viewers feel sick to their stomach at the site of extreme gore. You've seen this kind of movie before. The HELLRAISER series had plenty of scenes containing this sensibility. This is a kind of movie for which I have no respect, a kind of movie which I had hoped died out years ago. It is quite possible for a movie to frighten or shock its audience without resorting to nothing more than gore, but EVENT HORIZON takes the low road, and the viewers pay the price. There are many good, respectable performances, from Fishburne and Neill most noticably. Paul Anderson's direction is impressive, as it was in MORTAL KOMBAT. There are many nice special effects, mostly dealing with numerous common objects floating around in zero-gravity. The sets are beautiful to gaze upon. And Richard T. Jones' character (Cooper) is hilarious and extremely likable (more so than most characters I've seen in recent movies) for the little screen time that he has. And none of this can save the movie from being a D-grade level of film. The idea of a ship that has some sort of life within its walls, a life that knows the fears and inner skeletons of the human passengers, is a promising one. A haunted house story in space isn't such a bad idea. But the final execution is extremely disappointing. That's not to say that Philip Eisner (here making his feature film-writing debut) doesn't have talent. For those first 40 minutes, he manages to make a tired premise interesting, adding in aspects of unique flavor into a rip-off story, and that's something that not too many writers can do. He even has one scene that, though it also tries to sicken the audience, has a honestly tense feel to it (the scene in question deals with one of the crew being in an airlock while others try to save him from floating into space). He definitely has something of a gift, but it's not fully on display here. I certainly will look forward to seeing more from him, and I hope that his future work fully explores his talent and the story possibilities of the premise. But because of what this movie degenerates into, I have little or no respect, and got little or no enjoyment, out of it. If this is what we have to look forward to in the future of film, then I agree with Laurence Fishburne's sentiment - "God help us." RATING: D- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ From /home/matoh/tmp/sf-rev Fri Aug 22 16:43:53 1997 From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon Aug 18 15:23:17 1997 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!newsfeed.sunet.se!news99.sunet.se!news01.sunet.se!sunic!mn6.swip.net!nntp.uio.no!www.nntp.primenet.com!globalcenter0!news.primenet.com!nntp.primenet.com!newsfeed.direct.ca!infeed1.internetmci.com!newsfeed.internetmci.com!205.252.116.205!howland.erols.net!newsfeed.nacamar.de!wnfeed!204.127.130.5!worldnet.att.net!news.u.washington.edu!grahams From: Scott Renshaw Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Event Horizon (1997) Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 14 Aug 1997 23:30:39 GMT Organization: None Lines: 85 Approved: graham@ee.washington.edu Message-ID: <5t04ev$o89@nntp5.u.washington.edu> ~Reply-To: Scott Renshaw NNTP-Posting-Host: homer34.u.washington.edu NNTP-Posting-User: grahams Summary: r.a.m.r. #08590 Keywords: author=renshaw X-Questions-to: movie-rev-mod@www.ee.washington.edu X-Submissions-to: movie-reviews@www.ee.washington.edu Originator: grahams@homer34.u.washington.edu Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:7976 rec.arts.sf.reviews:1489 EVENT HORIZON (Paramount) Starring: Laurence Fishburne, Sam Neill, Kathleen Quinlan, Joely Richardson, Richard T. Jones. Screenplay: Philip Eisner. Producers: Jeremy Bolt, Lawrence Gordon and Lloyd Levin. Director: Paul Anderson. MPAA Rating: R (profanity, violence, gore, adult themes, brief nudity) Running Time: 95 minutes. Reviewed by Scott Renshaw. Give this to the makers of EVENT HORIZON: as wholesale rip-offs of ALIEN go, this one is remarkably thorough. With the assistance of copious captions, we learn that it involves a small space ship crew, headed by laconic Captain Joe Miller (Laurence Fishburne), which is sent on a somewhat mysterious search-and-rescue operation. When one advance team member returns to the ship in a catatonic state, the rest of the crew begins worrying...and, shortly thereafter, begins dying. To make matters worse, one member of the crew may be working for the other side. The only chance for the surviving member(s) of the crew is to blow up one part of the ship while using the rest as an escape pod, going into hyper-sleep and waiting for a rescue. Only a computer named Mother and a cat named Jonesy are missing to complete the picture The original twist to that familiar scenario -- and where EVENT HORIZON is concerned, "original" is used advisedly -- is that the object of the search and rescue operation is the Event Horizon, a prototype spacecraft created by Dr. William Weir (Sam Neill) with the ability to bend space-time for the purpose of deep-space travel. Unfortunately, instead of travelling to another galaxy, the Event Horizon appears to have travelled to another dimension, one inhabited by a chaotic life force which drives people mad with intense, hallucinatory visions. In that sense, the malevolent entity a bit more efficient than the predatory stowaway of ALIEN -- instead of tearing out your organs, it makes you want to tear them out yourself, or tear out those of your fellow crew members. EVENT HORIZON, on the other hand, is not nearly so efficient. ALIEN grabbed its viewers with one graphic, horrific moment and a whole lot of creepy atmosphers; EVENT HORIZON counters with a little creepy atmosphere and a whole lot of graphic, horrific moments. Not a single violent image is left to the imagination, not when special effects can render a character coughing up blood in zero gravity, or a body ripped open and hung like a side of beef. There are certainly a few scares in EVENT HORIZON, but director Paul Anderson (MORTAL KOMBAT) rarely earns them. Give me a roll of film, a dark room, a scary mask and a burst of dissonant strings, and even I could get an audience to jump every time. EVENT HORIZON doesn't build a sense of dread, because it's easier to settle for shock and disgust. The truly disappointing thing about Philip Eisner's script is that, for a while, it looks like it's headed somewhere interesting. The idea of characters defeated by their own demons is infinitely more compelling than characters defeated by real demons, which gives EVENT HROIZON a creepy tension while there's still some mystery about what's going on. But Eisner doesn't follow through on enough of his characters' dark secrets; whenever someone doesn't have a closeted skeleton to rattle, he just throws a bucket of blood at them. Even when he does follow up on a character's motivations, they end up making very little sense. Weir's motivations in particular -- which initially seem perfectly logical -- disintegrate near the film's climax, right about the time EVENT HORIZON becomes a parade of explosions, slow-motion and lovingly photographed corpses. EVENT HORIZON boasts some genuinely impressive technical credits, including imaginative production design by Joseph Bennett, but that doesn't explain what a cast this talented saw in this project. ALIEN was the kind of memorable film which launched careers. EVENT HORIZON is the kind of re-cycled nonsense which can end careers. Remember, in space, no one can hear you scream, but in a movie theater, you can hear everyone groan. On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 lost horizons: 3. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Visit Scott Renshaw's MoviePage http://www.inconnect.com/~renshaw/ *** Subscribe to receive new reviews directly by email! See the MoviePage for details, or reply to this message with subject line "Subscribe". -------------------------------------------------------------------------- From /home/matoh/tmp/sf-rev Fri Aug 22 16:43:55 1997 From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon Aug 18 15:23:18 1997 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!newsfeed.sunet.se!news99.sunet.se!news00.sunet.se!sunic!mn6.swip.net!nntp.uio.no!www.nntp.primenet.com!globalcenter0!news.primenet.com!nntp.primenet.com!infeed1.internetmci.com!newsfeed.internetmci.com!192.220.251.22!netnews.nwnet.net!news.u.washington.edu!grahams From: WFrith1680@aol.com (Walter Frith) Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Event Horizon (1997) Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 15 Aug 1997 15:50:31 GMT Organization: None Lines: 41 Approved: graham@ee.washington.edu Message-ID: <5t1ts7$8bf@nntp5.u.washington.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: homer34.u.washington.edu NNTP-Posting-User: grahams Summary: r.a.m.r. #08593 Keywords: author=frith X-Questions-to: movie-rev-mod@www.ee.washington.edu X-Submissions-to: movie-reviews@www.ee.washington.edu Cc: wdb@ipac.net Originator: grahams@homer34.u.washington.edu Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:7990 rec.arts.sf.reviews:1490 'Event Horizon' A movie review by Walter Frith As the medium of film grows larger with each passing year, movie audiences are left with fewer original movies but as long as a film can still entertain, it can still be called good. In the case of 'Event Horizon', this is a movie that isn't necessarily a copycat of past science fiction/horror films but rather it has been influenced by them. There are shades of 'Alien', 'The Exorcist', 'The Shining', '2001' and '2010' all mixed together in one very collective blend to shock and electrify you and is not for the faint of heart. There are extreme moments of graphic violence mixed in with a very loud and thunderous soundtrack and the special effects and art direction/set decoration are eye catching to say the least. Set 50 years in the future in the year 2047, 'Event Horizon' deals with a group of space explorers led by Laurence Fishburne who travel to the far reaches of Neptune to investigate a space ship launched from Earth 7 years earlier which disappeared without a trace. It is found and a doctor along for the ride (Sam Neill) is the one who helped build and design the ship and scientific technology has allowed him to create the outer space atmosphere around it. The exploration team discovers that the ship itself is now possessed by a lifeforce of its own and it feeds on the fears and secrets of humans who encounter it. Sound like a 'B' movie plot? Perhaps, but read on. To understand and appreciate this movie you have to stretch the boundaries of your imagination to a limit that perhaps may be a little too illogical and there is no doubt that director Paul Anderson has gone over the top at times but I still found the movie frightening, compelling and it has been a very long time since I jumped up in my seat while watching a film. Its religious overtones may offend some and its tone is sharp but the film is evenly paced, solidly edited (perhaps a bit too much at times) and technically efficient. If you enjoyed the movies I mentioned in the first paragraph of this review, then 'Event Horizon' will satisfy your craving for this kind of entertainment. Don't see this one if you feel faint at the sight of blood and it is not recommended for anyone that's ever covered their eyes during a movie. OUT OF 5> * * * 1/2 From /home/matoh/tmp/sf-rev Fri Aug 22 16:43:57 1997 From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon Aug 18 15:23:19 1997 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!newsfeed.sunet.se!news99.sunet.se!news01.sunet.se!sunic!mn6.swip.net!nntp.uio.no!