Event Horizon

to HELL With It!

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A stable, elegant installment to consort the exquisite focal elements of the Doom phenomena with the Alien direction, Event Horizon remains among the few sci-fi outputs that not particularly need to fear of the Ultimate Conqueror many must regard as: Time.

Surely, writer Paul Eisner had an evident fixation on Stanislaw Lem's Solyaris back in the day he - Eisner - came up with the story of this flick, yet the final result coats and keeps borrowed elements within an integral buildup which is not afraid to deliver pretty descent space-time novelty disturbances throughout the nicely realized presentational setup the film speaks in.

A pretty pleasant surprise to enrich the period characterized by the Year 2K Hysteria, Event Horizon sends a massive spaceship to no other dimension than the one many feared would collapse on Earth: Hell. Now, what may prove even more interesting that this? Easy: a flick needs to send the ship BACK from Hell. And, OH!, that it does indeed, giving us the exquisite chance to join a small everyday spaceparty trying to see what exactly went by on the vessel. One surely anticipates the darkest events, and darkest events one sees on the horizon, indeed.

Director Paul W.S. Anderson had great moments before, and I find Event Horizon to be one of those. The movie has a cold, ignorant atmosphere surrounding it with no pleasant findings to be made, neither promised of whatsoever. The screenplay follows entirely classic sequences solidified to be cute, welcomed traditions probably by the first Alien film. These elements include the absolutely not-to-be-left-out period in which crew members having their meals just to have their casual briefing of the situation that have previously occurred, yet seldom are the times when such happenings would propose fruity events to come. Not to mention how important it is to commence briefing while your crew members shovel boiled eggs and stuff related into their respective heads.

Event Horizon gives you two focal characters: great actor Sam Neill portrays Dr. William Weir, the Mastermind behind the Event Horizon spacehip, the first vessel with the capacity to travel along the shortest way between two different points. What the shortest possible distance between two different points might be, one might naturally ask. Consensus awareness surely would tell us that the shortest possible distance between these - eagerly cited and joyfully praised - two different points is: the Straight Line. Yet the Event Horizon operates by entirely different concepts, realized and put to the test by Dr. Weir himself. This great scientist states this: shortest distance between two different points is NOT the Straight Line. It is: Zero.

The spaceship's engine is an artificial Black Hole, - and here comes the intermediate spacehead talk, check this: - capable to bend the fabric of space-time in a way that starting point and destination point would occupy the same space and same time - thus through-travel can occur, while the artificial Black Hole would release the highly illegal (?) parallel dimension it just created to travel on, leaving consensus space-time ultimately intact. A very nice fictionfoam by Paul Eisner in which this focal idea remains strong originator, while he relies on Lem's similarly masterful inventions to forge quite effective support elements from, as we will eagerly scrutinize.



The other key protagonist the movie offers is Laurence Fishburn, giving you Captain Miller. The Skipper of the rescue vessel which happened to be sent out to investigate the Event Horizon does not seem to have much admiration for fairy tales, yet little!, if any!, does he know that he and his crew is about to experience a frightful one of those. I notice we have gotten ahead of ourselves, which is cool once you attempt to astral project, a definite no-no if to review a piece of entertainment. The Event Horizon's first journey was registered as a failure, the vessel got lost at unknown coordinates, never to be heard from again. You know the classic twist:

Until Now

Seven years following it's vanish, the gigantic ship reappears, begging to be checked out thoroughly. A brief, yet elegantly spent time period accounts the ship as more of a living entity than a construction of human knowledge and materia, suggestions do constantly reveal that the vessel has "seen" and "undertook" phenomenas, events and experiences that are way beyond the capacity of mankind to comprehend. These cautiously hinted elements are to reach their relative peek points via the finding of the records the previous, of course entirely disappeared crew of the Event Horizon have made. The message they recorded firstly appears only in vocal form, stating: "Save Yourself from Hell" in Latin, yet the investigators do have a hard time to decipher the input correctly. As it turns out later on, though: the crew of the Event Horizon had quite a hardcore party for quite a while prior to their complete banishment to a plane and form of existence you not necessarily want to experience without a superthick glass to separate you from it.



- Dude! You are LEVITATING!
- And figure THIS: that's how it goes the whole DAY!

