You'll be begging for mercy ... from this movie!

Rating: 4/10 (6 September 2016)

"OK, it's been, what, 18 years since the original 'Alien,' so let's just blatantly rip it off -- premise, story, look and feel, everything. But instead of the crew coming across a mysterious ship with a vicious space creature aboard that proceeds to kill off the crew one by one, in our flick the mysterious ship has just returned from a black hole with a weird alien life force that *possesses* some of the crew members, who then proceed to kill off the rest of the crew one by one. Oh and here's the cool part: that alien life force is literally from hell. That's right, the Judeo-Christian hell!"
Those are the forensically reconstructed thought processes behind "Event Horizon."
Don't consider the above to be spoilers. Consider them *savers*, as in saving you from sitting through this bloody mess.
If "Event Horizon" had production values that matched the quality of its script, then it would look a lot cheaper. The film does indeed look good, copying that gritty, creepy "Alien" look and feel admirably. That's what sucks you in to the story -- that, along with the hope that the story will deliver. Instead what the viewer gets are increasingly preposterous and inconsistent plot points, until the final reveal makes you want to throw a shoe at your TV. "Hell?! THAT'S what this was all about?"
"Event Horizon" even copies very specific parts of the "Alien" story, such as the whittled-down survivors agreeing to go into deep freeze and await a rescue ship and fighting to turn off the self-destruct mechanism that one of the evil-life-force-controlled humans has set.
To summarize, do not watch this film unless the preceding has still not turned you off from the idea of committing two hours of your life to this kind of story. Rip-offs are sometimes fun, and so are bad films that have something to offer -- in this case, top-tier (for the times) production values. But if a coherent story is what you're after -- something other than "beer and bad movie" night with the guys -- then stay the hell away.