[QUOTE=bughunter]
I was lulled in by the first act, set aboard the high-gee rescue vessel, thinking it might actually be a good hard-SF film, like Aliens. But then, it started sucking. Like the hard vacuum of space. Not only did the premise turn out to be the stuff of juvenile horror comics, but the acting and characterization but the poor acting and veneer-thin characterization compounded the suckage.
By the time one astronaut, well aware of supernatural dangers aboard ship, is lured into the engine room of the possessed ship by a vision of someone thirty astronomical units away, I was ready to walk out.
[/QUOTE]
That sort of thing is hardly unique to Event Horizon, though. The Smithee Awards even have an entire category devoted to this principle:* “Acting Appropriately Stupid.” *
One of the all-time best examples of this phenomenon that I can recall is from another SF/horror film, Planet of the Vampires (directed by Mario Bava, whose name also sometimes appears on better movies). Two astronauts are exploring an unfamiliar vessel, and encounter a control panel with a big, shiny, glowing, candy-like button. Despite having absolutely no clue as to its function, the first astronaut immediately presses it, presumably to find out what it does! It turns out that what the button does is to deliver a massively painful electric shock to whoever presses it (why? Malfunction? Anti-idiot device? I have no idea). That isn’t even the stupidest part, though. Second astronaut observes this entire exchange, then goes over and presses the button himself! I should digress to point out that Planet of the Vampires was evidently not intended as comedy.
From what little I can recall, **Event Horizon ** struck me as a pretty stupid movie, but not outstandingly so as crap SF goes. I thought the premise itself, while somewhat goofy and not terribly original, was not the problem so much as the lazy scripting and execution. The movie seemed to me like it actually could have been a fairly decent SF/horror offering; it had the bare bones of a good setup, mildly interesting set design, and several actors who have been known to turn in decent performances upon occasion. It seemed to me that at some point, for whatever reason, the filmmakers just gave up. The actors also just seemed to be going through the motions, not even able to muster the enthusiasm to make a decent, watchable B-movie. I got the sense that they must have already decided the film was going to be a dog, and were simply waiting for their checks to clear. I wasn’t disappointed in **Event Horizon ** because it was an overwhelmingly bad movie, but because it was forgettably bad when it seemed like it could have just as easily been serviceably entertaining.
One of the things that did amuse me about the film was the design of the ship itself. Granted, the likelihood that the ship and crew would be literally sucked into Hell probably wasn’t a scenario the engineers ever considered. On the other hand, I’d have thought that the one ship able to bring its crew back safely from such a journey would be a vehicle shaped like a giant crucifix. Evidently not, though. Hell must be run by Lutherans.