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!infeed1.internetmci.com!newsfeed.internetmci.com!192.220.251.22!netnews.nwnet.net!news.u.washington.edu!grahams From: Roger Rubio Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Event Horizon (1997) Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 17 Aug 1997 15:35:51 GMT Organization: Digital Prospects Lines: 82 Approved: graham@ee.washington.edu Message-ID: <5t75on$g9m@nntp5.u.washington.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: homer16.u.washington.edu NNTP-Posting-User: grahams Summary: r.a.m.r. # Keywords: author= X-Questions-to: movie-rev-mod@www.ee.washington.edu X-Submissions-to: movie-reviews@www.ee.washington.edu Originator: grahams@homer16.u.washington.edu Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:8011 rec.arts.sf.reviews:1493 EVENT HORIZON Directed by Paul Anderson Starring Sam Neill, Lawrence Fishburne, Joely Richardson After a long hiatus, The Snapman returns. Something was missing in this film. Something that would have really screwed me up, as some of the best horror movies have done in the past. The visuals were stunning, the cast talented, the writing decent; so what was missing? EVENT HORIZON takes place in 2047. The crew of the Search & Rescue ship Lewis & Clark has been sent to the planet Neptune to search for survivors of the Event Horizon, a ship which mysteriously disappeared seven years ago. Dr. Weir (Sam Neill) explains to Captain Miller (Lawrence Fishburne) and the crew of the Lewis & Clark the secret of the Event Horizon: the gravity drive. The gravity drive creates a black hole which folds two points in space-time close together which are normally very far away. The ship then hops the shortened distance through a "dimensional gateway" and returns space-time to normal. When the Lewis & Clark arrive at the Event Horizon, they find the crew dead and some very disturbing things going on. Apparently the trip brought back something it shouldn't have. Requisite horror movie misadventures ensue. The dimensional gateway the Event Horizon went through is never really explained in great detail. All you know is that it uses a black hole to create a dimensional gateway. The gateway apparently opened up a hole in our universe to a dimension of pure chaos. Okay, fine, I can deal with that; but why didn't it open a hole up to another universe instead of another dimension? Is there a whole dimension of pure chaos enveloping the universe as we know it? Does traveling through the gateway take you to a specific location, or just a dimension in general? As a techie-type, these are the kind of geeky questions I found myself asking about this story. If the story is going to go as far as explaining the space-time relationship and the folding of space, why doesn't it go as far as to explain the whole enchilada? And another thing: why did the ship come back? Just to get another crew so that they would promptly go back and die horribly in the dimension of hell? Unless Hollywood plans a hundreds EVENT HORIZON sequels to explain all of this, these issue will remain unclear. EVENT HORIZON relies heavily on its stunning visuals and impressive production design. All of it floored me; I give great kudos to the production crew for some great vision. But the writing is not exactly sure where it wants to go. Regular horror movie gimmicks find their way into a movie that is trying hard to be different from all the others. The idea of a spaceship going to hell and coming back is an interesting one, but this concept is awkwardly executed. This script is not very sure if it is trying to be an ALIEN crew-monster movie (the "evil" of the ship), THE SHINING spook-house movie (instead of the hotel "shining," the ship is "alive"), or a combination of both. If this movie wants to shock and disturb, it succeeds very well. But it resorts to in-your-face "jolt" scenes, where bursts of sounds and disturbing visuals will hopefully scare you out of your seat. Such a scheme for disturbing the audience only works when there is no sound accompanying the visuals. Otherwise the intent of the filmmakers is too obvious. And the flashes of pure chaos do not seem to be focused on any of the characters in general, just on the audience. The audience gets scared when the characters get scared. It is clear (or should I say, unclear if) the ship is not trying to scare the crew; it's trying to scare the people sitting in the audience in the movie theater. In ALIEN, the characters were scared to death of the monster running around the ship. In THE SHINING, Jack Torrance was the immediate object to be scared of, but in the end it was the hotel itself to stay away from. In EVENT HORIZON, we are not sure what to be scared of; the ship, the dimensional gateway, the supposed evil behind it all, or what? Great visuals, good special effects, and good acting can't fill in what was missing from this movie: genuine suspense. THE SNAPMAN snapman-hhp@juno.com (Roger Rubio) -- "Gravity cannot be held responsible for falling in love." -- Albert Einstein PCS Phone: (505) 480-4031 Home Page: http://www.unm.edu/~rsnappy/rodge.html Work E-mail: rubior@fc.dswa.mil From /home/matoh/tmp/sf-rev Fri Aug 22 16:44:00 1997 From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon Aug 18 15:23:21 1997 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lejonet.se!newsfeed1.telia.com!borg.unix.edu.sollentuna.se!news5.transpac.net!oden.abc.se!dos.canit.se!seunet!mn7.swip.net!mn6.swip.net!nntp.uio.no!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!infeed1.internetmci.com!newsfeed.internetmci.com!192.220.251.22!netnews.nwnet.net!news.u.washington.edu!grahams From: Steve Kong Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Event Horizon (1997) Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 18 Aug 1997 03:37:57 GMT Organization: None Lines: 72 Approved: graham@ee.washington.edu Message-ID: <5t8g2l$p0a@nntp5.u.washington.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: homer14.u.washington.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" NNTP-Posting-User: grahams Summary: r.a.m.r. #08619 Keywords: author=kong X-Questions-to: movie-rev-mod@www.ee.washington.edu X-Submissions-to: movie-reviews@www.ee.washington.edu Originator: grahams@homer14.u.washington.edu Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:8016 rec.arts.sf.reviews:1494 EVENT HORIZON (1997) A film review by Steve Kong Copyright 1997 Steve Kong "Wow!" and "Potential" are the words that popped up in my mind during the first 20 minutes or so of Event Horizon. Then the phrases "Ugh" and "It had potential" started to creep in. In the opening 20 minutes of Event Horizon, we are treated to some well-done special effects along with some pretty good ideas for a sci-fi movie. But after we are introduced to these ideas, we are sent on a path to a typical horror film. The premise to Event Horizon has so much potential; A ship, Event Horizon, is built with a special Gravity Drive that will let it tear holes in the space-time continuum and let it travel across galaxies without any effort. It does this by first tearing a hole at the two points, the origin and the destination. Then the Gravity Drive "folds" space-time so that the ship can be transported to the destination instantaneously. Sam Neill, plays William Weir, the creator of the Gravity Drive, he explains how the Gravity Drive works much better in the film. With this kind of start, and this kind of premise, there is infinite potential on a good solid sci-fi film. But, screenwriter Philip Eisner lets the script wander to the standard horror genre, and turns this film into nothing more than a gory not-scary film. It seems that seven years after the Event Horizon disappeared; it has not reappeared in orbit around Neptune. A team is dispatched to rescue any crew onboard the Event Horizon, salvage the Event Horizon, and find out what happened to the Event Horizon. The team is led by Captain Joe Miller (Lawrence Fishburne). The team is filled with stock two-dimensional characters, including one for comic relief. None of the characters are memorable. Sam Neill's William Weir is tagging along with the team to advise them. With the look of the film and the strange make up of the team, it looks almost like the Space Marines from James Cameron's Aliens. But, unfortunately, the casting for the team is not as strong, and the writing for the team is not up to par. The Event Horizon it seems has gone to Hell, or some evil place, and come back. The ship is now haunted, and it has a new crew to play with, and kill. As a horror film, Event Horizon does what it can. Using a lot of the turn-around-to-see-a-scary-thing technique to try to scare the audience. It also uses very short flashes of images and burst of sound to try to scare the audience. Most of these work, but after a few of them, I was wondering if the director was running short of inventive ways to scare the audience. The good thing about Event Horizon is the look of it. Director Paul Anderson, who's last film, Mortal Kombat, also looked great, creates a world that is dark, dingy and scary. The special effects are well done, these include some long shots of Neptune, complete with whirling storms. The spacecrafts look great and the interiors of Event Horizon and The Lewis and Clark are also great. But, all of the looks are lost to a boring, uninspired, horror film that hardly does what it sets out to do: Scare the audience. Sam Neill gives a decent performance as Weir, the smart and somewhat crazed scientist. Laurence Fishburne is below par, and looks as if he is as bored with the film as the audience is. The rest of the crew gives forgettable performances, and I really think that Kathleen Quinlan's (Apollo 13) talents are wasted in this film. Event Horizon a film that can be missed in the theatres and on video. It has a wonderful setup, but does not go through with it. Though it is visually spectacular, the story is just not there to support it's eye candy. A definite miss, save your money. Event Horizon has gone to Hell and has come back, but it seems as if all the fun has been striped of it in Hell. !=!=!=!=!=!=!=!=!=!=!=!=!=!=!=!=!=!=!=!=!=!=!=!=!=!=!=!=!=!=!=!=!=!=!=!=!=! steve kong "I want something else boiled@earthlink.net to get me through this spy on me at: steve-cam.home.ml.org semi-charmed kinda life" - 3eb movie reviews: hardboiled.home.ml.org mookie: mookie.relay.net !=!=!=!=!=!=!=!=!=!=!=!=!=!=!=!=!=!=!=!=!=!=!=!=!=!=!=!=!=!=!=!=!=!=!=!=!