Terrifyingly addictive

Rating: 9/10 (23 April 2002)

Event Horizon is a movie that despite you being terrified of, you just can't drag yourself away from the screen. It's unfairly knocked in many quarters, claiming it's overtly violent. I disagree - the violence is all central to the plot, which is enjoyable (in a "give you nightmares" kind of way) and engulfing.
The thing that I found so effective about it (other than the plot) is how extremely easy it is to empathise with the crew of the ship - the characters are such that most people watching will identify with at least one of them ("mama bear", "papa bear" and "baby bear" nicknames for some of the crew make you feel like these people really have worked together from before). When you start empathising with characters in a horror movie, it starts getting under your skin... and because of this, Event Horizon is highly effective.
There are definitely overtones from aliens, but you'll get much more of a scare from this... unlike in Aliens, the enemy of this movie cannot be shot, and whilst terrorising the crew, they can't live without it. This nightmarish symbiosis dogs the crew as they slowly begin to understand what's going on with the strange occurrences within ship and what happened to the previous crew. The more the movie progresses, the faster the frights come... and some of them are very, very effective, whether overtly (where it gets disgusting) or only in your head (where you're truly terrified).
If you're into sci-fi/horror, move over Aliens, this is the definitive movie.