Should be renamed Ripped Off and Sucked In (1997). Awful. 0.0001/10.

Rating: 1/10 (8 August 2002)

WARNING: SPOILERS!
Event Horizon (1997) starts out great: the special effects begin as part of the opening credits: there is a fabulous segue from the Paramount studio logo up into space, refocusing on the stars and onto an apparent gaseous event horizon around a black hole. An event horizon is the perceivable limit, or the boundary between describable and indescribable physics at the edge of a "singularity". A singularity, a "black hole" star fallen into its own gravity well, can be visualized, just as the Simpsons did, as an infinite, bottomless pit, if you consider normal spacetime essentially a two-dimensional plane. It really is supposed to be infinite, with nothingness and no dimensions, no spacetime, at the bottom. Hell, nothing anywhere inside a black hole can make any sense at all. You and I keep our brains in normal spacetime, and we just don't have any frame of reference at all in common with a singularity. None. That's the point.
At the perceivable edge of this thing, back onto normal space, there are some slightly less weird physics, which we have called the "event horizon". This is the one-way membrane hiding the black hole. But forget black holes; the event horizon ITSELF is really bad news. If you are unlucky enough to supposedly get stuck in one, you get stretched out infinitely (ouch), because in just the distance between your head and your foot the difference in the gravitational force acting upon you approaches the infinite. For "you", time does not pass, and you cannot even be said to have died. Anyway, that's the theory.
Black holes were a hotly debated theoretical entity among astrophysicists for about 25 years, especially after Carl Sagan's friend, Kip Thorne of Cal Tech came up with "wormholes" around 1970, the theoretical possibility of a path in spacetime through the singularity instead of hitting it (there is a mathematical solution to an equation, but Stephen Hawking doesn't like it much because it depends on too many other variables). The wormhole joins two points of spacetime together temporarily, but you need two gravity wells to make that happen. That's what the "gravity drive" on The Event Horizon is supposed to be doing.
So in 1997 Paul Anderson (annoyingly similarly named to sci-fi novelist Poul Anderson) and Paramount tried to fictionalize what it might be like to survive a wormhole. What a good idea (NOT) it was to imagine that the gravity drive would also drive astronauts mad. How stupid do you have to be to accept such rubbish? -Well, very.
Don't misunderstand, I have no real problem with the folding of spacetime: so it would take a black hole in front and a black hole behind your spaceship (according to the actual scientific theory); so what? Surely the crew of the Event Horizon could have already tamed and placed two such warm and fuzzy singularities on a leash. No problem.
Instead, my problem with the plot of Event Horizon (1997) is that the much vaunted gravity drive would interfere with the neurochemistry  and that's all  of human brains in normal spacetime. Kind of a big flaw, don't you think? It would be rather difficult to develop the technology without somebody overseeing the PLANETARY BUDGET needed, actually noticing. Kip Thorne doesn't even appear to have been consulted for this, and perhaps there's a reason for that. The hallucination premise is the avenue for supplying lots of explosions, blood, guts and gore  excitement, but only for bozos. Miramax/ Palace put out a similar schlocky but cheaper turkey 7 years before, called Hardware (1990), which is the only movie I actually walked out on in my whole life. I was THIS CLOSE to walking out on Event Horizon (1997).
The casting is OK. Laurence (previously usually credited as Larry, and before that, again as Laurence, I kid you not) Fishburne is the acceptable lead, as Captain Miller. Larry went on to be Morpheus in The Matrix (1999). Onya Larry, he's the only winner out of Event Horizon. I just wish he would figure out who he is.
I really appreciate Sam Neill for taking so many "big science" roles, probably beginning with Jurassic Park (1993). Here he is Dr Weir, the inventor of the "gravity drive", but it's thoroughly awful and depressing to see him so denigrated later on in this movie to a hideous schlock character aboard the bad ship Event Horizon. Please do watch him in The Dish (2000) instead, where he is the sweetest, most mild-mannered radio astronomer you could ever hope to see.
Kathleen Quinlan is lovely as usual, but she is wasted as the doctor aboard this popsicle, and remains forgettable. Jack Noseworthy gets initially red-shirted (in Star Trek parlance) within the first half-hour. Unfortunately his thesping is not missed. He had been mugging for the camera again and throwing away whatever lines he had. Richard T Jones as Cooper is somewhat brighter, but he too is annoying with his lack of discipline. Just because his starship captain is also an African American is no reason for Cooper to revert to a stereotype. He's either a mission specialist who NEVER WAS a stereotype- HELLO- or he's a bozo who shouldn't be there.
I recommend no-one stays around for the tease ending, which is so lame that it is necessary to tell the audience that "The End" has arrived. Ripped off and sucked in, man! Paramount's executives at the time approved this bizarre cross between cutting edge scientific theory and stupid schlock. To whom are they trying to appeal? Any audience capable of understanding the science will not be impressed by mindless blood and gore. Probably the single most offensive disappointment of the 20th century. MAJOR turkey. Stay away in droves (if you can)! Sorry, Larry, no reflection on your work. 0.0001/10.