=! From rec.arts.sf.reviews Thu Aug 28 14:44:02 1997 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!eru.mt.luth.se!news-ge.switch.ch!news.grnet.gr!news-feed1.eu.concert.net!infeed1.internetmci.com!newsfeed.internetmci.com!192.48.96.125!in3.uu.net!140.142.64.3!news.u.washington.edu!grahams From: mredman@bvoice.com (Michael Redman) Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Event Horizon (1997) Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 25 Aug 1997 17:08:33 GMT Organization: ... Lines: 77 Approved: graham@ee.washington.edu Message-ID: <5tse6h$t6r@nntp5.u.washington.edu> Reply-To: mredman@bvoice.com NNTP-Posting-Host: homer32.u.washington.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit NNTP-Posting-User: grahams Summary: r.a.m.r. #08696 Keywords: author=redman X-Questions-to: movie-rev-mod@www.ee.washington.edu X-Submissions-to: movie-reviews@www.ee.washington.edu Originator: grahams@homer32.u.washington.edu Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:8133 rec.arts.sf.reviews:1508 Event Horizon A Film Review By Michael Redman Copyright 1997 Michael Redman *** First Half Of The Film * Second Half Of The Film (Out of ****) To be perfectly blunt: this movie sucks. And in the worst way. Although heavily influenced (to be kind) by "Alien", the film starts off with great promise. The fine cast combined with first rate effects and dynamic art production sets the mood for what looks to be one of the few science fiction films with thought and soul. Then it turns into a cinematic disaster. Unexpected story twists and surprise changes in plot are not necessarily bad things, but "Event Horizon" takes so many bewildering left turns that it should have picked up a Triple A trip map before it began. Perhaps then it wouldn't have ended up completely lost. Starting off in Alienland with a short journey to Stargateville and a stop-over at The Shiningtown, the movie travels to CliveBarkerburg and then makes a rapid descent into the bad side of ThirdRateSlasherville. It's a long strange trip that ends up nowhere. In 2047, the crew of the Lewis And Clark head off to rescue a top secret ship that supposedly was destroyed seven years before. Now it has turned up in the upper atmosphere of Neptune. Neptune was obviously not chosen by chance by the filmmakers. Ask your local astrologer: it's the planet of deception, illusion and blurring the edges of this dimension and the next. Upon coming out of stasis, the secret is revealed. The ship was designed to create black holes and travel through them effectively moving faster than the speed of light. It had disappeared when the engine core was engaged only now to emerge in the lightning storms of one of the outer planets. The rescue ship's mission is to recover the inter-universe drive and hopefully rescue the crew. The crew of the Event Horizon turns out to be a lost cause as they have been turned into bloody shredded beef strewn all over the ship. When the rescuers began having vivid hallucinations and recover the lost ship's video log showing the crew violently attacking each other, it is obvious that something has gone horribly wrong. The first half of the movie has its problems. It's too derivative of "Alien" and creates startling moments by loud noises rather than suspense, but it still looks good. The ancient future art direction (ala "Stargate") is fascinating. The strong casting of Laurence Fishburne, Sam Neill and Kathleen Quinlan is certainly a step in the right direction. The computerized special effects are some of the best crafted ever seen on the screen. Then it all falls apart. After leading us into the false sense of security that we are in for a film of value, the producers decide that height of filmmaking is "Friday The 13th" and pour more and more blood on the sets. When you hear the ship's scientist explain that the EH has opened a gateway into a "dimension of unimaginable evil", you know that all hope is lost. After that, little makes sense. The plot is thrown out the window and substituted by boring gore. It would take hours to go through all my complaints about this piece of trash. The actors, effects and artistic vision are all completely wasted when the film jumps off the cliff into its ocean of mindless carnage. The auspicious beginning only creates a stronger sense of betrayal as the movie collapses under the weight of blood and guts and gorged out eyeballs. If you want to see some extraordinary visuals, go and walk out after about an hour. You won't have missed a thing. (Michael Redman has written this column for over 21% of a century and rarely has he seen a film that was such a disappointment. Email notes of sympathy to mredman@bvoice.com) [This appeared in the 8/22/97 "Bloomington Voice", Bloomington, Indiana. Michael Redman can be reached at mredman@bvoice.com ] -- mailto:mredman@bvoice.com From rec.arts.sf.reviews Thu Aug 28 14:44:02 1997 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!eru.mt.luth.se!feed1.news.erols.com!feta.direct.ca!newsfeed.direct.ca!ais.net!infeed1.internetmci.com!newsfeed.internetmci.com!192.48.96.125!in3.uu.net!140.142.64.3!news.u.washington.edu!grahams ~From: Scott Promish ~Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews ~Subject: Review: Event Horizon (1997) Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.movies ~Date: 25 Aug 1997 17:10:04 GMT Organization: Concentric Internet Services ~Lines: 54 Approved: graham@ee.washington.edu Message-ID: <5tse9c$t7l@nntp5.u.washington.edu> ~Reply-To: scottjp@cris.com NNTP-Posting-Host: homer32.u.washington.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit NNTP-Posting-User: grahams Summary: r.a.m.r. #08706 Keywords: author=promish X-Questions-to: movie-rev-mod@www.ee.washington.edu X-Submissions-to: movie-reviews@www.ee.washington.edu Errors-To: Originator: grahams@homer32.u.washington.edu ~Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:8138 rec.arts.sf.reviews:1509 EVENT HORIZON (1997) Reviewed by Scott Promish (c)1997 It's the year 2047. A rescue team is sent to Neptune to investigate the reappearance of a ship called Event Horizon, which mysteriously vanished seven years previous. As the scientist who is accompanying them explains, the Event Horizon was designed (by him) to travel by bending space and thus reaching its destination almost instantly. Nobody knows where it went on it's trial run, but it seems to have brought back a souvenir... People seem to like comparing this film to ALIEN. I suppose any movie where people are fighting for survival against the unknown on a spaceship is going to get compared to ALIEN. But whereas in ALIEN, people got killed off one by one for doing stupid things or for not listening to the orders of the one person on board with any common sense, people are killed here because they're outwitted, and the alien force (I will not get more specific than that) is simply better than them. EVENT HORIZON reminded me more of another "haunted spaceship" film, NIGHTFLYERS. There are also strong echoes of Clive Barker's HELLRAISER mythology. The film is filled with mindblowing special effects. One space shot earlier in the film is simply dizzifying. I can't stress enough how good everything looks. The scenes with random debris floating around the empty ship looked very CG, but that's all. But is there a good story behind it all? Perhaps surprisingly, given recent trends, there is, along with some interesting philosophical themes. But I'm not going to spoil it all. Hopefully you haven't read about it elsewhere. Acting is decent for the most part. I was particularly impressed with Sean Pertwee, who gives the best performance as the pilot, Smith. Sam Neill is also very good as the scientist. Laurence Fishburne could do well to inject some more feeling into this speech; his monotone voice was getting on my nerves. Everyone else is fine, but not remarkable. One thing that really bothered me as I watched was the constant reliance on cheap scares just to make the audience jump. Yes, they worked, but they were obvious, and they got annoying fast. Loud bursts of noise were often used where there shouldn't have been any, such as when an empty glove floats by and startles the team's captain. Fortunately, there are a lot of other disturbing scenes and themes that get to you as well. This film is definitely a step in the right direction for Paul Anderson, whose previous work was MORTAL KOMBAT, a nice looking but hollow film (I know, what did I expect. Actually, it was *better* than I expected.) Hopefully the progression will continue. [Review written 23 August 1997] From rec.arts.sf.reviews Thu Aug 28 14:44:02 1997 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!eru.mt.luth.se!feed1.news.erols.com!infeed1.internetmci.com!newsfeed.internetmci.com!192.48.96.125!in3.uu.net!140.142.64.3!news.u.washington.edu!grahams ~From: "Michael J. Legeros" ~Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews ~Subject: Review: Event Horizon (1997) Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.movies ~Date: 25 Aug 1997 17:14:31 GMT Organization: None ~Lines: 47 Approved: graham@ee.washington.edu Message-ID: <5tsehn$t9f@nntp5.u.washington.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: homer33.u.washington.edu NNTP-Posting-User: grahams Summary: r.a.m.r. #08728 Keywords: author=legeros X-Questions-to: movie-rev-mod@www.ee.washington.edu X-Submissions-to: movie-reviews@www.ee.washington.edu Originator: grahams@homer33.u.washington.edu ~Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:8101 rec.arts.sf.reviews:1506 Event Horizon (1997) A movie review by Michael J. Legeros Copyright 1997 by Michael J. Legeros (Paramount) Directed by Paul Anderson Written by Philip Eisner Cast Laurence Fishburne, Sam Neill, Kathleen Quinlan, Joely Richardson, Richard T. Jones, Jack Noseworthy, Jason Isaacs, Sean Pertwee MPAA Rating "R" (presumably for gore and violence) Running Time 97 minutes Reviewed at Mission Valley Cinemas, Raleigh, NC (16AUG97) == The title refers to the name of a derelict spaceship that is dis- covered in 2047, some years after it disappeared on its maiden voyage. Laurence Fishburne, Kathleen Quinlan, Richard T. Jones, Joely Richard- son, Jack Noseworthy, Jason Isaacs, Sean Pertwee, and Sam Neill play the search and rescue team that investigates the vessel, and to whom bad things begin to happen. Without revealing too many plot particulars, think of EVENT HORIZON as a big boo-house with some splatter movie tendencies. (ALIEN meets HELLRAISER, if you will.) Jolts a-plenty (strobes, sound effects, dream sequences, etc.) plus buckets of blood, ranging from clawed-out eyes to the gleefully grisly sight of a fully disemboweled human body. (You'll laugh, you'll heave.) The art direction and special effects are breathtaking and certainly a world more impressive than anything having to do with plot, dialogue, or character. (You *do* get to see the ship's navigator, the lovely Ms. Richardson, emerge from a "gravity immersion tank" wearing nothing but shorts and a jogging bra. Does that count as character development?) Directed by Paul Anderson (MORTAL KOMBAT), who pulls one or two memor- able sequences out of his butt: a hull breach, the restoration of gravity in zero-G, and a very cool example of how to rescue someone who isn't wearing a space suit when the airlock opens. Magnetic boots on. Grade: C- -- Mike Legeros - Movie Hell http://www.nonvirtual.com/hell From rec.arts.sf.reviews Thu Aug 28 14:44:02 1997 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!eru.mt.luth.se!feed1.news.erols.com!europa.clark.net!204.127.161.1!wnfeed!204.127.130.5!worldnet.att.net!news.u.washington.edu!grahams ~From: Steve Rhodes ~Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews ~Subject: Review: Event Horizon (1997) Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.movies ~Date: 26 Aug 1997 16:02:39 GMT Organization: Tandem Computers ~Lines: 86 Approved: graham@ee.washington.edu Message-ID: <5tuumv$jh7@nntp5.u.washington.