"Event Horizon"

            Event Horizon represents an odd subspecies of horror movies - namely, movies that seem to straddle the line between science fiction and horror.  You can view it as a science fiction movie with elements of horror, or as a horror movie with the trappings of science fiction.  Another example of this sort of movie is Pandorum, though I think that movie is more strongly rooted in science fiction than horror.  I think that on principle I'm going to stay away from movies of the Pandorum ilk, but Event Horizon is just sufficiently recognizable as a horror movie to make the cut.

            So.  An experimental spacecraft named Event Horizon vanishes without trace sometime in mid 21st Century.  About seven years later it reappears, and a search-and-rescue crew is duly dispatched to render what aid they can, taking along with them the nerdy egghead who designed the spacecraft in the first place (played by Sam Neill).  Turns out that the spacecraft used a new and hitherto untested kind of "gravity drive".  The idea is that it is supposed to open trans-dimensional pathways to other stars, but instead it opened a trans-dimensional pathway to Hell (or a reasonable facsimile thereof).  Nearly every member of the crew dies horribly in this dimension before going on to suffer unspeakably in the next dimension, with lots of flash-cut images of barbed wire and insect larvae.  One imagines the engineer clapping his hand to forehead and saying whoops, guys, sorry about that!  My bad!  Guess I should have tested that thing first…

            The movie frankly doesn’t make much sense.  I could not, for example, figure out who the woman with no eyes was, or what she had to do with anything.  Nor could I readily discern why Sam Neill spent so much time flipping back and forth between nerdy egghead engineer and Maximally Bad Spirit From Hell.  And the movie’s cynical ending makes one wonder if the movie even had a stinking point at all.  I conclude that, in fact, the movie had no point whatsoever.  It was stupid, gratuitous, gory, pointless and dumb, an apparently conscious remake of Hellraiser that stopped just short of bringing in Cenobites and puzzle boxes.

             But for some strange reason I like this movie.  This movie is, for me at least, very much like a banana split – it isn’t good for me at all, but I still like it.  As long as you recognize that it's full of empty calories and won't provide you with any essential nutrients, it's harmless fun. 

3 Skulls