The Shining Meets Alien

Rating: 8/10 (6 December 2004)

I liked the movie but do not understand why it is alleged to be worthy of a cult following. It's certainly a better than average science fiction flick but I found "the horror" in it more hokey than terrifying.
The plot was a great one to work with (starship vanishes for seven years, mysteriously returns with its crew dead or missing) and I read the book too which the movie generally follows except for its weak portrayal to the viewer of the true horrors the former crew of the Event Horizon actually experienced.
The casting was generally weak. Lawrence Fishburne as the rescue starship's Captain Miller wasn't working. I thought he played the role too tightly and reserved. Samuel L. Jackson would have been a better choice. Kathleen Quinlan still knows how to sob like a victim very well but hasn't turned in a decent performance since Lifeguard. Richard Jones as Cooper is a stereotype all the way and Jack Noseworthy as Justin was unnoteworthy.
WARNING SPOILERS GALORE!
If a central theme is that the ship has been to hell and back, then you've got to do a better job of presenting what your vision of hell really is. The book lays this out in detail. But the film covers it in quick, fast, vision sequences that if you blink, you'll miss. Using my DVD, I had to go frame by frame to see what was being flashed. Those were great, horrific shots of people in the apparent agony of existing in hell. Had they been put up there in extended, detailed sequences then you'd get an idea of the horrors of hell in unfolding detail. But to flash them by so quickly just detracted from the terror because it all went by too quickly. If you put all that work into a shot, let people see it and feast upon it!
It seemed more like the crew had just gone insane rather than the what really happened; having been to hell and been forced to do perverted things and have perverted things done to them. Just reading about those things (remember the arm down the throat? Yuch!) in the book was terrifying because you could imagine it in your mind. The film failed to capture the true potential of this horror, again because the sequences flashed by too quickly.
Sam Neil as the satanic figure worked well enough as he slowly succumbed to the evil. But the climactic battle mano-a-mano with Captain Miller was a head scratcher. Settle this by a fist fight with a creature from hell? I don't think so. And why would the creature yell when Captain Miller destroys the ship? Wouldn't that be what he wanted...to send everyone straight back to hell? Ah well.
This could have been one of the best sci-fi horror flicks of all time. The plot had such great material to work with. But the execution was a disappointment. The fact that this film is so popular, though flawed, attests to the viewers primal fears and desires concerning what could have been presented, but wasn't.
We just got a quick, unsatisfying glimpse of hell when we wanted the characters to actually take us there, terrify us, and make us all go back and want to become Christians the way The Exorcist did.
Overall, the screen version just wasn't as compelling as the book. I've seen scarier haunted houses.