When I was a teenager, I loved going to midnight movie marathons at Greater Union. Some of these would be impeccably themed (teen movie fests like Cruel Intentions + Urban Legend + Disturbing Behaviour) and others were a bit random, like the one where I first saw Event Horizon (1997) which was sandwiched between Tomorrow Never Dies and Kiss The Girls. This was back when I was a real fraidy cat about horror movies and often dreaded watching them, yet would still feel like I had to prove myself and conquer my fears. My vague memory is that I spent the movie scared, closing my eyes and letting my imagination fill in all the disgusting space horror I was hearing, and was just so relieved that it was over, and I could settle down with something more down to earth like Morgan Freeman and Ashley Judd tracking a serial killer.
If you don’t know the movie, it’s The Shining on a spaceship. The Event Horizon has disappeared for seven years and returns mysteriously. A crew led by Laurence Fishburne are sent to find out what happened. Sam Neill is the scientist who helped build the special drive to the Event Horizon that creates its own black hole to “fold space”. Anyway, it’s been somewhere dark and the ship has come back sentient. Revisiting Event Horizon after a few decades, it’s clearer that the horror scenes that haunted me and disturbed me were actually heavily edited by the studio (with Horizonheads dreaming of a mythical director’s cut). It is not as violent as I remember, though still quite nasty and gory. The influences are clearer as well, and while it is not exactly the best version of the Solaris meets Hellraiser twist on the Alien formula, it is still compelling, and is probably the closest thing to it, even with its traces of late-1990s energy (I do sincerely love that the closing credits song by The Prodigy).
What impressed me now was the set design, which clearly riffs on HR Gieger and Clive Barker, and yet is still impressively rendered, and physical and tactile; it is not exactly the green-screen studio stage dissociative sensation we’re used to seeing now. And much in the tradition of Cushing and Lee in Hammer Horror movies, your blood-curdling hokum is always going to be more convincing if you have convincing and committed actors, and the distinctly sonorous presences of Sam Neill and Laurence Fishburne ensure that everything feels grounded and substantial even if the plot doesn’t make sense and the action gets trashy. Directed by Paul WS Anderson in between his Mortal Kombat adaptation and his Kurt Russell sci-fi flick, Soldier, and with a good supporting cast (Sean Pertwee and Jason Isaacs in the same movie? Hell yeah, brother).
I can still hear the audience laughter in the cinema when Fisburne watches the disturbing log footage of the previous crew and flatly says, “We’re leaving now.” Available to stream on Amazon Prime and Stan. It’s not perfect, but it’s entertaining if you consider this messed up inter dimensional nastiness entertaining.
VHS Tracking 