Event Horizon

Dir: Paul W. S. Anderson

1997

****

I remember going to see 1997’s Event Horizon with three of my best friends. As we left the cinema they all agreed that it had been one of the worst films they had ever seen. They felt the hype didn’t live up to the finished film, that the horror element was laughable and that they had been cheated into seeing it. I remained silent, I knew I wouldn’t be able to convince them otherwise and perhaps they were right in many respects. I enjoyed it immensely. It is a ridiculous film, but then all horror films in space should be a little nonsensical, that’s what makes them fun. Real space travel looks incredibly boring, sure the view is nice but most of the time you’re either exercising, seeing if something works for the billionth time or trying to shit in a bag so that your turd doesn’t float into your colleagues' mouths. I don’t want to see that, I want a haunted house in space and that is exactly what Paul W. S. Anderson gave me. The film is set way in the future. In 2047, a distress signal is received from the Event Horizon, a starship that disappeared during its maiden voyage to Proxima Centauri seven years before and mysteriously reappeared in a decaying orbit around Neptune. The rescue vessel Lewis and Clark is dispatched to look for survivors and determine what happened. Captain Miller (Laurence Fishburne) of the Lewis and Clark - along with second-in-command Lieutenant Starck (Joely Richardson), pilot Smith (Sean Pertwee), medical technician Peters (Kathleen Quinlan), engineer Ensign Justin (Jack Noseworthy), Doctor D.J. (Jason Isaacs), and rescue technician Cooper (Richard T. Jones)  are also joined by Dr. William Weir (Sam Neill). Dr. Weir, who designed the Event Horizon, briefs the crew on the ship's experimental gravity drive. The drive generates an artificial black hole and uses it to bridge two points in spacetime, reducing travel time over astronomical distances. The only message received from the ship after its departure was a strange recording of screams and howls. When the recording is filtered, Doctor D.J. believes he can make out the Latin phrase "liberate me" ("save me") being spoken among the screams. Upon boarding the Event Horizon, the crew finds evidence of a massacre. As they search for survivors, the ship's gravity drive automatically activates. Justin is briefly pulled into the resulting portal. The activation also causes a shock wave that damages the Lewis and Clark, forcing the entire crew to board the Event Horizon. After Justin is pulled out, he is in a catatonic state, terrified by what he saw on the other side. He attempts suicide, forcing the crew to place him in stasis. The team begins to experience hallucinations corresponding to their fears and regrets: Miller sees Corrick, a subordinate he was forced to abandon to his death; Peters sees her son with his legs covered in bloody lesions; and Weir sees his late wife, with missing eyes, urging him to join her. The crew soon discover a video log of the Event Horizon's crew going insane and mutilating each other. The video log ends with a shot of the Event Horizon's captain, who has apparently gouged out his own eyes, holding them up to the camera and saying in Latin, "liberate tutemet ex inferis" ("save yourself from hell"). Miller and D.J. deduce that the ship's gravity drive opened a gateway into a dimension outside the known universe. Starck theorizes that the Event Horizon has somehow become a sentient being that is tormenting its occupants in an attempt to kill them or lure them back through the portal. Miller decides to destroy the Event Horizon. Peters is lured to her death by a hallucination of her son. Weir, who has gouged his own eyes out and is now possessed by the evil presence, uses an explosive device to destroy the Lewis and Clark. The explosion kills Smith and blasts Cooper off into space. Weir kills D.J. by vivisecting him and corners Starck on the bridge. Miller confronts Weir, who overpowers him and initiates a 10-minute countdown until the Event Horizon will return to the other dimension. Cooper, having used his space suit's oxygen supply to propel himself back to the ship, appears at the bridge window. Weir shoots at him and is blown into space by the ensuing decompression. Miller, Starck, and Cooper survive and manage to seal off the ship's bridge. With their own ship destroyed, Miller plans to split the Event Horizon in two and use the forward section of the ship as a lifeboat. He is attacked by manifestations of Corrick and a resurrected Weir. Miller fights them off and detonates the explosives, sacrificing himself. The gravity drive activates, pulling the ship's rear section into a black hole. Starck and Cooper enter stasis, beside a comatose Justin, and wait to be rescued. Seventy-two days later, the forward section of the Event Horizon is boarded by a rescue party, who discover the remaining crew still in stasis. A newly awakened Starck sees Weir posing as one of the rescuers, then wakes up screaming and is comforted by Cooper. As Cooper restrains the terrified Starck and as one of the rescuers calls for a sedative, the doors ominously close. Demons in space, dark science, Latin and people with no eyeballs….what else could you want from a horror sci-fi? Well, personally, I do want more but only because I know know there was more. Directors usually have a standard 10-week editing period to produce the first cut of a film, as guaranteed by the Directors Guild of America. However, due to the short production schedule of the film, the rapidly approaching release date, and the fact that principal photography hadn't completed yet, Anderson agreed with the Paramount studio to an editing period of six weeks and promised to deliver the film ready for release in August 1997, as Paramount wanted to have a hit film before Titanic, which they were going to release in September. When the main unit wrapped, Anderson was supposed to start editing the film, but he still had to shoot two weeks with the second unit, effectively shortening the time he could spend in post-production to just four weeks. In that short amount of time, only a rough cut of the film could be assembled. Anderson notes that at two hours and 10 minutes, it was overly long, with weak directing and acting that could have used a further editing pass, unfinished special effects and a poor sound mix. In test screenings, the cut was poorly received. There were complaints about the extreme amount of gore, and Anderson and producer Jeremy Bolt claim members of the test audience fainted during the screening. Paramount, which had stopped looking at the dailies before any of the gore was shot and were seeing the completed film for the first time along with the audience, were similarly shocked by how gruesome it was and demanded a shorter length time with a decreased amount of gore. I still don’t understand why you would cut gore from a horror film, test screenings are full of people who will say they didn’t like something anyway because if they think they will never be asked back if they continuously say they like a film and don’t appear critical of anything. Anderson believes that while his first cut was justifiably considered too long, Paramount forced him to make a cut that was instead too short, and that it would benefit by restoring around 10 minutes of missing footage, including some of the deleted gore. It was too late and the film is what it is. Apparently real-life amputees were used for special effects scenes in which Event Horizon crew members were mutilated, and pornographic film actors were hired to make the sex and rape scenes more realistic and graphic, so while I wanted more gore and horror, maybe it did take things a little too far. We’ll never know, a year after the film's release, John Goldwyn, head of production at Paramount, admitted to him that he felt the film had not been properly released, and that the studio wanted him to make the longer version he always intended. So for some time, Anderson and producer Jeremy Bolt worked on a director's cut. They traveled the world to locate the original footage, some of which was found in the strangest places (for example, in an abandoned Transylvanian salt mine). However, they quickly realized that since the movie was made before the DVD era (when alternate versions became much more commonplace), much of the original footage had been destroyed, or its storage place had not been documented; what was retrieved had often been badly archived or was otherwise degraded. It’s shocking really, you expect this sort of thing from really old films but not from a film made in 1997. I thought it was a great idea, with a great cast of characters. Call it a guilty pleasure if you like but I found it entertaining and have re-watched it many times. An overlooked horror that deserves more love.