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: homer27.u.washington.edu NNTP-Posting-User: grahams Summary: r.a.m.r. #08746 Keywords: author=rhodes X-Questions-to: movie-rev-mod@www.ee.washington.edu X-Submissions-to: movie-reviews@www.ee.washington.edu Originator: grahams@homer27.u.washington.edu ~Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:8117 rec.arts.sf.reviews:1507 _______________________________________________________________________ EVENT HORIZON A film review by Steve Rhodes Copyright 1997 Steve Rhodes RATING (0 TO ****): * There is a typically cheesy moment in EVENT HORIZON when the scientist on board explains how he cheated the law of physics and designed a craft to effectively go faster than the speed of light. Taking a nude pinup from the crew's quarters, he folds it together and pokes a hole from one side to the other to illustrate how the craft was able to jump across the time-space continuum via an artificial black hole. Ignore the trailers and the handsome special effects of EVENT HORIZON, for it is not a science fiction movie. This is an expensive horror film that is pure schlock. It does have a glossy sci-fi wrapper, a la ALIEN, but the quality of the underlying production is a pure B movie exercise in terror. The year is 2047. Seven years earlier in the greatest space disaster ever a ship called the Event Horizon was lost while on a mission to explore deep space. The ship has suddenly reappeared, so the U.S.A.C. Lewis and Clark is sent to find out what happened and whether anyone survived. The movie has a talented, but completely wasted cast. The scientist, Dr. William Wier, is played almost like a zombie by Sam Neill. The head of the Lewis and Clark, Captain Joe Miller, is played by Laurence Fishburne in a fit of anger. Why the captain has such a bad attitude is never explained. Perhaps Fishburne was mad at his agent for signing him for this hopeless film. Other members of the crew include Joely Richardson as Starck and Kathleen Quinlan as Peters. First-time writer Philip Eisner's fatuous script includes a stream of inane lines including retreads ("Smoke 'em if you got 'em"), overly cute ones ("You know the rules people. Someone drops the ball, we get the call."), and the brutally obvious ("What are you telling me? This ship is alive?"). Director Paul Anderson, who last blessed the cinematic world with MORTAL COMBAT, stages EVENT HORIZON with nary a subtle moment. His style of overdirecting can best be seen when the rescue crew finds the derelict ship. Way out in space, it has the name "Event Horizon" in lights so bright that it would do any Broadway musical proud. The crew, which makes some pretty foolish moves later, at least does not miss this floating billboard. Once inside the EVENT HORIZON, the horror show gets into full gear, right down the obligatory child endangerment scenes. The audience gets to witness massive amounts of blood and nauseating special effects. People's bodies explode from within, and in the film's piece de resistance, characters rip out their own eye balls. "Where we're going, we won't need eyes to see," an eyeless Dr. Wier assures the captain. This slickly produced bad movie has superlative special effects. Objects, especially liquids, float in space with a eerie realism. Still, the net effect of all of the gore in this disturbing film is apt to leave many movie goers wanting to head for a shower. Some pictures, ALIEN and ALIENS being the best examples, can make an apocalyptic vision fascinating. EVENT HORIZON, on the other hand, is merely disgusting and watching it is about as much fun as staring at car accidents along the highway. EVENT HORIZON runs just 1:35 but feels like it will never end. The movie is rated R for frequent profanity, massive violence and gratuitous nudity. The show would be acceptable for mature teenagers, but I do not recommend it to anyone. I give it * for the wasted special effects and the talented cast. _______________________________________________________________________ **** = A must see film. *** = Excellent show. Look for it. ** = Average movie. Kind of enjoyable. * = Poor show. Don't waste your money. 0 = Totally and painfully unbearable picture. REVIEW WRITTEN ON: August 18, 1997 Opinions expressed are mine and not meant to reflect my employer's. From rec.arts.sf.reviews Thu Aug 28 14:44:03 1997 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!eru.mt.luth.se!www.nntp.primenet.com!globalcenter1!news.primenet.com!nntp.primenet.com!howland.erols.net!infeed1.internetmci.com!newsfeed.internetmci.com!192.220.251.22!netnews.nwnet.net!news.u.washington.edu!grahams ~From: John Eung Soo Kim ~Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews ~Subject: Review: Event Horizon (1997) Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.movies ~Date: 27 Aug 1997 23:54:50 GMT Organization: CONNECT2 Internet Networks, Inc. InterNetNews Site ~Lines: 49 Approved: graham@ee.washington.edu Message-ID: <5u2eoa$j91@nntp5.u.washington.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: homer14.u.washington.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit NNTP-Posting-User: grahams Summary: r.a.m.r. #08776 Keywords: author=kim X-Questions-to: movie-rev-mod@www.ee.washington.edu X-Submissions-to: movie-reviews@www.ee.washington.edu Originator: grahams@homer14.u.washington.edu ~Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:8160 rec.arts.sf.reviews:1511 Event Horizon / R / 1997 Director: Paul Anderson Star Players: Sam Neil, Lawrence Fishburne ****1/2 of ***** stars If you love being scared out of your pants, this is the movie you've been waiting for. In the year 2040, the space ship Event Horizon was lost near Neptune. Publically, it was stated that Event Horizon had exploded. Privately, it was a special experimental ship that allowed faster than light space travel by folding space. It is now 2047, seven years after what was called the biggest space disaster ever recorded and a beacon has been discovered near the orbit of Neptune. Dr. Weis (Sam Neil of Jurassic Park) is sent with the rescue ship Lewis&Clark which is captained by Lawrence Fishburne to attempt to salvage the crew and ship. There were only two plot points that disturbed me but they proved to be minor. The first was the scientific explanations for the experimental space folding process but remember Star Trek? During its initial television season 90% of its audience was unable to understand one full episode due to its heavy usage of up to date scientific theories and hypotheses. We figure this point can be forgiven since an explanation had to have been made and it's very much appreciated that they don't come back to any more science and concentrate on the story. The next point is slightly more critical. The survivors. They weren't the ones that we rooted for. In fact, they had the least amount of screen time and the least amount of contact, save one, with the entity within Event Horizon. Aside from these slight hitches, the movie was brilliantly done. The special effects were amazing, except for some of the floating space debris which was clearly computer generated, the editing was tight and moved the story quite nicely, the sound and score was perfect, never overpowering and perfectly underscoring the visuals and the story! Whew! The most amazing aspect of the film was that it had a fierce story with tension starting at the first five minutes and never relenting afterwards. The plot was well developed and the sub-plots added to the eerieness of the whole project. One bit of warning, Event Horizon is not for the squeemish. There is enough gore to make you spew so don't buy the extra large popcorn! Be especially wary of the hell scenes, which by the way screams with Clive Barker influences. ----- http:www.con2.com/~jfilmer/welcome.html Film and Television at NYU:Tisch School of the Arts ----- From rec.arts.sf.reviews Tue Sep 9 19:21:37 1997 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!eru.mt.luth.se!www.nntp.primenet.com!globalcenter1!news.primenet.com!nntp.primenet.com!howland.erols.net!news-peer.sprintlink.net!news.sprintlink.net!Sprint!uunet!in5.uu.net!news.u.washington.edu!news.u.washington.edu!grahams From: good@pixar.com (Craig Good) Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Event Horizon (1997) Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 3 Sep 1997 23:53:59 GMT Organization: None Lines: 52 Approved: graham@ee.washington.edu Message-ID: <5uktan$3rs@nntp5.u.washington.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: homer09.u.washington.edu NNTP-Posting-User: grahams Summary: r.a.m.r. #08874 Keywords: author=good X-Questions-to: movie-rev-mod@www.ee.washington.edu X-Submissions-to: movie-reviews@www.ee.washington.edu Originator: grahams@homer09.u.washington.edu Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:8289 rec.arts.sf.reviews:1527 To Hell In A Handbasket "Event Horizon" manages to raise the notion of "preposterous" to new heights. What starts out as a promising premise, that of a derelict space ship on the edge of the solar system which has returned as a ghost ship from parts unknown, degenerates into an incomprehensible mess. A rescue team led by Larry Fishburne is joined by the nightmare-prone scientist, Sam Neil, on a mission to rescue the Event Horizon and any surviving crew. For seven years the ship had been Somewhere, after trying out a new gravity drive which is supposed to use loopholes in relativity for effectively faster than light travel. The ship seems to have been to hell and back, literally, and is now a flying haunted mansion that evokes nightmarish visions of hell in the rescue crew. All of that sounds like it should work. It doesn't. The dialogue is by turns forced, silly, on the nose, or pure exposition. The plot devices have blinking red lights on them so you can't miss them. The "science" in this science fiction film is annoyingly stupid. (How about a guy in a space suit, floating outside a window, yelling and being heard from inside?) The movie is nearly devoid of content and has to rely on cheap tricks in an attempt to startle the audience. Laughably loud edits and buckets of fake blood are but desperate band-aids over the holes through which air from the theatre is rushing in to fill the void. I got the impression more than once that it was made by people who as children stuck their friends' hands in buckets of cold spaghetti and peeled grapes on Halloween. Here is your official "Event Horizon" sound designer guide: 1: All doors sound like full volume explosions when they open. 2: Anything that passes near the camera makes a whooshing noise. As a fitting finish, the closing credits run over something that was no doubt performed by people who would describe themselves as musicians, but who managed only to produce an unpleasent noise apparently designed to drive the remaining stragglers from the theatre. Somone in the parking lot elevator after the movie said, "Maybe we should have seen 'George of the Jungle' instead." Ditto. From rec.arts.sf.reviews Tue Sep 9 19:22:18 1997 From: Boyd.Petrie@aros.net (Boyd Petrie) Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Event Horizon (1997) Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 4 Sep 1997 15:27:57 GMT Organization: ArosNet Inc. Lines: 113 Approved: graham@ee.washington.edu Message-ID: <5umk1t$fc5@nntp5.u.washington.