Halloween Countdown 2018 – Day 18 Event Horizon (1997)

Greetings my Movie Ghouls!

Day 18 is here and after the abysmal run I’ve been having this week we get a good one. We should have been watching A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge. But my ‘DVD’ player didn’t have that title, so we watched 1997’s Event Horizon.

From memory, I really enjoyed this film. It’s a nice blend of sci-fi and horror, with nods to films like Alien and The Shining. In my video review, I refer to this as a Haunted House Movie, because that is what it is. It’s a structure that is oppressive, and unwelcoming, surrounded by a never-ending thunderstorm, but it’s in Spaaaaace.

Event Horizon

The story is that a ‘faster than light’ ship, which bends space and time to travel great distances disappears. It turns up 7 years later with the crew gone and no explanation to what happened and where in space they went. The crew of the Louis and Clark a salvage vessel captained by Pre-Morpheus Lawrence Fishburne are taking the designer Sam Neill to collect the Event Horizon.

But, it turns out they went further than they meant to, crossing to a different universe that is run by chaos. Basically, it’s a doorway to Hell. The concept of this film is brilliant. A ship that is supposed to travel to the far reaches of space goes wrong and travels to Hell, what could be better?

Well, once I finished watching I stopped the film and took note of the time. The full film, not including credits was 91 minutes; clearly, this film has been cut within an inch of its life. As this is the case, it’s easy to see why everything seems to move so fast. Characters having jumps in logic, and Sam Neill’s apparent possession by the ship happens way too fast.

Hell is only a word

There’s one scene where he’s talking to Fishburne and he says “I am Home”. He disappears into the darkness. A moment later he’s concerned over the dead body of a crew member like he wasn’t just acting like a possessed monkey. I do feel that some of the story has been lost and I wouldn’t be surprised if Neill’s character wasn’t possessed to build the ship in the first place.

It just seems a bit muddled and quickly edited together. I know that there is backstory to why production was rushed; I feel you can see it in the final product. Lost footage was found in a salt mine in Transylvania, but I doubt there will ever be a final or extended cut.

The idea of this film is good, and although I said you can see the rushed production in the final film, I do still feel they produced a good film. It is reasonably atmospheric, leaning on horror tropes from both Haunted house films and other 90’s graphic body horror movies such as Hellraiser.

In summary, I didn’t enjoy this film as much as I used to. I am not saying it is bad, it isn’t. But you can see the scars of a film that has been mutilated in the cutting room. Be that to reduce the rating, or because of the rushed schedule. All I do know is, if you build a ship that has walls that can stab you, there’s something not quite right.

Rating:
🎃🎃🎃

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