Event Horizon [Blu-ray]

Before I go off reviewing this cult classic, I'll share my personal history with this movie, which dates back nearly eleven years ago.I remember finishing up the forth grade back in June of 1998 and my brother rented Event Horizon from the local video store at the time and I watched it with him. When it was over, I was scared s***less the whole summer break. Oddly enough, I kept watching the movie throughout the summer, despite the fact that it was the most terrifying movie I've ever seen (and remains so to this day). I remember everyday from that summer, constantly fearing that a deranged Dr. Weir would break into my room and ritualistically end my existence. Even worse, I vividly remember my brother reenacting the infamous "video transmission" scene by holding golf balls covered in fake blood (to look like eyeballs) and covered himself with fake blood as he was saying "Liberate tutame ex inferis." Summer break eventually ended and with school starting up, I was finally able to dispose any memories I had of the movie. Sam Neill advertised for MCI at the time and even though I knew it wasn't really Dr. Weir, I still freaked out at the sight of those commercials. I would stay away from this movie for about seven years. In March of 2005, me and my friends held a "movie night" at my best friend's place over the weekend and I quickly saw Event Horizon on the video store shelf and I told my friends "You want to see a really messed up movie? Watch this." We rented Event Horizon and all of the deliciously evil and terrifying memories flooded back to my head that night; I couldn't sleep for days.PLOT:For those of you new to Event Horizon, here's the lowdown. In the year 2040, a space ship called the Event Horizon was launched to reach Proxima Centauri (Earth's nearest star) by using an artificial dimensional gateway to create a black hole, bridging the two points in space to drastically reduce journey time. When the ship goes about on its mission, it disappears without a trace. It's currently 2047 and the Event Horizon has returned off the orbit of Neptune. The Lewis and Clark rescue shuttle is dispatched to investigate and salvage the ship. As the Lewis and Clark docks with the Event Horizon and the rescue crew probes the ship, things start to go awry.SETTING:To me, this is the perfectly executed sci-fi/horror hybrid movie. Why? Event Horizon has many things going for it, but one of the best aspects is the perfect setting. Think about it; not only does the Event Horizon have a creepy gothic interior, the ship itself is surrounded by stormy conditions in space, you're stranded because your boarding ship was heavily damaged, the Event Horizon's communication functions are shot (not able to contact for help), and the only transmission you have of the ship's original crew truly sounds like screams out of hell. If you were aboard the Event Horizon, wouldn't you be scared? I sure would!!CHARACTERS:The actors do an excellent job with their roles; particularly Lawrence Fishburne as Captain Miller, Sam Neill as Dr. Weir, Kathleen Quinlan as Lt. Peters, and Jason Isaacs as D.J. To me, Dr. Weir is one of the best and most evil villains I've ever seen in film; so much so, I had to namedrop him on my review of Morbid Angel's "Altars of Madness" to describe how evil that album is. Dr. Weir isn't some one-dimensional character that's evil and nothing else; he was originally a man of scientific ambition with his Event Horizon project but his work would cause his wife, Claire, to commit suicide from loneliness. This would haunt Weir and when he boards his long lost creation, it would mentally torment him with his sins and drive him into a state of evil madness. Even prior to Weir's transformation as the antagonist, you can tell there was something messed up about him when he's aboard the Lewis and Clark, playing an intercepted transmission from the Event Horizon with a straight face, despite it sounding so hellish. Lt. Peters and Captain Miller also have interesting back stories involving Peters having to abandon her crippled son and Miller having to abandon one of his crew members on a burning space ship several years prior. Along with Weir's sins, the Event Horizon would use the sins of Miller and Peters to torment them. Rescue tech Cooper (Richard T. Jones) does a good job at providing a little humor in the movie to keep the audience from spiraling into states of madness; I particularly like him telling X.O. Starck as he was giving crew members coffee "Want something hot and black inside you?"SCARE TACTICS AND OTHER NASTY STUFF:Unlike most horror movies that use cliché settings and scare tactics to unnerve the audience, this uses much more original ideas to scare movie fans. In Event Horizon, there's no boogeyman, no hideous aliens, and not even any physical life forms on it!! The thing that makes this movie so scary is that it perfectly utilizes the whole "fear of the unknown" concept as no one investigating the ship knows what they're dealing with. Paul Anderson's interpretation of hell is also more original, making it more unnerving. The cliché fire and brimstone imagery has been replaced with the ship's gravity drive deck filled with some of the most horrendous looking corpses ever put on film. This brings me to my next point. There's lots of gore in this movie, but unlike mediocre flicks like Hostel and The Hills Have Eyes, the gore in this movie is used to enhance the dark, unnerving atmosphere of the movie rather than