Not bad

Rating: 7/10 (4 January 2003)

Before going on to much worse things (ie. RESIDENT EVIL), Paul W.S. Anderson (formerly just Paul Anderson, but he changed due to confusion with P.T. Anderson, director of MAGNOLIA, the British director made this, he second venture into Hollywood. After the dreadful MORTAL KOMBAT, Mr. Anderson took on a multi-million dollar sci-fi horror movie: this.
Scripted by reative unknown Philip Eisner, it's that same-old-story of a space-crew coming across an abandoned vessel, only to find that something is still there. . . Laurence Fishburne is an effective Captain Miller, backed up by a whole sack of cliches; Sean Pertwee's cocky pilot, Joely Richardson's sturn professional, Jack Noseworthy's wide-eyed rookie, and Sam Neill's mad scientist. The plot consists of Fishburne's crew teaming up with Neill to find his space-ship of the title, which went missing 4 years ago. When they enter it, all they find are hideously mutilated corpses and a lot of blood.. .plus a particulary disturbing ship's log, which would make Captain Picard turn positively green with disgust. We soon find out that the Event Horizon can open some gateway and travel through the universe, defying the laws of physics because. . .oh just see it and find out, but it's brought something from it's last travels. . .to Hell.
Turning from a rather rum episode of BLAKE'S 7, into a twisted space-slasher was an innotive move from Anderson, and although it doesn't live up to his expectations ('The Shining in Space' was his promise, but it's more like SCREAM among the stars). More like THE HAUNTING (the original not the crap Jan de Bont remake) than ALIEN, this replaces the creepy old house with a creepy old space-ship and it certainly works a treat. The acting is not bad (for a scu-fi movie, anyway), whilst the special-effects and the ever-increasing gore and prosthetics are very impressive. So it's rather sad that isn't actually that scary. There are a couple jumps and frights, but nothing very substantial.
This is a case of an idea being brilliant of paper, but not quite working in practice. Eisner's script is good, but there are too many plot-holes and not enough charactrisation. Despite it being buffed up by Andrew Kevin Walker (responsible for SE7EN and, er, 8MM), the horror scenes are gruesome, but none of them stay with you in the same way that the murders in SE7EN do. Although the Spanish Inquisition-style torture chambers are a nice touch.
Anderson handles the action reasonbly well, much better than in RESIDENT EVIL, but it is the actual Event Horizon, a labyrinth of steel corridors and large spikey-rooms, which steals the show.
EVENT HORIZON is the perfect movie for a Friday night in: pulp sci-fi with buckets (and quite literally, waves) of blood. In the first sitting it was creepy, but in repeated watching, it lacks the rewatchability of other horror movies which continue being frightening as many times as you see them (THE THING, HALLOWEEN).
Paul W.S. Anderson does a far better job on this, than on RESIDENT EVIL (which he scripted himself, so perhaps there lies the problem), and is his best film to date. Mind you, that's not much of an achievement as his other movies include SHOPPING and SOLDIER (shudder).
EVENT HORIZON has become something of a modern cult-clag movie, and it's fun to watch people being hacked and sliced to pieces, but like all of Anderson's films, they are fatally superficial. 3 out of 5