Event Horizon is my favorite “crazy waves” movie. What are crazy waves you ask? Crazy waves is a term I made up to explain why space ship occupants go crazy when orbiting weird planets or hanging out near the black hole drive. Obviously these objects give off crazy waves that make people go crazy.
Event Horizon is a good movie but it irritates me that it starts off with a pretty hard sci fi idea; the black hole drive, and then ends with “it opened a gateway to a hell dimension” :rolleyes:
I guess I dislike mixing sci fi and myth.
I know there are other crazy waves movies but I’m having a hard time thinking of them off hand. So please nominate other crazy wave movies.
I’m trying to distill crazy waves into a concise definition. Perhaps, an inappropriate mixing of science and myth in a sci fi movie?
I just realized that the Star Wars prequels are reverse crazy waves movies. Lucas screwed up the myth (The Force) with science (midichlorians).
OK so other than the astronomical bodies of the planets of Event Horizon and Solaris, and perhaps the titular “Disney’s The Black Hole”, which planets give off crazy waves? Because clearly you feel you have identified some kind of cinematic trend… I don’t think the spaceborn Hellraiser movie was near a particular planet other than Earth but I suppose it could be considered.
I disagree with your premise. I saw the poster for the movie and instantly knew what type of film it was. I was right, too, as I found when I finally saw it on cable. Mike Nelson (of MST3K fame) did a wonderful review of it in his book Movie Megacheese.
Part of the problem is that I like the hard SF, and am annoyed 9as you are) when it ends up as a cover for fantasy or horror. But it’s also because I really dislike the “it becomes/appears as that which you fear the most” concept, which has been done to death, and always badly. Maybe someday it will be done right, but I doubt it.
I’m also annoyed that the film features a frequently-glimpsed “burning man”, which makes me suspect that this may have started off as someone trying to adapt Alfred Bester’s The Stars my Destination/Tiger, Tiger! as a film. Or that it’s made by someone who really wanted to film that, and this is his reference. I’d a zillion times more rather see an adaptation of that story than this. In the right hands, tSmD would be an awesome Sf film. But I really don’t like EH.
I was really excited to see Event Horizon, because the plot sounded so intriguing… Ship mysteriously disappears on its maiden voyage and appears 8 years later. People are sent out to investigate…yeah, that’s my kind of Sci Fi.
In his review, Ebert wrote, "So, OK, where did the ship go for seven years, and what happened while it was there? Why is the original crew all dead? Unfortunately, ``Event Horizon’’ is not the movie to answer these questions. " I remember thinking, yeah too bad, because that’s the movie I wanted to see.
I agree. Don’t get me wrong- Event Horizon is a good movie, and Sam Neill is as fun as he always is… but I’ve always thought that this movie is the sequel to the much more interesting movie we never got to see.
Another “crazy waves” movie (great term, BTW) is Sunshine. (It’s also fantastic to show off a bluray player - incredibly vibrant colors, excellent sound mixing.)
I considered calling Hellraiser a crazy waves movie but the “box” doesn’t have any scientific purpose. The box was mystical and the result was mystical.
Sphere is another “crazy waves” film - ripply metallic alien orb basically hypnotizes people, even drawing them inside, leading to paranoia and weird crap happening.
I’ve frequently described Event Horizon as seeming like the scriptwriter died partway through writing the full script, and some meddling producer stepped in and said, “Hey, I know what’ll work - I just saw Hellraiser this weekend and have some great ideas for the script!”
I had this same feeling when it first came out. I was very disappointed with it.
But watching it yesterday, I thought it was good. It’s just a sci fi horror movie. Lowered expectations made the movie better. The black hole drive was neat and creepy looking.
I was going to nominate this too. It was pretty good for a space-crazies movie, right up until the last 15 minutes, when it inexplicably became intolerably stupid.
I always thought that the ideal movie to compliment Event Horizon was In the Mouth of Madness. In the first movie, Sam Neill gets in a spaceship, drives to a mysterious place and gets mencaced by be-tentacled monsters. In the second, Sam Neill gets in a car, drives to a mysterious place and gets mencaced by be-tentacled monsters.
There have been several Star Trek episodes along these lines, where ther egion of space itself affects the mental health of the crew:
TOS: “The Tholian Web”
TOS: “The Immunity Syndrome” (to a degree)
TNG: “Where No One Has Gone Before” (sort-of, the space was making their hallucinations real)
TNG: “Night Terrors” (REM deprivation)
TNG: “Cause and Effect” (relentless feelings of deja vu start affecting the crew)
Well, I wasn’t counting episodes where the insanity was coming from some quantifiable organic source or localized telepathy (i.e. “Day of the Dove”) but from “this region of space is, like, weird, man!”
You can always watch Lexx and wonder if all these people haven’t gone insane by being in space too long.
I had the idea that the main plot device for Farscape was: How can we mess with John Crichton’s mind this week?
I don’t agree with him on everything but Nelson’s review of Event Horizon expressed my feelings about the film exactly–especially in the concluding paragraphs where he discusses the theological and philosophical implications raised by the last third of the film before concluding, “Forget it, it’s just a stupid movie.”
Also, the fact that Sam Neill looked like a grilled 7-11 hot dog at the end didn’t help things.
Event Horizon, by the way, is one of those movies that is regarded as so deadly that it single-handedly crippled or destroyed the careers of a number of actors.
I saw a “making of” featurette for this movie and was REALLY psyched to see it. Well, it wasn’t so good. But I thought there were a lot of very interesting ideas and set designs / effects. I remember really liking the exterior design of the ship, and the general idea of the “warp drive through hell”