Nerds That Geek Movie Review: ‘Event Horizon’

Written by John Edward Betancourt

For the most part, folks that are entrusted to market a motion picture have a fairly easy job. After all, the vast majority of movies fall into a baseline genre, allowing for marketing teams to make it clear to prospective audiences, what this movie is going to be about and why they should absolutely head out to the theaters to watch it. But sometimes you get those special films that well...  are difficult to sell. Especially when the filmmaker in question has assembled a movie where the genre and its prospective hook, aren’t easy to decipher in the slightest.

Which means that the marketing company in question, hasn’t a clue how to get people to come see this particular film in the slightest and that motivates them to pick a concept in said movie and focus on that to entice an audience. Which is a decision that leads to some interesting results. The kind that offers up trailers and commercials that really do put a particular expectation in a viewer’s mind, only for them to discover a wholly different kind of film when they sit down with popcorn in hand, and that often leads to disappointment or confusion, and that’s precisely what happened in 1997 with the film, Event Horizon.  

In the year 2040, man can celebrate the fact that it has established itself amongst the stars. With colonies on the Moon and Mars, it is time for man to reach further out into space and the experimental vessel Event Horizon is designed to do just that. But she disappears without a trace near Neptune and is considered lost... that is until 2047, when she suddenly reappears. Now it is up to the designer of the vessel, Doctor Weir, and the crew of the search and rescue vessel Lewis and Clark to find out what happened to the crew of the Event Horizon and more importantly, figure out where the ship has been for the last seven years.  

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​So, as I stated before some films simply don't have a specific genre that defines them, and Event Horizon is one of those films. When advertised many years ago the trailers and commercials remained as ambiguous as possible. Granted it looked cool from the get-go, and the ‘Infinite Terror’ line in the trailer combined with the mystery, made me instantly assume that perhaps the ship had been in contact with a nasty species out there and what they sent back was designed to test us and terrify us. But lo and behold, when my family stepped into the theater to see it, we were all treated to a terrifying twist. In that, this was indeed a horror film set in outer space and that unexpected surprise was enough to scare my little sister right out of the theater.    

But that surprise aside, my sister eventually watched this movie and loved it, and so do I. Simply because this quality twist sucks you into the story before the movie shocks you completely and I do mean that it shocks you. Because there are some incredibly disturbing scenes in this film that stay with you long after the story has ended. In fact, the scene where the crew of the Lewis and Clark finally find out exactly where the ship has been and are able to see the ship's log of what happened to the crew still makes me cringe to this day. Yet, for every perfect scene like that one, there are plenty that are cliché, and that's unfortunate. Because this truly had the potential to be an incredibly dark and genuinely disturbing horror film. But this flick is worth a look, if only for those perfect horror moments.  

However, what truly breaks my heart about Event Horizon is the sheer fact that Paramount Pictures demanded that the movie tone down its most shocking scenes. Because it is a well-known fact now that Director Paul W.S. Anderson went all out with the gore and the terror and that a great deal of the stuff that unsettles us in the finished product, is but a sampling of what he envisioned. And while edits are commonplace, what’s heartbreaking is that we will likely never see what he had planned for us. Because the original negatives to Event Horizon have been lost to the ravages of time and sadly that will forever keep this movie from realizing its potential. But that is what it is and we can instead celebrate what turned out to be a solid little horror film, one that still managed to shock and surprise audiences to the point, where we still celebrate this film, twenty-four years after its release.

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