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Event Horizon


Event Horizon (1997) RR

An experimental faster-than-light spaceship, Event Horizon, disappeared on its maiden voyage. Seven years later it reappears near Neptune and a rescue ship is sent to investigate.


I don't like using the term guilty pleasure because why would I be ashamed of liking a particular film. If I were prone to use it though I would certainly apply it to Event Horizon. I've seen it like five times now so it has to be good, right?

The film has major issues that do bother me. It doesn't have proper characters at all, it has terrible mechanical issues with the ship (like the airlock scene) and there are some bad humor scenes that don't fit at all (like Cooper's return to the ship). Some of the CGI is really dated too (mostly the floating stuff in zero-G) and for large part the film is just a collection of scary scenes.

So what's good? Event Horizon (the ship) looks absolutely gorgeous with it's dark Gothic style and threatening black spikes protruding form all sorts of places. It's like something straight out of the old Warhammer 40k (actually the whole plot reminds me a lot of 40k - I'm pretty sure that in the original lore Chaos came from the Warpspace used by ships on FTL travel). I just really like the concept of something evil lurking beyond the boundaries of our world (in fiction, I mean).

All those quick glimpses from Hell and of the original crew are very good. At least when the film was newer there used to be rumors that lots (maybe even 10+ minutes) of gore and torture was removed from the final film by the studio (there was even a persistent rumor that such version was showed somewhere in Far East). Based on what's left I'm really sad these seem to be only rumors (or at least the material doesn't exist anymore).

So Event Horizon is one of the worst films I'm calling good. For some reason I'm willing to forgive its faults to rather large degree.