It’s a crazy thing, the idea of Hell. From an early age, I was taught to pray at night or I’d burn. Throw my records, VHS tapes and Nightmare board games into the church bonfire, or I’d live in the fire of Hades. The myth of brimstone and pain was so deeply ingrained into my psyche, that I lived most of my childhood in fear of a red man with horns and a pitchfork, never a fun existence for a kid to endure. One afternoon, on Sunday, August 17th, 1997, I’d come to terms with my true feelings on the idea of hell and I’d come to that realization due to ditching my then-church’s BBQ in order to see Paul W.S. Anderson’s EVENT HORIZON, a film that had hit my local theater two days earlier. Sitting in an almost empty auditorium, I expected a sci-fi horror hybrid that I’d gladly hide from my dad when he’d ask what I had seen. I expected a fun ride, not a film that would lead to my own questioning of Hell, religion and faith.
In the years that followed that first viewing of EVENT HORIZON, the myth of the film’s production would eventually overshadow that experience. With each year that passed, the stories of studio tampering, tons of footage being left out of the film and soon lost became more infamous than the film itself, leading this writer to forget how special Anderson’s Hell-in-space gem truly was, until revisiting the film for this particular piece. Sitting down and reacquainting myself with EVENT HORIZON was a special moment, bringing back so many feelings of what Hell really is to me, all due to a film that seems like a surface sci-fi/horror flick, but is really a look at the Hell we all create, the personal hells we live in, all born out of pain.
The plot of EVENT HORIZON isn’t necessarily a difficult one to follow. Like the crew in ALIEN, we’re given a group of reluctant heroes in the sense of being expected to take part in a rescue mission they didn’t sign up for. Discovering the remains of the lost Event Horizon ship is appealing, but the cost of the crew walking into what is essentially their own personal nightmares is one that is both electric and shocking to watch. Each crew member deals with something lost or potentially lost, from Sam Neill’s character dealing with the death of a spouse, to Kathleen Quinlan’s character worst nightmares of missing out on the life if her child, every fear we tend to hold close to our chest is front and center in the film. We’re eventually told that the Event Horizon went into what is essentially a portal into Hell, but what is Hell?, the film asks us.
It’s a blast to watch the horrific effects, the ominous score and to behold some of the most impressive set designs since ALIEN, but like THE SHINING, EVENT HORIZON is more about the internal struggle of losing your grasp on reality and having your own worst nightmares be brought into the forefront. Not only do we get each character facing their own hells eye to eye, but in grotesque ways that feel like you’re watching an invasive amount of personal torture, from Neill’s eyes being ripped out to some of the most memorable space horror sequences put on film. Anderson doesn’t feel the need to hold your hand and explain everything, but it’s that lack of explanation that allows you as a viewer to take each horrific sequence and ask yourself about your own nightmares, your own pain and your own history with horror, humanity and letting ones closest to you down. A message film it is not, but there’s something profound found within Philip Eisner’s excellent script, a look at the horror found within each of us, something infinitely easier to get under our skin, more than just a space monster that could have been. What is hell, if not our own personal disappointments?
Though we’re given protagonists in the crew members (Laurence Fishburne’s Captain Miller sincerely does his best to keep his crew safe), the film doesn’t necessarily deal with your typical good vs. bad angle — no, instead we’re given a struggle to make it through your worst imagination, all while said imagination is trying to dismember you and potentially turn you and your friends into what can only be called a Blood Orgy. When our characters are dispatched one by one, we feel the deaths, because like those characters, we all live with similar pain. We’ve all let our spouses or children down, our friends, our parents, we’ve all placed skeletons deep within our own respective closets, and what EVENT HORIZON does so brilliantly, is show that sooner or later, we will all have to atone from the letdowns and mistakes our own past, and it does it drenched in blood and carnage. Like the film says, “Save yourself from hell,” and though there is no savior found within the film, we’re given such a great ride to live vicariously through.
Sure, EVENT HORIZON isn’t as championed as some of the other sci-fi gems of the past. It will never be held with such reverence as say 2001: A Space Odyssey or Alien, but there’s something infinitely special about this mean spirited, yet very impactful sci-fi/horror roller coaster ride. It’s rare for a film to entertaining the hell out of you, while also making you think about mortality and fear, death and disappointment at the very same time. Revisiting the film all of the years later, I can see why it didn’t do as well as it should have. Perhaps a bit ahead of its time, I could see EVENT HORIZON being released these days, by A24 or XYZ, allowing for a slow burn horror film to breathe and exist on its own, as opposed to 1997, when studios didn’t really know what they had when Anderson delivered the original cut. If the film had been released today, it would be on every best of horror list and rightfully so.
I don’t remember much about being a teenager, aside from the ever present questioning of faith and hope, but sitting there, 16 and looking for some form of explanation, I saw the same film I watched as a 40-year-old this past week: a film that challenges its viewer to question their own personal feelings on what pain and horror can lead to, what hell truly means, and readers, that’s one hell of a special thing to witness.
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Tags: Adrian Biddle, Hell, Jack Noseworthy, Jason Isaacs, Jerry Smith, Joely Richardson, Kathleen Quinlan, Laurence Fishburne, Martin Hunter, Michael Kamen, Paul W.S Anderson, Philip Eisner, Richard T. Jones, Sam Neill, Sean Pertwee, Space, The Future
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