relying solely on it. In other words, the violence in this movie won't bore you. The violence in this movie REALLY is disturbing; the scene where Starck and Peters unscramble the video in the ship's computer showing the original crew killing and eating each other still freaks me out to this day. The scene where Dr. Weir attacks D.J. on the medical deck is really appalling as you can see Dr. Weir's bloody, empty eye sockets and the way he kills D.J. is guaranteed to freak out movie goers. As Weir and Miller duke it out toward the end, Weir forces Miller to see Hell and trust me, it really is terrifying.THEMES AND ESOTERIC THINGS:Religion is a big theme in Event Horizon, as you can already tell with the constant mention of Hell and the use of Latin in some scenes. The concept of creating artifical black holes to reduce time in space travel is really neat; I just hope I'm dead before technology advances that far!! Something that I really enjoyed was when D.J.'s carcass is shown in the medical deck, there's lots of esoteric occult symbols painted everywhere. I'm really glad that Anderson didn't use something typical like the pentagram and inverted cross to represent Hell, and the mysterious nature of these creepy symbols adds to the terror in this movie. These symbols would also appear on Dr. Weir's body when he comes back as some sort of undead creature towards the end of the movie. Everything in Event Horizon isn't tied up in a neat little bow, there's several little things that aren't fully explained. I normally don't like it when movies do this as it usually comes off as laziness, but it works for Event Horizon because they do it in a manner that satisfies the viewer at the end of the movie but makes them wonder about other things. For one, you never really see the "chaos dimension," only images of people getting horribly killed aboard the Event Horizon. So that leaves your imagination to decide what this dimension really looks like.SOUNDTRACK:For the most part, the soundtrack is magnificent; it perfectly fuses hard techno beats with chilling classical orchestra melodies. The weird combination perfectly suits the movie. The only music track I hated was the one at the very end by The Prodigies called "Funky S***," it sounds bad and fits nowhere in the movie, even though it was only on the credits.EXTRAS:The current edition of Event Horizon has a second disk full of bonus features. While these features aren't as abundant as say those in the T2: Extreme Edition DVD set, they are worthwhile. There's featurettes about the making of Event Horizon along with videos of concept art. While I liked the conceptual drawings and 3D renderings provided in the DVD set, they could have added more and I would have preferred that each image was presented as a still frame rather than a video montage with commentary because with DVD programs like Cyberlink Power DVD that include "snapshot" features, I like to make "snapshots" of these art pieces so that I can quickly get ideas when I hit the drawing boards for my own creations. Still, I enjoyed what I got in this area. The "making of" featurettes are a real treat, they show the numerous difficulties filming the movie and the neat props and filming techniques used to make this film possible. After watching these, I wasn't too pleased at Paramount for terribly rushing Paul Anderson and his crew to finish Event Horizon at a certain deadline. These corporate slimeballs would also force Anderson to cut out about 40 minutes of the original edition of the movie because test audiences were too freaked out by the level of violence in it. Some scenes were put on the bonus disk, and while pretty satisfying to see, it's a shame that they couldn't be restored into the film itself. However, given that Event Horizon came out before the DVD revolution and that Paramount wasn't too pleased by the film's poor performance in the box office, the uncut editions of the movie have been lost. Infact, Anderson stated he had to go all over the world to find the lost footage included on the DVD. In short, I can't blame Anderson for this shortcoming as the blame really belongs to Paramount for their unrealistic time demands and the wimpy test audiences for their squeamishness. All in all, the bonus disk is a nice addition to the movie.CRITICISM:The only bad thing I can say about Event Horizon was the song played at the end credits, which I already stated under "soundtracks." This is only noticeable flaw that I could find in this movie, but it doesn't really detract the quality of the film as a whole. Apparently, a lot of people panned this movie for being too violent and scary. That's mind-bogglingly stupid; panning an R-rated sci-fi/horror movie for being scary and violent is like panning The Ren and Stimpy Show or The Simpsons for making people laugh. For the people who didn't like the movie for these aspects, what were you expecting this to be? A family film about Shaqulle O' Neal in space rapping and playing basketball with aliens? Do your homework next time, there's ratings and content descriptions on the movie posters and DVD cases, READ THEM!!FINAL WORD:In Paul Anderson's filmography, Event Horizon is easily his crowning jewel. It's really sad that he'd sink to such low levels in making such junk like Alien vs Predator and Resident Evil. Event Horizon isn't a movie for everyone, but if you want a movie that will give you nightmares and weird things to discuss with fellow cinema buffs, Event Horizon will reward you greatly.

