Event Horizon (1997)

[Ted C]

 

Took a little time to watch Event Horizon last night. Someone on FB said that it was the closest thing to a Warhammer 40,000 movie that we would ever get. I don't know if anyone will ever work out a deal with Games Workshop to do a movie (usually breaks down at the merchandising), but Event Horizon isn't a half bad interpretation of what can happen if you send an unprotected ship through the Warp.

The movie does a good job of building suspense and doesn't rely on jump scares. People do occasionally do things that I would consider stupid, but there's basically something messing with their heads to begin with, so it's not that unreasonable.

Good times. This was available on Hulu, if anyone cares.

[claws]

I think it is interesting that the majority of critics didn't like the movie when it first came out. I remember my TV guide magazine would label it as the "flop of the day" whenever it was shown on TV.

When I first went online a few years later I noticed that pretty much everyone loved Event Horizon on message boards. Some even calling it the scariest movie ever made.

Personally I wouldn't go as far but I think the film delivers the horror goods.

[Trevor]

This was the first film I saw advertised on the thing called the Internet, the first time I ever used it.

Still one of the most disturbing films I have ever seen. 

[FatFreddysCat]

I own it on DVD, like it a lot. It's a little bit "Hellraiser," a little "The Black Hole," and a little "Alien" all rolled up and thrown into a blender set to "puree."

[WingedSerpent]

I really like this film.  Its almost impossible for Sam Neil to give a bad performance.  Plus the look of the ship is wonderfully both Gothic and futuristic.  I forget where I first read it, but the ship in Event Horizon was built around the blue prints for the Sistine Chapel.

[Archivist]

Do you see... DO YOU SEE???  

This movie is legit freak-out material. It's gruesome without lingering over the gore, and the thought of the ship sucking everyone back to Hell is ghastly. It's a bit like if Michael Crichton's Sphere ship went to Hell instead of the past.

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Do you know what's really weird? This:

After a successful initial DVD release, the studio and Anderson became interested in assembling a director's cut but they quickly found out that the excised footage had not been carefully stored and that much of it had gone missing. The deleted scenes were stored in a salt mine in Transylvania and had rotted away due to how they were stored in the mine. The plan to assemble a director's cut was abandoned and instead a special-edition two-DVD set was released that featured one deleted scene, two extended scenes, and a few shots of deleted material in the included making-of. The footage is of "video" quality.[6]

'Stored in a salt mine in Transylvania'???

[Ted C]

One thing I thought about when looking at the gravity drive: "Is there some technical reason it has to be so gothic and spiky?" The engine room looks like a torture chamber for no practical reason.

[Allhallowsday]

I haven't seen it in a long time, but I thought it was weird, creepy, scary. 

[zelmo73]

Do you know what's really weird? This:

After a successful initial DVD release, the studio and Anderson became interested in assembling a director's cut but they quickly found out that the excised footage had not been carefully stored and that much of it had gone missing. The deleted scenes were stored in a salt mine in Transylvania and had rotted away due to how they were stored in the mine. The plan to assemble a director's cut was abandoned and instead a special-edition two-DVD set was released that featured one deleted scene, two extended scenes, and a few shots of deleted material in the included making-of. The footage is of "video" quality.[6]

'Stored in a salt mine in Transylvania'???

Apparently, the deleted scenes were so gruesome and disturbing that they would not have avoided an NC-17 rating. The quick flashes of footage of what the lost crew had done to each other as they warped into Hell was apparently just a tip of the iceberg of the deleted scenes that were lost in the Transylvanian salt mine.

[Paquita]

Event Horizon was a great movie and I'm never going to watch it again.  This was the horror movie that "broke" me.  Before watching Event Horizon, I was all about watching anything and everything horror can throw at me (except animal and/or baby/elderly cruelty or killings - I'm looking at you Creepshow 2!) - blood, guts, demons, ghosts! Ha!  I eat them for breakfast give me more brrrah!!  That was me!  And then came Event Horizon...  I think you hit it on the head that it doesn't rely on "jump scares" and that's kind of how it got me.  I just remember my eyes being glued to the screen and then at the end I was just thinking "What did I just watch?!"   For years after I saw that movie, I would get a little scared in my tummy anytime I saw Sam Neill.

