I watched Event Horizon this weekend. I’ve been looking forward to it a long time, and I am pleased to say it didn’t disappoint at all: a scary mindfuck horror flick that kept me riveted.
After I watched it, I went to go read about it online, as I always do. I happened to check Rotten Tomatoes. RT gave it a 23%, complaining about multiple aspects of the movie.
I really loved it. I thought Lawrence Fishburne was great, and we had a *reason * why Weir was acting like such a dick, instead of just being a dick.
I thought it was great up until Sam Neil went evil - something about the idea of pure, inhuman evil being embodied by a naked, middle aged Australian who goes around punching people deflated a lot of the film’s tension for me.
I really enjoyed it- it’s certainly creepy- but I couldn’t help thinking that it would’ve been even more interesting if it had been about the events leading up to the movie.
Not to mention the terrible makeup job on EvilSam. And the “the suits hate the ending what should we do/oh wait, I just saw Hellraiser on TV this weekend” right turn that the plot makes right around EvilSam’s appearance.
My husband and I saw it in the theater. Loved the sets, loved the premise, hated the way the plot went. We both ended up being transfixed by the awfulness and bitched all the way out to the parking lot, then rushed home to warn one of his sisters not to go. Too late, she was arriving home from seeing it as well and her first words on the phone were, “that sucked!”
So much potential and it utterly failed to carry it off properly.
I hated it. I didn’t go to see it when it was new, because I had a premonition about it, which turned out to be correct when I saw it on cable. Mike Nelson (of MST3K fame) did a wonderful dissection of it in his book ** Movie Megacheese**.
Side Note: The image of The Burning Man showing up makes me suspect that the original plan was to film Alfred Bester’s The Stars my Destination, a book that would (you should pardon the pun) make a hell of a movie. If this is what they come up with when they try to film Bester, maybe it’s good that they haven’t filmed it yet.
I still use the line “where we’re going, you won’t need eyes to see” every so often at work - it’s a great line, you can adapt it to all kinds of situations. I remember the film had a tonne of atmosphere and the production design was really good, although odd, but I was turned off by the BOO! overuse of BOO! jump scenes. There was a creepy tension BOO! throughout the film that could have been developed more. Instead of BOO! having jump scenes every ten minutes. The decompression scene seemed surprisingly realistic for a Hollywood movie. Except it was a British film, I think; there was a wave of sci-fi films from the period by British directors largely filmed in Britain that gots lots of press over here and flopped horribly. Judge Dredd, Tank Girl… er, Space Truckers? SFX magazine used to go ga-ga over them.
It reminded me, in an odd way, of that old Space: 1999 episode. You know the one. Dragon’s Domain, with the tentacle monster. Same feeling of mounting unease, clever production design. It also reminded me a bit of Sphere, in the sense that it had a clever build-up but a flop of an ending, except that it was much better than Sphere.
I found the movie had some creepy moments and some nice little touches, but the overall arc of the film was too predictable and familiar. Maybe not as bad as the critics presented, but still not something I’d call good.
What a peculiar coincidence. the movie is like 15 yrs old and it just came up last week. My coworker is a big time sci-fi fan. Somehow the our conversation strayed to why a person can’t fly faster than the speed of light. I mentioned Event Horizon’s way around it.
He’d never heard of the movie. I recalled it was pretty awesome, so I brought it up on rotten toms. Yeah, the critics gave it a 23%, but the audience gave it a 68. Still lower than I would have.
We’ll see how it stands up to a scifi guy once he sees it.
This was the very first R rated movie that my parents let me see in the theater. I was pretty young, middle school age. I remember they debated about it for a while, and after we got out of the theater, my dad told me not to tell anyone that he had taken us to it (he was a little ashamed I guess). I remember I told some kids at sunday school, then I felt guilty about it and told him that I had told people about seeing an R rated movie in the theater. He was disappointed in me and I think it was years and years again before I ever saw another R rated flick.
I do remember thinking it was INCREDIBLY scary, and I have fond memories of it. But maybe it really is a terrible movie, colored only by nostalgia.
As for Event Horizon, its probably the only sci-fi/horror crossover movie that I actually liked, though it does seem to be a real love it or hate it movie. Though I haven’t seen it for a long time, not sure how it would stand up now…I’m also afraid to watch the ‘even more gore’ special edition.
I’ve started a thread on why science-fiction seems to be so closely tied to the horror genre in the movies, more than one promising film has been ruined because of that connection.
edited to add I recently read ‘The Stars My Destination’ as well and while it was definitely a good book I think part of the reason why its so popular is because of its unpleasant antihero of a main character, I’m not a fan of cynicism and especially not in science fiction.
It has an intriguing and spooky premise, but also some of the worst dialogue ever penned (no specific examples jump to mind, I just have memories of shaking my head in disbelief the last time I watched it, which was a few years ago).
As far as horror flicks go, it’s one of the few I actually found scary on a level beyond the simplistic BOO! and obnoxiously gorey stuff. I just don’t find some serial killer or ghosts or whatever very interesting at all; I’m much more interested in the psychological and scientific what-ifs that it presents. As others said though, I think it suffered from some poor dialog and poor general plot. I can mostly forgive that from a horror standpoint since that doesn’t really damage the psychological aspects of it.
What hurt it the most for me is something something I’ve seen in a lot of horror flicks where they spend a lot of time building up the atmosphere, only showing glimpses of a villain and they sort of decide they need a real “villain”. The evil Dr. Weir just fell flat. I’m not sure what else they could have done that would have been any better for a villain and just leaving it as atmospheric psychological would have been equally unfulfilling (see the ending of The Ninth Gate for people really hating that approach too). Frankly, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen of that type pull it off successfully, so I have a hard time criticizing the film too much for it.
I still liked the film though because, as I said, I still think the general premise and atmosphere does as good of a job of horror as anything else I’ve seen. But then again, I’m not really all that into horror.
(originally anyway)