the event horizon is the boundary of a black hole . . .
and , in the future , it 's also the name of a spaceship that vanished when it tried to go faster than the speed of light by traversing through its own portable black hole .
naturally , this is the setup for the other event horizon . . .
the movie .
when the ship suddenly appears at the point that it vanished at , just outside of neptune , the crew of the ship called the " lewis and clark " has to go to investigate , and dr .
william weir , the creator of the " event horizon , " gets to come along for the ride .
if you 've glanced at a poster for this movie , you know that , supposedly , what follows is " infinite terror .
"
well , i do n't know about the " terror " part , but
" infinite " certainly seems to qualify . . .
event horizon is a mean - spirited , gory , sick excuse for a film .
it starts off as an alien rip - off , and then degenerates into a pointlessly bloody slasher flick after about 40 minutes .
at least for those first 40 minutes it 's an * interesting * rip - off of alien .
that 's a lot more than can be said for the rest of them movie , which seems to go on forever
.
it not a scary monster movie , nor is it a psychological thriller .
it is simply a movie which tries again and again to make the viewers feel sick to their stomach at the site of extreme gore .
you 've seen this kind of movie before .
the hellraiser series had plenty of scenes containing this sensibility .
this is a kind of movie for which i have no respect , a kind of movie which i had hoped died out years ago .
it is quite possible for a movie to frighten or shock its audience without resorting to nothing more than gore , but event horizon takes the low road , and the viewers pay the price .
there are many good , respectable performances , from fishburne and neill most noticably .
paul anderson 's direction is impressive , as it was in mortal kombat .
there are many nice special effects , mostly dealing with numerous common objects floating around in zero - gravity .
the sets are beautiful to gaze upon .
and richard t .
jones ' character ( cooper ) is hilarious and extremely likable ( more so than most characters i 've seen in recent movies ) for the little screen time that he has .
and none of this can save the movie from being a d - grade level of film .
the idea of a ship that has some sort of life within its walls , a life that knows the fears and inner skeletons of the human passengers , is a promising one .
a haunted house story in space is n't such a bad idea .
but the final execution is extremely disappointing .
that 's not to say that philip eisner ( here making his feature film - writing debut ) does n't have talent .
for those first 40 minutes , he manages to make a tired premise interesting , adding in aspects of unique flavor into a rip - off story , and that 's something that not too many writers can do .
he even has one scene that , though it also tries to sicken the audience , has a honestly tense feel to it ( the scene in question deals with one of the crew being in an airlock while others try to save him from floating into space ) .
he definitely has something of a gift , but it 's not fully on display here .
i certainly will look forward to seeing more from him , and i hope that his future work fully explores his talent and the story possibilities of the premise .
but because of what this movie degenerates into , i have little or no respect , and got little or no enjoyment , out of it .
if this is what we have to look forward to in the future of film , then i agree with laurence fishburne 's sentiment - " god help us .
"
Output: N