Sadly eviscerated.

Rating: 5/10 (22 April 2005)

'Have you ever seen acting in zero gravity?' I have, it's not pretty. Event Horizon was directed Paul Anderson, or Paul W.S. Anderson as he now calls himself in an attempt to avoid being confused with indie auteur Paul Thomas Anderson, though apparently he's now confused with indie auteur Wes Anderson. Dyslexia is apparently more prevalent than I had previously imagined. I doubt the Anderson in question here has ever been accused of being an auteur. Second only to the frankly inexcusably inept Ewe Boll in destroying the reputation of video game to movie adaptations, and maybe those responsible for Super Mario Bros., Anderson here deals with a debut script from Philip Eisner.
Establishing itself firmly in a Sci-Fi mould, Event Horizon kicks off with a brief captioned run down of the past 50 or so years of space travel. It's the year 2047, humans are now floating around far flung regions of deep space and happily robbing Mars of her natural resources. We learn that an experimental ship, called the Event Horizon, disappeared on her maiden voyage some seven years previously. Now that a transmission has been picked up from her, it's the dubious honour of a small team lead by Captain Miller (Laurence Fishburne) along with the mastermind behind the technology of the ship, Dr. Weir (Sam Neill), to launch a salvage and rescue mission. The rescue crew is typically artificially diverse in personality, gender, and race in order to drum up some banter and accentuate conflict and distrust when the inevitable tough gets going. After the customary pseudo-science babble to explain how the ship works, it makes black holes and travels through them, the unwilling would be rescuers find and board the stricken vessel. It quickly becomes apparent that where ever the Gothic-nouveau ship has been all this time, it hasn't exactly had a positive affect. The crew quickly start experiencing horrific personal visions that seem far too tangible to be mere hallucinations, could it be that the ship is alive and trying to kill them? Wearing it's influences on it's sleeve, Event Horizon's opening scenes manage to ape both the Nostromo introduction from Alien and the external space station shots from 2001. Despite drawing from these rich sources, it's apparent in the brevity and showiness of the execution that these scenes are there simply 'because they can'. Though clearly the art direction and production design people have done their stuff admirably, and cinematographer Adrian Biddle, a veteran of both Alien and Aliens productions, is both comfortable and highly competent in his task, their efforts are sorely dampened by frenetic cuts. Just as you're trying to absorb some of the neo-Gothic dread, Anderson pulls you away in favour of a cheap fright or some inane expository dialogue. Though Sci-Fi in it's trappings, Event Horizon is clearly a horror film, and it's in this endeavour that it finds the most success. Overtly owing much to Clive Barker's Hellraiser vision, Anderson manages to conjure some memorably disturbing scenes. The notion that ship actually travelled to some other hellish dimension, or perhaps Hell itself becomes more compelling with each subsequent gory set piece. Indeed it seems Anderson was slightly too successful in this department. As any viewer will notice, the final third of the film suffers badly from confused editing. Characters go unaccounted for extended periods with no explanation, the action flits around in a chaotic fashion, what the hell is going on? The charitable might offer that it's an intentional device to mirror the chaotic, disorientating events the crew are suffering. The sensible know that, like many of the inhabitants of Event Horizon the ship, Event Horizon the movie has been eviscerated. Literally, the guts have been ripped out of this movie. It's rumoured that around 20 minutes of horror excess had to be excised from the film in order to secure the financially desirable 'R' rating for US audiences. Almost ironic considering Anderson's previous project, Mortal Kombat had the curious distinction of being significantly less violent than the video game that spawned it in order to be compatible with it's youthful target audience.
It's a shame the strongest material, both in content and ostensibly quality, have been left out. It would likely have helped propel the film above it's critical and box office also-ran status, and helped distract from some of the films evident short comings. Though the leads Fishburne and Neill grind out characteristically workman like performances, most of the supports visibly flounder with the hackneyed dialogue and paper thin characterisation. It's clear Event Horizon has too many shortcomings to ever have reached the heights of it's influences, but it could have been a whole lot better. I for one would certainly welcome the arrival of the rumoured 'Director's Cut' style DVD. Perhaps this film still has more to offer. As it stands presently, Event Horizon is certainly worth a look for anyone looking for some stylish scares, so long as you don't try and follow it too closely.