money goes in, but nothing comes out

Rating: Null/10 (26 April 2004)

Lawrence Fishburne is the head honcho aboard an interplanetary search and rescue ship, and leads his crew, with genius scientist Sam Neil in tow, to Neptune in search of a presumed-lost spaceship. Once they get there, they find said ship, but no crew, and, oh by the way, the gates to Hell. Huh? Did we miss something here, like CONTINUITY?? The first half of the film is okay, but really falls apart in the second half. Nothing makes much sense; there's lots of gore but not much reason for it, and one very gratuitous scene wherein a crewmember, sensing danger (no moss on this one!) rockets to the rescue, shouting: "Here I come, (insert a really naughty word here)!!" Apparently, if this film is any guide, in the future, spaceships will be commanded by Americans and crewed by the British; most of these people sound as if they were yanked off the streets of Liverpool. The second half of the film looks very much like it was inspired by "Hellraiser", but with a "we've seen it before" tedium to it. According to post-release hype, a rotating passageway in the "Event Horizon" ship was deliberately designed to look like the interior of a meat grinder, and in this it thoroughly succeeds, but to what end? Not only doesn't it make the least bit of sense, it's extremely disorienting just to look at, to say nothing of actually having to walk through. Why? No astronaut would willingly sign on to a ship that looked like this. The pity is that both Fishburne and Neil are better-than-average actors who have made some terrible decisions of late. How many new driveways do you guys really need? In short, folks, if you really want lots of gore and/or weirdness, stay with "Hellraiser" or "I Come in Peace", and send this loser off to the cornfield.