[Allhallowsday]

Event Horizon was a great movie and I'm never going to watch it again.  This was the horror movie that "broke" me.  Before watching Event Horizon, I was all about watching anything and everything horror can throw at me (except animal and/or baby/elderly cruelty or killings - I'm looking at you Creepshow 2!) - blood, guts, demons, ghosts! Ha!  I eat them for breakfast give me more brrrah!!  That was me!  And then came Event Horizon...  I think you hit it on the head that it doesn't rely on "jump scares" and that's kind of how it got me.  I just remember my eyes being glued to the screen and then at the end I was just thinking "What did I just watch?!"   For years after I saw that movie, I would get a little scared in my tummy anytime I saw Sam Neill.

 

Have you seen TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE (1974) ? 

[Paquita]

Event Horizon was a great movie and I'm never going to watch it again.  This was the horror movie that "broke" me.  Before watching Event Horizon, I was all about watching anything and everything horror can throw at me (except animal and/or baby/elderly cruelty or killings - I'm looking at you Creepshow 2!) - blood, guts, demons, ghosts! Ha!  I eat them for breakfast give me more brrrah!!  That was me!  And then came Event Horizon...  I think you hit it on the head that it doesn't rely on "jump scares" and that's kind of how it got me.  I just remember my eyes being glued to the screen and then at the end I was just thinking "What did I just watch?!"   For years after I saw that movie, I would get a little scared in my tummy anytime I saw Sam Neill.

 

Have you seen TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE (1974) ? 

Yes!  But I don't remember it being such a big deal to me.  Maybe because they picked up a hitchhiker, or because I already knew what to expect and already turned myself "off" a bit.  I saw it at the time I was trying to be super hardcore and act like none of this stuff bothered me.

[Allhallowsday]

...Have you seen TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE (1974) ? 

Yes!  But I don't remember it being such a big deal to me.  Maybe because they picked up a hitchhiker, or because I already knew what to expect and already turned myself "off" a bit.  I saw it at the time I was trying to be super hardcore and act like none of this stuff bothered me.

I was with three hardcore Horror veterans when I first saw it and I think we were all shaken.  'Course that was 40 years ago, but I am perplexed that it did not make a strong impression on you.  EVENT HORIZON is eerie and scary.  TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE is relentless.  People seem to remember it as extremely gory.  It isn't.  It's just intense.  And frightening.  I am perplexed because there is nothing to compare to it. 

[Paquita]

When I saw Texas Chain Saw Massacre, it had been around for over 20 years and had a "legendary" type of reputation among older kids.  I kind of already knew what it was about, I saw clips of it, read reviews, etc. so I knew it was brutal and violent and supposed to be disturbing and I was a teenager and determined not to be bested by it.  I’m sure I probably couldn’t watch it now.  I’m a lot softer than I was as a kid.

I was NOT prepared for Event Horizon.  I don’t think it was very popular when it came out and I don’t remember hearing much about it before I saw it.  I caught it on HBO or Showtime after seeing bits and pieces of it that seemed interesting and reading that it wasn’t “just” a space movie.  Even then, when I thought I was all tough, I was secretly a little freaked out by deep space and biblical stuff and just wasn’t ready for those two things to be clashing in a movie that I thought was going to be a drama about space madness or something. I didn’t know anything about what an “event horizon” was so it was kind of an ambiguous title to me, unlike “Texas Chain Saw Massacre” where you kind of know there’s going to be a chain saw, some massacring and it was going to be big, like Texas :).

[Allhallowsday]

^ Supposed to be disturbing?    You are the only person I've encountered who was not disturbed.