Creepy, But Mindless

Rating: 3/10 (19 August 1998)

"Event Horizon" could have been a really impressive movie. The visuals are nice, and the film does have a couple of genuinely creepy and frightening moments, which is more than can be said for quite a few so-called horror films. However, the movie is badly compromised by characters that move about as mindless slaves to the plot, as well as by some excruciatingly bad science. Now, this is a science fiction movie, and as a longtime fan of science fiction, I am willing to concede such unlikelihoods as their faster -than-light drive and artificial gravity; however, the gross and unnecessary violations of well-understood physics (such as the fact that the ships seem to be both indside Neptune's atmosphere and motionless with respect to it and orbiting the planet at the same time; ask yourself why you don't see satellites "orbiting" in the atmosphere of Earth) and the ridiculously artificial technical complications completely destroy my willing suspension of disbelief. For years, I have been waiting to see a space-opera-type science fiction movie come out of Hollywood that shows even close to the level of sceintific and technical knowledge shown by the great majority of successful hard science fiction writers. I am still waiting.
Overall Rating: 4 (out of 10), or 1 and 1/2 stars (out of 4)