There's a difference between darkness and blackness.

Rating: 1/10 (10 August 2001)

Darkness is frightening, because we don't know what it contains. Blackness isn't frightening - it's just ugly and off putting, like the flourescent greens that also figure so heavily in the colour scheme, like the sudden loud noises and the lascerated flesh. "Event Horizon" doesn't know the difference between scary, startling, and sickening.
But what makes the film really bad is the complete absence of characterisation. How many people were aboard the rescue ship to begin with? Five? Ten? If only I'd counted. There's the ship's hubristic scientist - so utterly lifeless a hubristic scientist that I bet if you were to tap him on the shoulder and ask, "Why did you do what you just did?" he would look puzzled and reply, "Because I'm the hubristic scientist." Similar remarks apply to the jivin' black guy, and to the tough but capable captain (although he, out of everyone, comes closest to being an actual character). Everyone else on board is utterly unmemorable. Is this better, or worse? Hard to tell. I think Laurence Fishburne's captain is easier to take than the average faceless crew member; Sam Neill's scientist is much harder.
Don't think for a minute that I'm blaming the actors. It's the script. No more than half of the lines CAN be delivered with conviction, so no more than half are. The cast spends most of its time shouting at one another, explaining things (in a sort of a way) to the audience, and wandering off suddenly to investigate this or that without telling anyone only to come back having forgotten whatever it was they had been doing before they left. It becomes tiring after a while, watching conversations you know won't lead anywhere because they'll be forgotten as soon as the camera turns to something else.
P.S.: I can't help noticing that an earlier reviewer tells us that if we don't want something scary and suspenseful we should watch "Bambi" instead. He can't have seen "Bambi" recently. Concede for the sake of argument that "Event Horizon" is scary; still, "Bambi" is far more suspenseful. One cares whether or not Bambi survives.