The buildup has a nice rhythmization to it, as the unpleasant atmosphere reigns more than ready to send out vibes that are totally capable to compromise the inner operation of the investigators. One young dude - Jack Noseworthy, what an exquisite name! - comes into contact with an abomination the ship exhibits, this entity is only referred by the boy as "the darkness in me". A highly inventive creative death scene is about to occur by this time, as the character -I assume - chooses to act according to the darkness he experienced, thus he abruptly finds himself in an airlock, opening up wildspace on his body. Let me tell you this: human anatomy exhibits a blatant handicap if to face off wildspace, and of this, Event Horizon informs you clearly, convincingly.

This memorable sequence poses as focal point in the fabric, as the boy's highly successful attempt to demonstrate extreme space tourism correlates with the fresh assumption that the Event Horizon been and came back to and from Hell Itself. Lem's fiction from Solyaris is skillfully implemented: respective sour conscience manifests and haunts everybody onboard. The Event Horizion materializes your darkest, bitterest secrets, and amazingly: this truly great idea indeed reigns in an altered position once it operates on entirely negative registers. While Lem uses his idea to voice and unleash emotional and spiritual issues, Eisner translates them to voice and unleash fear and terror. I particularly like the tagline of the flick, stating: Infinite Space, Infinite Terror. Sexy, no? The effectiveness of Lem's output remains brilliant in both cases, yet the original variant does offer optional, yet very interesting routes to furtherly wonder on, I think. If you are interested, please be sure to check out my Solyaris review which I wanted to link for you, yet almost forgot.



A key point to conduct focal observations from is the depiction of Hell's foul breath the vessel brought back with itself, and I would say that Event Horizon delivers an acceptable novelty feast to satisfy twisted curiosity with, though these revealed atrocities themselves have a hard time to deconstruct what we belive to be "proper" and "legit" beyond flesh. Therefore flesh remains the element to abuse when Hell is about to claim it's rampant presence. The movie takes a cute, even decently realized adjustment to the imagery of the classic RPG game of the day, Diablo by Blizzard Entertainment, placing the good doctor Weir - who, SPOILER!: goes massively nuts and chooses to worship Hell - into set pieces that harmonically resonate with the weighty dark fantasy appeals the aforementioned hack'n slash role playing classic enriched popular culture with.

Thus, strangely enough: my concerns are the same as my delights, as Event Horizon shows you a Hell which is fair 'nuff once the agenda is nothing more than to reveal surficial traits of it, yet the flashy, brief, novelty-showaround of abused flesh and blood do weight in as the Primal Conclusion Hell can shock you with, at least according to the vessel and it's narrative creators. I do not think that this would be the case in an "Ideal Proper Hell", though. In "Ideal Proper Hell", such affairs as Event Horizon depicts certainly should be but the beginning of something much, much worse. I am ready to assume that this particular field to contain experiences much worse than pain is a risky deal to reveal, let alone: to invent and to construct. Event Horizon thus gives you but the naturally anticipated, considers you will be quite satisfied and shocked with it, and dismisses you abruptly, while I am sure "Ideal Proper Hell" would "stand" in front of you just to ask:

Ready to see - MORE and - DIFFERENT?

Event Horizon never asks you this, yet it certainly delivers an acceptable novelty showdown to conclude it's storyline, even better: the final twist has some extra appeal to it, especially considering that the event it gives you does NOT, in fact, happen in the film's reality. It does happen nevertheless in the respective realities of those whom have confronted with Dr. Weir's highly deformed, final form. I think this is the aspect "Ideal Proper Hell" STARTS from, also remains an aspect that Event Horizon exhibits no massive interest in.



- Doctor, what does the term "hardcore" mean to you?
- Question is what I mean to the term "hardcore".

This 1997 output remains a charming variant on science fiction ready to communicate via a darker tone, it even seems unfortunate that recent sci-fi directions do not aspire to offer tales and narratives on this particular register. Solid acting, some surprisingly good environmental ideas and related special effects, let alone the possibility to peek unto Hell through a keyhole: the Event Horizon's Black Hole is BUT a keyhole, yet it's welcomed existence emphasizes the possibility and, maybe, satisfiable need to check out other Hell !S! in the future, just to make sure we respect them, rejecting their keen invitations to take part in them in any other way than for the sake of development, fun, and inventive, quality entertainment.

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