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: homer38.u.washington.edu NNTP-Posting-User: grahams Summary: r.a.m.r. #08881 Keywords: author=petrie X-Questions-to: movie-rev-mod@www.ee.washington.edu X-Submissions-to: movie-reviews@www.ee.washington.edu Originator: grahams@homer38.u.washington.edu Path: news.ifm.liu.se!genius.dat.hk-r.se!news.lth.se!eru.mt.luth.se!www.nntp.primenet.com!globalcenter1!news.primenet.com!nntp.primenet.com!howland.erols.net!news-peer.sprintlink.net!news.sprintlink.net!Sprint!uunet!in5.uu.net!news.u.washington.edu!news.u.washington.edu!grahams Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:8274 rec.arts.sf.reviews:1524 Event Horizon (1997) Rated R for violence, terror, language, and brief nudity Starring Sam Neill, Laurence Fishburne, Kathleen Quinlan ***1/2 of **** Laurence Fishburne was in last year's "Othello." Kathleen Quinlan was in this year's "Breakdown," and Sam Neill was in "Jurassic Park." Now, all these respected actors come together in a film that got dumped on by many critics, and won't make much money at the box office. The only way the film could make more money is by word of mouth, which is exactly what it might do. Last year, a film came out which was very scary the first half, and then turned into a comic suspense thriller. That film was "Scream." By word of mouth, that film became the highest grossing horror film ever. Hopefully, that word of mouth will spread onto Event Horizon, the new sci-fi/horror film from director Paul Anderson. Whatever occurs at the box office or with critics, Event Horizon will be the scariest film that I have seen since "Nightmare on Elm Street" (Actually, "Arachnophobia" scared me more than any film ever made). The film is so scary that it will have you on the edge of your seat, waiting for another surprise. And don't worry, there are many "jump" moments in this film. Event Horizon begins with the overused computer narration which types the summary onto the screen. We learn that a ship disappeared in 2040, and seven years later, she has returned. The Event Horizon was rumored to have been destroyed in space, becoming the worst space disaster ever. Now that she has reappeared, a crew is brought in to salvage what is left of the crew and ship. This crew consists of Captain Miller (Fishburne), Dr. Weir (Neill), who designed and built the ship, Starck (Joely Richardson), Peters (Kathleen Quinlan), and four other crew members. In fact, this film only has about nine actors who show up on screen. This crew sets off into deep space; their destination: Neptune. When they arrive, about 57 days later, they find the ship void of human life. What happened to the crew, and where did the ship go? All these questions are shoved into Dr. Weir's face because he designed it. Blood is found on the wall, and a recording is heard in Latin. The ship's log isn't much help either, because the part they need to see is jumbled and blurry. However, soon, the crew begins experiencing strange occurances, and Justin (Jack Noseworthy, also from "Breakdown") is sucked into the "heart" of the ship. This "heart", as explained by Weir, is what made the ship vanish for seven years. It folds space and allows the ship to pass through a black hole, instantaneously travelling to somewhere far, far away. Justin, however, tries to commit suicide (in a very graphic and bloody way), and Captain Miller wants to know what happened to him. Dr. Weir isn't able to answer any of the questions, and the film quickly turns into a horror film. Explaining any more of this film would ruin all the suspense, and believe me, there is a lot of it present in Event Horizon. And one of the best things about the film is that while most of the "jumps" come from the skilled filmmakers who know how to time the music and silence, most of the scariness comes from the plot and story. Unfortunately, the only downside to the film is the number of cliches that are used, and how many other films it steals from (Alien and Hellraiser are the most notable). Well, the ending of the film sucks too. On the plus side, while the film is riddled with cliches, the filmmakers have put new twists to them, making them seem original again. The hero-outruns-the-fireball cliche is one of the best because while it uses the cliche, it also uses the story to make it seem possible. Basically, Event Horizon is a sci-fi haunted house film. Nothing is as it seems, and this is the frightening aspect of the story. What is real? And what is just part of the imagination? Is the ship alive? Or is the mind playing tricks as a result of the isolation of the crew? The outcome is more terrifying than what is expected, and this provides an utterly frightening experience. This is one of those films that you will see once, and then tell all your friends about, and then take them to see it just so you can laugh at how scared they are. The filmmaking is probably the best part of the film itself. Director Paul Anderson knows exactly how to scare you. He uses great sets with shadows and dark corners. Sounds seem to come from nowhere, and things appear and disappear constantly. Composer Michael Kamen uses music to great effect here, making the music fade into silence, and then playing a very loud chord just when something on screen happens (many of film's "jump" moments are caused by this). Cinematographer Adrian Biddle uses all the common camera angles for horror films, but somehow they all seem to make the film more scary. The special effects are very well done, especially some of the computer generated ones. All of the effects are well done, and some are quite amazing. The effects are done by Cinesite, an ILM rival, and with this film, they prove that they can hold their own against bigger companies. The acting is well done (with the exception of Noseworthy). Fishburne gives a terrific performance, if not a bit recycled itself. Still, he has a great presence on screen, and his scenes are some of the best. Sam Neill steals the film with a great performance as the designer of Event Horizon. His performance is the key to the film, and he handles it extremely well. Kathleen Quinlan gives a nice and almost low-key performance, but her character isn't given much to do. Joely Richardson is very good, although she doesn't get much to do either. Noseworthy is usually good throughout the film, but sometimes he just got on my nerves. The rest of the cast supports very well, but again, they aren't given much to do. It's mainly Fishburne and Neill's film. Event Horizon is rated R for graphic violence and gore, some nudity, and language, with quite a bit of terror. This film is definitely not for the faint of heart, and the atmosphere itself could scare some people. Even the most proud people will show signs of fear during this film. All of the technical elements are put together extremely well, providing one of the scariest films to come along in a long time. Not many films give me nightmares at night, but Event Horizon did just that. I will say it again, just in case you didn't get what I am trying to tell you: Event Horizon is an EXTREMELY scary film. Respect of Respect's Movie Reviews http://www.aros.net/~respect/movies.html respect@aros.net From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon Sep 15 13:48:38 1997 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!eru.mt.luth.se!www.nntp.primenet.com!globalcenter1!news.primenet.com!nntp.primenet.com!su-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!su-news-feed1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!newsgate.tandem.com!uunet!in5.uu.net!news.u.washington.edu!news.u.washington.edu!grahams From: leeper@mtgbcs.mt.lucent.com (Mark R Leeper) Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Event Horizon (1997) Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 10 Sep 1997 03:30:12 GMT Organization: None Lines: 68 Approved: graham@ee.washington.edu Message-ID: <5v5484$52f@nntp5.u.washington.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: homer32.u.washington.edu Content-Type: text NNTP-Posting-User: grahams Summary: r.a.m.r. #08920 Keywords: author=leeper X-Questions-to: movie-rev-mod@www.ee.washington.edu X-Submissions-to: movie-reviews@www.ee.washington.edu Originator: grahams@homer32.u.washington.edu Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:8342 rec.arts.sf.reviews:1531 EVENT HORIZON A film review by Mark R. Leeper Capsule: A good cast, good special effects, and an intriguing title all go to make a really exciting-looking coming attraction. The film itself has nearly nothing of value that was not in the trailer. This is not so much set in the universe of modern physics as in Clive Barker's horror universe. This film is a loser. Rating: -1 (-4 to +4), 3 (0 to 10) I have heard it observed that any film that starts out with an aerial view of a city is not a film worth seeing. That may be helpful on cable, but not for films in a movie theater. I guess I would claim that any film whose publicity uses the word "terror" is a film well worth avoiding. I saw a coming attraction for EVENT HORIZON and thought that it looked pretty good. At the time I did not realize that I knew the rule about the word "terror." I knew but knew not that I knew. I only realized that I knew when I looked up some information about this interesting looking film on the web and saw the word "terror" in the ad, that I realized it had to be a bad film and I knew that only on the basis of seeing that one word. PSYCHO is one film that could be said to produce terror, but the ads did not use the word. Hitchcock never claimed to be a master of terror; William Castle made that claim. As a rule of thumb, if you are terrified by a William Castle film you should wait five or six years until you hit puberty and try it again. EVENT HORIZON is essentially a haunted house film in space that rather artfully uses scenes and touches from a lot of different films to tell a new story. There is a lot of ALIEN and a lot of HELLRAISER with bits of THE HAUNTING, FORBIDDEN PLANET, 2001, STAR TREK VI, MARY SHELLEY'S FRANKENSTEIN, THIS ISLAND EARTH, and probably others I missed. These days too many films tend to have a great look but not very much content. It is the music video aesthetic. This is a film with great visual images, but the plot is really basically the haunted house film in space. The film shovels images at the viewer so fast that it is difficult to interpret just what has been seen, and really it may not matter. When you find out what is really going on, it is a real letdown. This has to be one of the least intriguing concepts possible for a film. I will not give it away, but this is more a Clive