excessive gore? you people are pathetic!

Rating: Null/10 (12 October 2000)

"The excessive gore was unnecessary" blah blah blah... well, here's a surprising revelation. This film was toned down in order to get past the MPAA with an R rating, which goes to show what a crock America's film classification system has become. The original conception of the ending, in fact, had the Event Horizon making its jump with all of the new crew still aboard. The intention was to show us a slice of the other dimension and just how awful it is.
Maybe this film appears shockingly violent to Americans, but to people with more sense or who live in countries where the censors emphasise classification over cutting, it's really just standard horror fare. Oh wait a minute... did someone actually mistake this film for science fiction? I would have thought the mere premise would have cleared that one up: spaceship disappears, spaceship comes back like a modern day Marie Celeste. Pretty easy to work out that we're not taking this trip out into space to be awed by special effects shots. We're doing it because we want to be revolted by the darker side of human nature.
Having said that, gore is what makes a horror film watchable in spite of a bad script and bad acting. However, Event Horizon is not hobbled by either of those things. The mostly British cast realised that they were mostly props for bad things to happen to, and it shows in the way they act out their roles. It makes a nice contrast with American acting, where they seem to expect at least a thousand lines of clever dialogue.
My only serious complaints about this film are that it isn't long enough to have a story which makes you care about anyone besides Fishburne and Neill, and that it isn't out on DVD here. Oh, and don't try to watch this film on VHS. The low-level noise in the dark areas of the picture and the loss of about 33% of the picture severely cuts down the film's impact. Part of the attraction at the cinema was the wide shots out in space. That and all the blood. Blood. Blood. Blood. Blood.