

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]