Barker sort of horror film in a science fiction setting than it is a science fiction film. The title is the most intriguing thing about the film, but "Event Horizon" is just the name of a spacecraft, and there is no internal evidence that anyone involved in the production knew even what the term meant. This film is really a good cast wasted. Sam Neill and Laurence Fishburne are, of course, major actors. I suspect they will take the money and run. But what makes the casting particularly unusual is the inclusion of Kathleen Quinlin of I NEVER PROMISED YOU A ROSE GARDEN. She is an actress who always added a certain fragility to her roles. She is sort of the anti-Bette-Davis. Here that quality is not just ignored, it is plastered over and she is nearly unrecognizable. She is cast against type and brings nothing special that is usable to her role. This is a film that needed a writer with vision, but instead had one with a high concept. I would rate this letdown a -1 on the -4 to +4 scale. Mark R. Leeper mleeper@lucent.com Copyright 1997 Mark R. Leeper From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon Sep 15 13:48:52 1997 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!eru.mt.luth.se!news-ge.switch.ch!in2p3.fr!oleane!newsxfer3.itd.umich.edu!newsfeed.internetmci.com!newsfeed.internetmci.com!192.48.96.125!in3.uu.net!140.142.64.3!news.u.washington.edu!grahams From: Laurence Mixson Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Event Horizon (1997) Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 10 Sep 1997 15:37:05 GMT Organization: Datasync Internet Lines: 40 Approved: graham@ee.washington.edu Message-ID: <5v6er1$e5f@nntp5.u.washington.edu> Reply-To: jarls@datasync.com NNTP-Posting-Host: homer33.u.washington.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit NNTP-Posting-User: grahams Summary: r.a.m.r. #08929 Keywords: author=mixson X-Questions-to: movie-rev-mod@www.ee.washington.edu X-Submissions-to: movie-reviews@www.ee.washington.edu Originator: grahams@homer33.u.washington.edu Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:8356 rec.arts.sf.reviews:1535 Event Horizon (1997) Starring Laurence Fishburne, Sam Neill, Joely Richardson, Kathleen Quinlan. Review by Laurence Mixson (jarls@datasync.com) ***1/2 out of **** Event Horizon really fools you for a while. For about the first third of the movie, I thought it was going to be your average, run-of-the-mill late-summer release, basically a straight-to-video release put into the theaters. I was wrong. The movie sets up the plot rather quickly: seven years ago(it takes place in the year 2040-something)a spaceship named the Event Horizon, designed to explore the vast caverns of space, dissapeared. Now, in the present(although, technically, it's the future, but let's not get into that), the ship suddenly reappers with no apparent crew on board. A rescue ship crew, headed up by Captain Miller(Fishburne)to explore the event horizon. Accompanying he and his several man crew is Dr. Weir(Neill), who designed the Event Horizon. He lets them in on a secret rather early into the picture: the Event Horizon was not actually a space exploration ship, but a top-secret time-travel ship, designed to create a black hole and use it to travel from one end of the universe to the other. Miller's crew boards the Event Horizon and discovers that none of the Event's crew is present, all though lots of neat gore and blood splatter is everywhere. Eventually, they begin having hallucinations, and things start to get more violent, and Weir is cracking up... Event Horizon owes more than a little to both The Shining and Hellraiser which it gracefully rips off; and even ups them, in some cases. The special effects, while not cutting edge, are very good; they're the best when showing off graphic displays of gore. Like a man being cut open, having his insides dumped out, and hung from hooks on the ceiling. Did I mention this is a well-rounded, family movie as well? All though it's probably too late now to see it at the theaters, Event Horizon is a definite must-see video. Which, I suppose, makes it a good direct-to-video picture. Except it's better than that. Except that's not the point. Or is it? Aww, forget it... From rec.arts.sf.reviews Thu Oct 30 14:07:47 1997 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!eru.mt.luth.se!news.algonet.se!news.maxwell.syr.edu!news-peer.sprintlink.net!news.sprintlink.net!Sprint!worldnet.att.net!news.u.washington.edu!grahams From: "Shane Burridge" Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Event Horizon (1997) Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 5 Oct 1997 17:47:38 GMT Organization: Griffith University, Gold Coast Lines: 45 Approved: graham@ee.washington.edu Message-ID: <618jrq$m8m$1@nntp5.u.washington.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: homer29.u.washington.edu X-Trace: nntp5.u.washington.edu 876073658 22806 (None) 140.142.64.7 X-Complaints-To: help@cac.washington.edu NNTP-Posting-User: grahams Summary: r.a.m.r. #09233 Keywords: author=burridge X-Questions-to: movie-rev-mod@www.ee.washington.edu X-Submissions-to: movie-reviews@www.ee.washington.edu Originator: grahams@homer29.u.washington.edu Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:8569 rec.arts.sf.reviews:1549 EVENT HORIZON (1997) 95m. It's not that EVENT HORIZON isn't well made. It's just that I've been there before. In fact, I'm hard pressed to think of another film more entirely fabricated of quotes from other movies. Barely five minutes into the story I found myself sidetracked with references from obvious candidates like ALIEN, LIFEFORCE, and 2010, but the quotespotting soon brought forth non-SF films such as DON'T LOOK NOW and THE SHINING, and culminated with SOLARIS and, God help me, Disney's THE BLACK HOLE. Why is it - pardon the pun - that black hole movies always suck? It's a fascinating subject that still hasn't been treated right by Hollywood. In this case, the Event Horizon is not the rim of a black hole, but the name of a spaceship that reappears in Neptune's orbit after a seven year absence. But maybe it's really a non-Event Horizon. It's a Marie Celeste in Space scenario, the kind of story that early STAR TREK episodes bought the patent on years ago. To be fair, the opening scenes are writ large upon the screen, at least proving once again that SF cinema was the reason that Panavision was invented. The actors - Laurence Fishburne and Sam Neill head the cast - are all fine, the sets are great, the budget is big, there is some legitimate haunted-house atmosphere, a couple of gripping sequences, and at least one moment that made me laugh (when Fishburne decisively announces they're vacating the ship). But there are still holes in the plot, and I don't mean the black kind either, that keep the film from being solidly grounded: the abandonment of all scientific rationale (even Neill's pragmatic Doctor gives up) shows that the film-makers were less interested in explanation than effect. And, come to think of it, isn't there a crew member unaccounted for at the end? It may not be the movie’s fault. I guess I was expecting something more purely science-fictional, and instead got that SF-horror hybrid that seems to have consumed the genre of late. If I had seen EVENT HORIZON fifteen years ago I would have no doubt loved it. But you can only jump out of your seats from the same shock effects so many times, and after that there's not a lot left for a story to go on. Which is a shame, because I wanted to enjoy this film more than I did. Contrary to its title, EVENT HORIZON didn't take me into unchartered territory. The most unexpected thing about the ending was hearing a song by the Prodigy played over the final credits. From rec.arts.sf.reviews Thu Oct 30 14:07:52 1997 From: Tim Voon Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Event Horizon (1997) Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 9 Oct 1997 16:01:39 GMT Organization: Mariah Lines: 68 Approved: graham@ee.washington.edu Message-ID: <61iv53$3gd$1@nntp5.u.washington.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: homer13.u.washington.edu X-Trace: nntp5.u.washington.edu 876412899 3597 (None) 140.142.64.4 X-Complaints-To: help@cac.washington.edu NNTP-Posting-User: grahams Summary: r.a.m.r. #09286 Keywords: author=voon X-Questions-to: movie-rev-mod@www.ee.washington.edu X-Submissions-to: movie-reviews@www.ee.washington.edu Originator: grahams@homer13.u.washington.edu Path: news.ifm.liu.se!genius.dat.hk-r.se!news.lth.se!eru.mt.luth.se!luth.se!feed1.news.erols.com!howland.erols.net!news-peer.sprintlink.net!news.sprintlink.net!Sprint!worldnet.att.net!news.u.washington.edu!grahams Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:8614 rec.arts.sf.reviews:1553 EVENT HORIZON 1997 A film review by Timothy Voon Copyright 1997 Timothy Voon 8 :-( :-( :-( :-( :-( :-( :-( :-( for potentially the worst movie I’ve seen this year Cast: Laurence Fishburne, Sam Neill, Kathleen Quinlan, Joely Richardson, Richard T. Jones, Jack Noseworthy, Jason Isaacs, Sean Pertwee Director: Paul Anderson Screenplay: Philip Eisner This movie works on pure horror and special effects. Both of which score zilch when the mind is continually bombarded by wave upon wave of shocking graphic gore. Is there a story line? Yes and no. YES, it is the tale of an exploration ship known as the "Event Horizon", capable of travel through a self-generated Black Hole. After being missing for seven years, it reappears. Apparently the ship has been to Hell and back, and NO it shouldn't have made a re-appearance. There seems to be no limit to the human imagination when it comes to horror. Sam Neil's face is mutilated to the point where Freddy Kruger could be mistaken for Ronald McDonald in comparison. The simple scarred face is no longer shocking enough. The eyes must also be gorged out for added effect. Why not go all the way and remove the nose and tongue as well. That way we would be spared the mumbo jumbo dialogue, and the putrid stench that this movie creates. Let me mention a few horrific moments of wasted movie time. The "Silence of the Lambs" scene. This time the female gender is spared the skinning process. Instead we have an average sized Caucasian male who is skinned alive, before his carcass is poetically sprawled on the butchering table. The rest of him dangles on a hook above the body, giving "hung and dry" a new meaning. The "Carrie" scene - a simple bucket of blood has become cliche. This time we have a torrential river of crimson red, which floods and submerges its characters. This is definitely what the blood bank needs. Now for something not seen too often in Mainstream cinema. The "Body Mutilation Orgy Scene", which was unsuspectingly thrown at the audience. We have the naked, mutilated bodies of the missing crew running about the ship, ripping each other's insides out; and I don't just mean the eyes. I figured that this must have been the substitute sex scene, cause the actors get to take their clothes off. I won't forget to mention the "Blow the boy from the inside out" scene. Where once again we watch a nice young man having his eyes and veins explode in a pressure lock. There we go with the eyes again. Fetish, fetish. fetish. Now tell me, was I meant to enjoy the movie, or merely gag in the aisle where I was sitting. I'm not a great connoisseur of food, but I guess what is considered one man's vomit, is another man's creme de la creme. Believe me, this movie leaves a very bitter taste in the mouth. Are the actors worth mentioning? No. After portraying such used and abused characters, whose bodies have no less been put through a meat grinder, anonymity would be the kindest option. As for the director Paul Anderson, enough with the exploding eyes and bloody torrents, we have no wish to view the best left unseen effects of playing "Mortal Kombat" - a much better movie if you ask me. If I wanted to scare myself, I could have stayed at home and played "Peek-a-Boo" with a one year-old child. Timothy Voon e-mail: stirling@netlink.com.au From rec.arts.sf.reviews Wed May 13 11:22:28 1998 From: thecat@zip.com.au (Jeff Walters) Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Event Horizon (1997) Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 13 May 1998 03:59:09 GMT Organization: The Zipsters Lines: 37 Approved: graham@ee.washington.edu Message-ID: <6jb5qd$nc3$1@nntp5.u.washington.