It has something for everybody but nothing that would make it a great movie

Rating: 7/10 (23 July 2009)

I enjoyed Event Horizon the first time I watched it. Now after some years I went back to it and it still holds although it aged badly. That doesn't make it a bad movie, in my opinion the age made it unintentionally funny and that what kept me watching.
The story follows pretty much the same story as the movie "Ghostship" (which is even more unintentionally silly) - there is a ship wreck in space, a team is sent to search & rescue and they all get slaughter. Much alike "Ghostship" there is a plot twist which is unexpected and makes no sense but sure is great to watch.
But what makes this movie bearable is pure comedy on screen. We start with Sam Neil as Dr Weir (thats a villain name alright) in a bathroom on a rescue ship. He has a large mirror and a bathtub (his room sure is spacious for a starship. Of course there is normal gravitation all around. You wouldn't guess how astronauts in 2047 shave - with a RAZOR. His attention is drawn by a dripping tap, the tap itself has no levers so I guess Neil thought to himself "I should have went for a premium space-tub". Also all this space plumbers must be lazy not to fix the tap before a mission. We then visit the bridge where everybody have roller chairs (what if the gravity generator malfunctioned?) and spit stupid one-liners like "its all blinking on my screen". The captain is Morpheus (played by Morpheus=) and he makes little more sense unless you count an odd leather jacket - is it the part of official uniform? The crew goes into some deep sleep chambers (like in alien but with water) and Doctor Weir wakes up first, everybody is sleeping and computer is silent. Don't you know that this is a nightmare already? This ends with a comedic "AAAAAaaaaAAA" by Sam Neil, wasn't he embarrassed by doing a scene like that? After they wake up they found out that they are near Neptun and complain (didn't they know where the ship was headed?). Also its up to Weir to explain to the crew how the government made a ship faster than light. Impossibly the crew is smart enough to tell this is impossible. This scene is priceless because again it hard not to pity Sam Neil to explain the unexplainable. He starts with saying how they managed to fold "space time", is it similar to time on Earth? Than 5 minutes before they reach the wreck Dr Weir(d) plays them the one transmission that they've got from it - the recording consist of loud screams and a mad voice saying "save me" in Latin. NOW, thats a good hint 5 MINUTES before boarding the vessel! wow =) The team goes to the ships, find it awfully quiet and than find stupid excuses to to wander off and get slaughtered. The big (no) secret is that the ship basically been to HELL and back. That very original. Whats unoriginal is why the ship finds some sneaky way to kill the characters instead of turning the life support off. The design of the capable-of-speed-of-light spaceship is questionable to say the lest. To get to engineering part you have to go trough a section that looks like a meat grinder and the engine itself looks like torture chamber fantasy. Seriously why a a engine would even need so many spikes? and sharp parts. I think the engine is powered on dangerous environment alone. The core is a liquid stable substance and the character exhibits whats seems to be a "matrix syndrome" to put the whole hand into unknown substance. What kind of engineer does that? I like the set-up but the rest of the film that follow is sub-par: we see a lot of gore (people with gouged eyes, parts of people falling from the ceiling, people crushed) and all the characters do nothing but invent stupid ways to get out of the ship. The plot twist is indeed unexpected (although not shocking) but at the same time gives no hints as why it happened.
Its a funny little flick that is more disgusting than scary but I don't think there is an abundance of this kind of horrors. Its recommendable but don't expect anything remotely serious and coherent. With a good spirit you can have a great time with it.