haunted house on a spaceship

Rating: 2/10 (24 December 2011)

There are two main problems I have with Event Horizon. First, the unbelievable storyline and characters. Second, the lack of originality and taking ideas from other famous sci-fi movies.
The movie is based on a story that a trans dimensional spaceship returns after having gone missing for 7 years. The "Event Horizon" which has a black hole engine, folds "space" so that it can travel faster than light. A rag-tag group of swearing, smoking and brawling space "soldiers", accompanied by the delicate mad scientist who invented the ungodly missing ship go on a reconnaissance mission. Basically, the doctor goes berserk on the ship, and people start going mad, tearing out their eyes and so on. The ship, it is suggested, has most likely travelled to trans-dimensional hell. The ships crew is seen in the video log consuming itself while the captain offers a monologue in Latin while holding his extracted eyeballs.
Event Horizon liberally steals ideas from superior sci-fi films. The grungy space cowboy themes from alien, and the cerebral psychological aspects of Solaris. The film degenerates to lots of running through cryptically Gothic space ship corridors, and self-immolation. Finally there is some large explosion after most of the actors have died.