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: homer36.u.washington.edu X-Trace: nntp5.u.washington.edu 895031949 23939 (None) 140.142.64.5 X-Complaints-To: help@cac.washington.edu NNTP-Posting-User: grahams Summary: r.a.m.r. #12443 Keywords: author=walters X-Questions-to: movie-rev-mod@www.ee.washington.edu X-Submissions-to: movie-reviews@www.ee.washington.edu Originator: grahams@homer36.u.washington.edu Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!genius.dat.hk-r.se!feed1.news.luth.se!luth.se!masternews.telia.net!news-nyc.telia.net!howland.erols.net!news-peer.sprintlink.net!news.sprintlink.net!wn3feed!worldnet.att.net!140.142.64.3!news.u.washington.edu!grahams Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:11556 rec.arts.sf.reviews:1901 **Event Horizon** Reviewed by Jeff Walters Man, this was one wierd movie. Similar to Conspiracy Theory in that it couldn't decide which genre it is. The first hour is your standard stock Aliens clone, which nicely created an eerie atmosphere about the ship. The last half hour? This was when the makers blew the script out the airlock and just decided - "Screw it, let's just kill everybody". From then on - forget Sci-Fi...this movie becomes 100% horror. What really dissappointed me about this movie was that it tried to scare you in entirely the wrong way. Instead of using clever tricks or trying to build up to a scare - this movie just uses loud noises, sudden camera shifts and short quick bursts of gore.....yawn....everyone's seen it all before and knows when to expect it. The one thing that was done well was the lead up to finding out about what happened to the previous crew. There are skeletons lying around mangled and mashed, but what did this? Then finally after being painfully restored - the new crew views the video. The acting isn't too bad at all.....considering what the actors had to work with anyway, as there is no complex or interesting dialogue to speak of. There was some very nice camerawork in certain sequences though, like when the hull near the bridge of the Event Horizon is breached and the camera pans back to follow specific objects as they bounce across the deck and are sucked out into space. This movie could have been so much better. It had a good experienced cast who deserved more to work with. There was just nothing new here that any of us haven't seen before in Aliens or Hellraiser. 2 stars out of 5 From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon Jul 13 13:55:57 1998 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!feed1.news.luth.se!luth.se!news-ge.switch.ch!news-fra1.dfn.de!news.hrz.uni-kassel.de!fu-berlin.de!howland.erols.net!feed2.news.erols.com!erols!wn4feed!worldnet.att.net!140.142.64.3!news.u.washington.edu!grahams From: Kevin Patterson Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Event Horizon (1997) Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 10 Jul 1998 16:06:31 GMT Organization: None Lines: 103 Approved: graham@ee.washington.edu Message-ID: <6o5e67$gle$1@nntp3.u.washington.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: homer01.u.washington.edu X-Trace: nntp3.u.washington.edu 900086791 17070 (None) 140.142.64.4 X-Complaints-To: help@cac.washington.edu NNTP-Posting-User: grahams Summary: r.a.m.r. #13212 Keywords: author=patterson X-Questions-to: movie-rev-mod@www.ee.washington.edu X-Submissions-to: movie-reviews@www.ee.washington.edu Originator: grahams@homer01.u.washington.edu Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:12389 rec.arts.sf.reviews:1995 Film review by Kevin Patterson EVENT HORIZON Rating: ** (out of four) R, 1997 Director: Paul Anderson Screenplay: Philip Eisner Starring Cast: Sam Neill, Laurence Fishburne. EVENT HORIZON is the latest entry into the sci-fi/horror sub-genre of Movies About Weird Stuff Happening In Deep Space. With its ominous-looking visual design and its setting on a spaceship trapped inside the atmosphere of the planet Neptune, it aspires to be a claustrophobic piece of isolation and fear in the tradition of ALIEN. But while ALIEN can lay claim to a reasonably well-developed story and interesting characters to engage the audience's attention, EVENT HORIZON cannot: its screenplay is vague and undeveloped, and it is populated by one-dimensional figures who are there mainly to run around, scream in fright, and bleed profusely. As the film begins, we learn that it is the year 2047, and a deep space research ship known as the Event Horizon, having disappeared without a trace seven years ago, has now reappeared near Neptune and has sent out a garbled message to Earth. The Event Horizon has the capability to move faster than light through a sort of dimensional jump initiated by a "gravity drive" designed by Dr. Weir (Sam Neill), who is now assigned to a military team led by Captain Miller (Laurence Fishburne). Their mission is to recover the ship and determine the fate of its crew. When they eventually reach the ship, they discover that everyone on board is dead, either killed or driven to suicide by some sort of otherwordly force that has occupied the ship during the attempted dimensional jump: "save yourselves from Hell," an Event Horizon crew member has recorded over the ship's log. The force is still present, and it soon begins wreaking havoc on Miller's crew. This mix of science fiction and supernatural horror is on tenuous ground from the beginning. Science fiction normally lends itself to strange and fantastic events that are nevertheless explainable, at least according to some sort of movie pseudoscience. But Philip Eisner's screenplay seems to posit that the evil forces of EVENT HORIZON are demonic, or at least non-corporeal, which raises the question of why these demons would suddenly decide to pick on the crew of an experimental spaceship, as opposed to your average Joe Earthling. A ship moving faster than light could easily find itself on the wrong side of the universe, but I'm not sure why it would wind up in Hell. Unfortunately, the movie doesn't seem to know the answer, or at least it never lets the audience in on the secret. In any case, this concept is handled somewhat inconsistently by the filmmakers. If you're going to make a horror movie with a paper-thin story, you might as well at least concentrate on the more frightening aspect of it, which in this case would be the supernatural. But this demon, or demonic alien, or living hell-ship, or whatever it is, spends an awful lot of time using a possessed crew member to blow stuff up and shoot at the others when it has already proven that it can drive someone to suicide with hallucinations. Of course, it never actually does anything to help its cause, like deactivating life support or disabling the auto-destruct system (perhaps it was too busy filling a corridor with blood at the time). There is also one action sequence, in which a crew member is thrown thousands of miles into outer space, but returns to the exact point where he left using propulsion from his spacesuit's air tanks, that is so implausible that I literally shouted, "Oh, come ON!" at the screen. It's as if the filmmakers thought it was sufficient simply to create on-screen mayhem even if most of it makes very little sense. The screenplay supplies some of the characters with guilt complexes or conflicts of one sort or another, but they are of relatively minor significance and are nothing we haven't seen before (Weir mourns his dead wife, Miller remembers another officer whom he was forced to let die, another crew member misses her child, etc.). Miller's conflict with Weir, whom he resents because his team was called off leave for this mission, seems pretty unprofessional and is something I might have expected from one of the junior team members instead of the captain. Cooper, a foul-mouthed, cocky young officer, supplies some comic relief, but his personality contrasts so much with the others that he sometimes seems like he accidentally wandered in from a Quentin Tarantino movie. And none of this much matters in the first place, because the characters rarely get a chance to think about what's happening or engage in much dialogue before there's another explosion or another hallucination or another blood flood. That's not to say that EVENT HORIZON isn't at least partly effective: the apparitions and hallucinations are genuinely scary. And while director Paul Anderson is stuck with a pretty bad script, he at least manages to conjure up some claustrophobia and dread with the movie's remote setting, and this setup invests a certain chill into a series of gruesome confrontations that otherwise might have been merely disgusting. (And lest anyone think I was being facetious in my earlier comments about blood, these scenes are indeed gruesome: I don't think I've seen this much blood in a movie since FANTASTIC VOYAGE.) Something pretty frightening is happening in this movie, though it's anyone's guess as to exactly what. EVENT HORIZON gets a passing grade as a horror flick, but that's about all it gets: the plot is a mess, and even the scares rely too heavily on shock and gore. The isolated outer space setting and the ambitious, extravagantly creepy design of the ship's interior are really all that's noteworthy about this film. The rest of it could have been made by any horror hack with a camera, a few actors, and large quantities of fake blood. - - - - - Film Reviews Page: http://members.aol.com/KTPattersn/reviews.html From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon Aug 10 13:21:17 1998 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!feed1.news.luth.se!luth.se!feed2.news.erols.com!erols!wn4feed!worldnet.att.net!140.142.64.3!news.u.washington.edu!grahams From: "Choo Eng Aun, Jack" Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Event Horizon (1997)( Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 25 Jul 1998 16:43:32 GMT Organization: None Lines: 72 Approved: graham@ee.washington.edu Message-ID: <6pd1vk$f3c$1@nntp3.u.washington.