Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Secretly Awesome - Event Horizon

Release Date: August 15, 1997
Director: Paul W.S. Anderson
Writer: Philip Eisner
Cast: Sam Neill, Laurence Fishburne, Jason Isaacs, Kathleen Quinlan, Joely Richardson, Richard T. Jones, Jack Noseworthy
Box Office: $26,673,242
Rotten Tomatoes: 21%


Event Horizon follows a rescue team on a mission to investigate what happened to a portal-jumping space-ship that has just re-appeared after it was missing for seven years. It turns out the ship has been to some Hellish dimension and brought back some kind of energy force that drives people insane, and when the rescue team arrives, they find the bloody remains of the ship's crew. What may sound like a routine B-movie turns out to have some top-notch production value, a cast of under-used character actors, and some surprisingly reserved direction from none other than Paul W.S. Anderson, the man responsible for the Resident Evil franchise, which is anything but reserved.


The first hour of Event Horizon is all tension build-up, and surprisingly effective build-up at that. Sure, we learn all of the things we expect to learn, and quickly realize that the crew members will be separated through a strange sequence of events and picked off one-by-one in the end, but what makes Event Horizon different is its amazing set design and art direction, as well as some eerie lighting effects. There's something creepy in every room and every corridor that sets a very unsettling tone that the rest of the film keeps pace with for a while, as the crew explore the ship, and come across places like the hatch that opens up into the green ventilation shaft maze. As this goes on, we start to see the crew's waking nightmares, which cause them to do some crazy things until the whole thing devolves into a big, bloody death-trap. And I say "devolve" there with love, because the last half hour is actually pretty satisfyingly gory.


A lot of this could have been terrible (I'd be interested to read the screenplay to see how bad it might be), but it was really well-cast. The actors take the material seriously enough and deliver the expository dialogue with enough gravity for me to be more than willing to suspend disbelief. And Anderson's direction is pretty subtle at times; he lets a lot of moments play out slowly, sometimes almost painfully slowly, like a scene in which a possessed crew-mate goes into the cargo bay with the intention of opening the hatch into space. The scene lasts for minutes as the powerless crew try to talk him down. It's pretty intense. And of course, Event Horizon ends like a 90s action film should, with a showdown in a random location. In this case, Fishburne faces a demonic ripped-faced Sam Neill in a literal bloodbath at the base of a spherical room which holds a spinning orb-like multi-dimensional portal, which is on fire. Not to be missed.

1 comment:

  1. Yes!

    First: I'm glad you wrote about the scene that I always think about when ever people talk about this film - the kid going out into space. Ugh, that is a great/brutal scene!

    Second: I really like the "Secretly Awesome" tag. Very good. Will you rate these films also?
    Lastly, great job on doing your homework on how much the movie made, and the Rotten Tomatoes score. 21%? that's crap! It deserves a higher score then that.

    Way to go!
    Beautiful post!

    ReplyDelete