Post by tav7623 on Oct 22, 2010 12:00:00 GMT -5
“Where we’re going we won’t need eyes to see”- Wier
Over the years I have seen a lot of horror movies some great, some good, some meh, some bad, some downright horrible and some so bad they were good. Usually when it comes to the horror films of director Paul W.S. Anderson they fall in between meh (Resident Evil) and bad (AvP), but there is one exception, early in his career Anderson directed a horror movie call Event Horizon. Event Horizon was shot in Britain on a $50 million dollar budget and starred Laurence Fishburn, Sam Neill, Jason Issacs, and Kathleen Quinlan. The movie was released theatrically on August 17th 1997, grossed $26 million dollars, and received generally negative reviews (it currently holds a 21% critic rating/63% audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a 6.3 rating on IMDB putting it behind Resident Evil and tying it with Resident Evil: Afterlife for the second best rating for a Anderson directed horror movie) from movie critics. The plot of the movie centers around the crew of the U.S. government search and rescue ship Lewis and Clark led by Capt. Miller (Fishburn) as they investigate/search the missing space ship Event Horizon for survivors now that the ship has suddenly re-appeared 7 years after its initial disappearance. Tagging along with the crew is the Event Horizon’s creator Dr. William Wier (Neill), who is serving as an advisor to help the crew of the Lewis and Clark in their rescue efforts and to help them find out what happened to the ship. Slowly their worst nightmares start to manifest before their eyes, they soon come to realize that the ship is now alive, is feeding off of their fear, and eventually uses that fear to try and kill them.
Pros: some decent practical special effects, good set design, and some decent acting (but not from Fishburn who is partially channeling his future role/character Morpheus or Neill)
Cons: some bad CGI effects especially those involving objects floating around in zero gravity, the editing/directing doesn’t do a great job of setting up/establishing all of the character’s fears and then building up the suspense when their fears start to materialize in front of them.
Overall I give Event Horizon a 3.5 out of 10 for being a downright horrible horror movie that tries to be scary and atmospheric, but for the most part fails to do so because of poor directing/editing and script design. The only good thing about this movie other than the practical special effects and set design is that it would go on to be part of the inspiration behind the classic PS3/Xbox 360 game Dead Space and the evil woodland creatures in the South Park Season 8 episode Woodland Critter Christmas. The bad news is that the general plot of this movie and two of the kills would later be ripped off and just ever so slightly altered five years later in the horrible Dark Castle movie Ghost Ship. Still if you are a fan of spaced based horror movies I would recommend that you at least check out this movie because there might be a few things for you to like about this movie. However if you are like me and are not a fan of spaced based horror (aka movies set in a space ship in outer space or on planets other than earth………for me the only exceptions are movies Alien and Aliens, and video games Doom 3 (PC version)and Dead Space) or Paul W.S. Anderson movies then I would recommend not checking out this movie because it doesn’t really bring anything new to the table in regards to mind blowing shit that could alter your perception/opinion of the sub genre and what it does bring to the table has not only been done before but has been done better by more talented filmmakers than Paul W.S. Anderson.
I hope you enjoyed this review, please let me know what you think, and please come back tomorrow for the day 5 review of The Changeling (1980)