Great Movie Ruined By Silly Ending ***SPOILERS***

Rating: 7/10 (7 May 2010)

Paul Anderson certainly wont be mistaken for a virtuoso filmmaker any time soon, particularly if his work on 'AVP', 'Mortal Kombat' and 'Resident Evil' is anything to go by, but for one brief moment in the late 90's, he was on the verge of creating a genuine psycho-horror masterpiece. And then Evil Paul took over again and ruined everything about twenty minutes from the finish line.
The plot is thus: In the year 2047(which suddenly doesn't seem quite as far away as it probably did in 1997), Laurence Fishburne and Sam Neill lead a salvage operation into Neptune space to investigate the sudden re-appearance of the starship 'Event Horizon'. The ship had disappeared without a trace seven years prior during a complicated light-speed travel experiment, and it's the crew's job to rescue any survivors, salvage the ship and figure out what the hell went wrong.
Needless to say, the ship has been somewhere horrifying and has brought back something, well, let's just say it's not very nice. But it's also not what you'd expect - There's no acid dribbling alien killer here, in its place a tense, claustrophobic nightmare that truly defies description. In fact, it's that good that it reminds you of something Clive Barker or John Carpenter could have conceived.
So for the majority of its running time, 'Event Horizon' manages to be a genuinely frightening and surprisingly innovative sci-fi/horror show that is not only well written, but extremely well acted as well. The characters, the set-design, the extremely creepy central concept of an otherworldly hell dimension accessed through a black hole, are all excellent. And then suddenly Anderson loses the plot, and gurgles out possibly the silliest and most cringe-worthy finale since Denzel Washington impaled John Lithgow on the electric tower in 'Ricochet'.
If you don't want to know what happens, stop reading now. If you'd rather save yourself the torture of watching it, then Sam Neill suddenly tears his own eyes out and morphs into Pinhead from Hellraiser, the token comedic-relief-black-dude propels himself through space by dumping his oxygen tanks (yeah right) whilst delivering his best Eddie Murphy impression, and Morpheus (sorry, L. Fish) blows up the ship (much to the behest of Pinhead), looking as though even he realises how stupid this film has become and is glad to put an end to the madness.
Anderson could have had a classic on his hands here, but unfortunately his 'Resident Evil' side got the better of him in the latter stages of the film. That said, the rest of it has proved to be good enough to earn him a respected cult favourite, but one can only help but wonder what might have been if he had have exercised a little restraint in penning the finale. 7/10.