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: homer25.u.washington.edu X-Trace: nntp3.u.washington.edu 901385012 15468 (None) 140.142.17.35 X-Complaints-To: help@cac.washington.edu NNTP-Posting-User: grahams Summary: r.a.m.r. #13522 Keywords: author=choo X-Questions-to: movie-rev-mod@www.ee.washington.edu X-Submissions-to: movie-reviews@www.ee.washington.edu Originator: grahams@homer25.u.washington.edu Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:12628 rec.arts.sf.reviews:2049 EVENT HORIZON (1997) Directed by Paul Anderson Starring : Lawrence Fishburne Sam Neill Kathleen Quinlan Running Time : 1hr 50mins Rating : ***1/2 out of **** (at your own risk!) EVENT HORIZON is dreadful horror.=20 No, it is not a bad film, in fact it is so good in achieving its = purpose, I actually wished for the film to end itself quickly. EVENT = HORIZON is not your run-of-the-mill sci-fi film, I'm sure many who have = watched this will agree with me. It is not even original in that sense, = and it does borrow heavily from films like ALIEN, HELLRAISER and even = BLADE RUNNER. The magic of this film lies in its unorthodox setting and = methodical build-up that makes it wonderfully horrifying. The story brings us to the year 2050, where space travel have since = enormously progressed. The EVENT HORIZON is actually a ship built for a = secret experimental purpose; it has the ability to fold time and space = thus making it possible for travelling distances not reachable in a = man's lifetime. The ship disappeared as soon as it went into operation = but after 7 years, it reappeared again within the orbit of Neptune. A = search and rescue team led by Miller (Fishburne) is given the task to = check for survivors of the EVENT HORIZON. The designer of the ship, Dr. = Weir (Neill) follows along to satisfy his curiosity on what actually = happened to his otherwise technologically impressive ship. EVENT HORIZON is a sci-fi horror film, much truer to the word than say, = ALIEN would ever be. While in ALIEN, the crew has to cope with a = ferocious creature while encased within tight spaces, in EVENT HORIZON, = the forces which goes against the crew is undefined but yet so powerful = and horrifying. The story unfolds itself slowly and the suspense buildup = is superb, up till the point where I really felt like saying out loud = `enough! I can't stand this anymore!'. There are more than enough jolts = to send your adrenalin pumping overtime. The story in itself is not = exactly something very exciting and also, the acting is only at most, = average by most commercial standards. Even so, the essence of horror is = carried out very well in this film, thanks to its well-paced = storytelling, disturbing set designs and some really gory sequences = (which incidentally, has been quite generously removed by our censorship = board).=20 Director Paul Anderson (who did MORTAL KOMBAT) and his team of = `atmosphere' creators have done well in keeping EVENT HORIZON within the = bounds of the term `horror'. This picture did not do very well in the US = box-office most probably for the dread-factor impact it has on most = audiences; people will not see it again and not many would recommend = their friend to watch this. Although on the face of it, EVENT HORIZON is = mostly molded for mass-entertainment; many thrills, spills and suspense = to keep audiences in focus. However, the offbeat horror element which it = ultimately convey audiences is very disturbing. My friend and I could = not say a word to each other for quite a while after going through the = `experience' of EVENT HORIZON. I guess it was just the immense feeling = of dread which the film had cast upon us. Be forewarned, this film is not for the faint-hearted nor for pure = entertainment. Be prepared to be disturbed if you should decide to watch = this film! EVENT HORIZON is highly recommended=85=85but at your own = risk! It has been a long time since good-horror embraced the big screen, = and EVENT HORIZON is one. ------=_NextPart_000_01BDB37A.450CF120-- From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon Nov 9 17:25:37 1998 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!feed1.news.luth.se!luth.se!cyclone.news.idirect.com!island.idirect.com!newsfeed.direct.ca!news.u.washington.edu!grahams From: James Sanford Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Event Horizon (1997) Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 9 Nov 1998 05:39:17 GMT Organization: CWIX Lines: 44 Approved: graham@ee.washington.edu Message-ID: <725v65$159a$1@nntp3.u.washington.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: homer36.u.washington.edu X-Trace: nntp3.u.washington.edu 910589957 38186 (None) 140.142.17.40 X-Complaints-To: help@cac.washington.edu NNTP-Posting-User: grahams Summary: r.a.m.r. #15196 Keywords: author=sanford X-Questions-to: movie-rev-mod@www.ee.washington.edu X-Submissions-to: movie-reviews@www.ee.washington.edu Originator: grahams@homer36.u.washington.edu Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:14389 rec.arts.sf.reviews:2165 In astronomical terms, an "event horizon" is defined as the point in the boundary of a black hole at which light or matter cannot escape being pulled in. In cinematic terms, "Event Horizon" almost immediately grabs the attention with lavish sets, first-rate special effects and an intriguing premise, only to end up chucking its careful set-up and resorting to a blood-drenched finale better-suited to a "Nightmare On Elm Street" installment. It's a classic exmplae of many admirable parts added up to an unsatisfying whole. In its first hour, "Event" is startlingly beautiful and compelling, borrowing heavily from the influential 1977 Russian film "Solaris," in which an investigator looking into the cause of mental breakdowns among the crew of a space station finds himself haunted by images from his past. "Event Horizon" revolves around a prototype superspaceship of that name that mysteriously vanished near Neptune in 2040. Seven years later it reappears, and Dr. William Weir (Sam Neill), the designer of the vessel, joins the mission to salvage the ship. What made the Event Horizon special was its "heart," a gravity drive that could fold time and space, allowing the craft to travel at speeds faster than light. But now, the gravity drive appears to have developed an evil mind of its own, as Weir and his teammates are terrorized by vivid hallucinations and spooked by manifestations of their own memories. Director Paul Anderson is often heavy-handed, frequently trotting out the old false-scare-accompanied-by-a-burst-of-shrieking-music to jolt his audience. Even so, the film has some genuinely chilling moments and memorable visuals. The passageway through a revolving tunnel that looks like a giant meat-grinder is a brilliant setting, and the gravity drive itself, with its multiple rotating rings, is a thing of creepy beauty. The impressive cast -- Laurence Fishburne, Kathleen Quinlan, Joely Richardson, etc. -- play out Philip Eisner's script without a hint of campiness or condescension, although Neill's initial restraint finally gives way to shameless hamminess. Likewise, "Event" deteriorates in its last half-hour into a gore-drenched free-for-all, with images of Hell that seem to have been lifted directly from a Nine Inch Nails video and numerous gruesome murders and self-mutilations: One character is even forced to put out his eyes with his own thumbs. By the time Richardson is swept through the corridors of the ship on a tidal wave of blood, you'll realize that's a pretty apt metaphor for what's happened to the film itself. Once "Event Horizon" goes off-course, it never regains its bearings. James Sanford From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon Dec 1 18:01:04 2003 From: Dragan Antulov Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Retrospective: Event Horizon (1997) Approved: ramr@rottentomatoes.com Followup-To: rec.arts.movies.past-films Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2003 20:40:15 -0000 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Message-ID: X-RAMR-ID: 36340 X-Language: en X-RT-ReviewID: 1219909 X-RT-TitleID: 1079092 X-RT-AuthorID: 1307 X-RT-RatingText: 2/10 Summary: r.a.m.r. #36340 X-Questions-to: ramr@rottentomatoes.com X-Submissions-to: ramr@rottentomatoes.com X-Complaints-To: abuse@supernews.com Lines: 60 Path: news.island.liu.se!newsfeed.sunet.se!news01.sunet.se!wineasy!newsfeed.wineasy.se!news.sto.telegate.se!news.tele.dk!news.tele.dk!small.news.tele.dk!news.maxwell.syr.edu!sn-xit-03!sn-xit-06!sn-post-02!sn-post-01!supernews.com!news.supernews.com!not-for-mail Xref: news.island.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:8123 rec.arts.sf.reviews:696 EVENT HORIZON (1997) A Film Review Copyright Dragan Antulov 2003 Lack of original ideas seems to be the greatest problem of modern Hollywood. But original ideas alone can't save some Hollywood films - when Hollywood have one of those ideas, its filmmakers often leave impression that they don't know what to do with it. EVENT HORIZON, 1997 science fiction horror directed by Paul W.S. Anderson is one of those films that can perfectly illustrate my point. The plot is set in year 2047. Seven years ago "Event Horizon", experimental space ship equipped with revolutionary inter-stellar drive, has mysteriously disappeared beyond the orbit of Neptune. After distress call is received, it turns out that "Event Horizon" has mysteriously reappeared. "Lewis & Clarke", search and rescue ship, is sent to investigate and pick up eventual survivors, and its crew, led by Captain Miller (played by Laurence Fishburne) reluctantly takes Dr. Weir (played by Sam Neill), doomed ship's original designer, on ship. When Miller's men finally get on board "Event Horizon", it turns out that they don't have anyone to rescue - the crew of "Event Horizon" is little pieces. It also appear that "Event Horizon" has picked up someone or something on its last voyage, because Miller's crew begins suffering from nasty hallucinations and quick return home becomes increasingly attractive option. EVENT HORIZON had intriguing concept based on "hard" science fiction (the title is borrowed from astrophysics terminology). It also had very talented cast and not insignificant amounts of money were spent on special effects, costumes and production design. Unfortunately, just like in many similar occasions, word "science fiction" was in the end nothing more than a cheap excuse for uninspired and predictable horror where "cool" special and make-up effects are supposed to be more attractive or interesting than plot, characters and scientific issues. With characters we don't particularly care for (and whose final fate could easily be predicted), with all plausibility and "science" being thrown out of window and with sad realisation that vast number of talents and creative resources have been tragically wasted, it isn't hard to understand why EVENT HORIZON ended up in a black hole of oblivion. RATING: 2/10 (-) Review written on November 20th 2003 Dragan Antulov a.k.a. Drax http://film.purger.com - Filmske recenzije na hrvatskom/Movie Reviews in Croatian http://www.ofcs.org - Online Films Critics Society ========== X-RAMR-ID: 36340 X-Language: en X-RT-ReviewID: 1219909 X-RT-TitleID: 1079092 X-RT-AuthorID: 1307 X-RT-RatingText: 2/10