This movie hasn't been given its due respect. It's a visually masterful, terrifying, claustrophobic cinematic experience reminiscent of films like Alien and yet introduces much of it's own flavor on the Sci-Fi Horror Genre. The acting is stunning, the performances are top notch, and it's absolutely bizarre that I get to say the directing and pacing are brilliant despite being made by the director of such turds as Resident Evil, Mortal Kombat, and Death Race.And with all that said, the similarities seen in films like the Matrix are palpable. Both feature similar musical cues, color palates, similar character beats, similar sequences altogether, and end with same techno music. Yet Event Horizon was made two years earlier. Clearly the Matrix has plagiarized much of it's style from Event Horizon yet only one would go on to make cinematic history.I'm glad Event Horizon is getting the critical re-evaluation it deserves. It's not only a decent Science Fiction horror film, I'd argue it's one of the best in the genre.

I've been meaning to watch this for years. I didn't go see it at the movie theater when it came out because I don't particularly like horror films, although I do like Sci Fi. Alien/Aliens is about my limit. I saw this was up on streaming and it was Saturday morning, so how scary could it be? Answer is, not particularly. From what I can tell, Event Horizon was heavily cut, and was probably much better before the cuts - even if it wouldn't be my kind of thing. As it is, it comes across as a relatively clumsy, heavy-handed sci fi horror that is so streamlined that anything they tell you automatically telegraphs what is going to happen in the film. It's Chekov's Gun taken too far. Obviously not a bad film, and the horror elements are far less than I expected, but you can tell a much better film was left on the editing room floor.

Worth watching. Too bad they lost the deleted scenes.

Odd genre for sure. No need to review, movie is old and I'm sure you have already seen it/ know what it is. Sam Neill was always an odd Kiwi. He did Mouth of Madness too- which was also great and he did Dead Ringer. This is a cult classic now. Good for a watch every once in a blue moon. And all of the hidden love stories just beneath the surface of the horror are magnificently hidden, lol, just kidding. It's a fun romp and worth a cheap buy to own. Pandorum is probably my fav of that kind of movie, but shout out to Alien too.

[Possibly spoilers}It's my understanding this movie was heavily 'inspired' by WH40k lore, very specifically it can be counted as Humanity's first encounter with the Immaterium or warp, aka as Hell, and it went about as well as one would expect.In the WH40k lore, this is how ships travel faster than light, by literally opening a portal to and traveling through Hell itself. The Event Horizon unfortunately wasn't protected from demonic possession XD

The trivia says it was originally 130min and far too violent, I wish that was offered for those who wanted to see it because I know I would enjoy it. What's a few nightmares for the sake of a good movie?? Even though this is an older movie, it holds up well. I never really felt like I was watching a silent black and white picture movie lol Love the plot, the actors, everything about it. Although if they went to an alternate dimension I wish it was more "spacey" and "alien-ish" and bizarre, as opposed to just straight up hell. Then again, that might have made it cheezy and this movie is definitely not cheezy. Good sci fi horror flick.

I like sci fi horror combos and this is a good one. Sam Neill and Laurence Fishburne are always good.

Excellent upgrade from DVD & Blu-ray

To my mind this is a well underrated sci-fi horror movie it's one of the best sci-fi horrors that's been made along with alien aliens etc this is a creepy atmospheric and gory movie that is different from a lot of films out there it's a must see for fans of horror sci-fi don't miss out on this fantastic movie I'm going to buy it's on blue ray now !!!!

STILL AN AWESOME FILM AFTER ALL THESE YEARS !!!!!!!!!

La película llegó a tiempo y en buen estado. Película inconica de la ciencia ficción y terror, su historia te atrapará. Gran calidad de imagen, y audio. Bluray normal viene con doblaje en español y subtítulos, el Blu-ray 4k solo subtítulos en inglés.

Le vaisseau Lewis & Clarke commandé par le capitaine Miller (L.Fishburne) a pour mission de retrouver l'Event Horizon, un vaisseau disparu depuis 7 ans, capable de voyager plus vite que la lumière. Son concepteur, le physicien William Wear (l'inquiétant Sam Neil) fait parti du voyage. Comme tout film de S.F, Paul W.S Anderson («Mortal Kombat», «Resident Evil») solide artisan de série B nous présente l'équipage du Lewis & Clarke composé d'acteurs anglo-saxon : (K.Quinlan, L.Fishburne, S.Neil, R.T.Jones, J.Richarsdson, J.Isaac et S.Pertwee), jolie brochette de comédiens que le récit du film n'épargnera pas. Ce qui commence comme un film de S.F classique va vite devenir anxiogène. L'ambiance spatiale de plus en plus délétère est bien retranscrite et le jeu des acteurs, surtout celui du Dr Wear (Neil) attise la flamme d'un suspense allant crescendo. Un message de détresse terrifiant aux abords de Neptune entrainera l'équipage du Lewis & Clarke vers l'enfer. A l'approche du vaisseau en perdition, des questions se posent aux spectateurs : Que s'est-il passé lors du voyage expérimental ? Où est l'équipage ? Est-ce que Wear a dit toute la vérité ? Dans les méandres du vaisseau, tout semble n'être que chaos et désolation. Lors de sa progression dans cet immense tombeau, l'équipe de sauvetage découvrira l'impensable à travers une histoire d'horreur à la «Hellraiser» où le suspense oscille entre «ALien» et «Pandorum». L'espace est infini, la terreur aussi !