Event Horizon [Blu-ray]

Before I go off reviewing this cult classic, I'll share my personal history with this movie, which dates back nearly eleven years ago.I remember finishing up the forth grade back in June of 1998 and my brother rented Event Horizon from the local video store at the time and I watched it with him. When it was over, I was scared s***less the whole summer break. Oddly enough, I kept watching the movie throughout the summer, despite the fact that it was the most terrifying movie I've ever seen (and remains so to this day). I remember everyday from that summer, constantly fearing that a deranged Dr. Weir would break into my room and ritualistically end my existence. Even worse, I vividly remember my brother reenacting the infamous "video transmission" scene by holding golf balls covered in fake blood (to look like eyeballs) and covered himself with fake blood as he was saying "Liberate tutame ex inferis." Summer break eventually ended and with school starting up, I was finally able to dispose any memories I had of the movie. Sam Neill advertised for MCI at the time and even though I knew it wasn't really Dr. Weir, I still freaked out at the sight of those commercials. I would stay away from this movie for about seven years. In March of 2005, me and my friends held a "movie night" at my best friend's place over the weekend and I quickly saw Event Horizon on the video store shelf and I told my friends "You want to see a really messed up movie? Watch this." We rented Event Horizon and all of the deliciously evil and terrifying memories flooded back to my head that night; I couldn't sleep for days.PLOT:For those of you new to Event Horizon, here's the lowdown. In the year 2040, a space ship called the Event Horizon was launched to reach Proxima Centauri (Earth's nearest star) by using an artificial dimensional gateway to create a black hole, bridging the two points in space to drastically reduce journey time. When the ship goes about on its mission, it disappears without a trace. It's currently 2047 and the Event Horizon has returned off the orbit of Neptune. The Lewis and Clark rescue shuttle is dispatched to investigate and salvage the ship. As the Lewis and Clark docks with the Event Horizon and the rescue crew probes the ship, things start to go awry.SETTING:To me, this is the perfectly executed sci-fi/horror hybrid movie. Why? Event Horizon has many things going for it, but one of the best aspects is the perfect setting. Think about it; not only does the Event Horizon have a creepy gothic interior, the ship itself is surrounded by stormy conditions in space, you're stranded because your boarding ship was heavily damaged, the Event Horizon's communication functions are shot (not able to contact for help), and the only transmission you have of the ship's original crew truly sounds like screams out of hell. If you were aboard the Event Horizon, wouldn't you be scared? I sure would!!CHARACTERS:The actors do an excellent job with their roles; particularly Lawrence Fishburne as Captain Miller, Sam Neill as Dr. Weir, Kathleen Quinlan as Lt. Peters, and Jason Isaacs as D.J. To me, Dr. Weir is one of the best and most evil villains I've ever seen in film; so much so, I had to namedrop him on my review of Morbid Angel's "Altars of Madness" to describe how evil that album is. Dr. Weir isn't some one-dimensional character that's evil and nothing else; he was originally a man of scientific ambition with his Event Horizon project but his work would cause his wife, Claire, to commit suicide from loneliness. This would haunt Weir and when he boards his long lost creation, it would mentally torment him with his sins and drive him into a state of evil madness. Even prior to Weir's transformation as the antagonist, you can tell there was something messed up about him when he's aboard the Lewis and Clark, playing an intercepted transmission from the Event Horizon with a straight face, despite it sounding so hellish. Lt. Peters and Captain Miller also have interesting back stories involving Peters having to abandon her crippled son and Miller having to abandon one of his crew members on a burning space ship several years prior. Along with Weir's sins, the Event Horizon would use the sins of Miller and Peters to torment them. Rescue tech Cooper (Richard T. Jones) does a good job at providing a little humor in the movie to keep the audience from spiraling into states of madness; I particularly like him telling X.O. Starck as he was giving crew members coffee "Want something hot and black inside you?"SCARE TACTICS AND OTHER NASTY STUFF:Unlike most horror movies that use cliché settings and scare tactics to unnerve the audience, this uses much more original ideas to scare movie fans. In Event Horizon, there's no boogeyman, no hideous aliens, and not even any physical life forms on it!! The thing that makes this movie so scary is that it perfectly utilizes the whole "fear of the unknown" concept as no one investigating the ship knows what they're dealing with. Paul Anderson's interpretation of hell is also more original, making it more unnerving. The cliché fire and brimstone imagery has been replaced with the ship's gravity drive deck filled with some of the most horrendous looking corpses ever put on film. This brings me to my next point. There's lots of gore in this movie, but unlike mediocre flicks like Hostel and The Hills Have Eyes, the gore in this movie is used to enhance the dark, unnerving atmosphere of the movie rather than relying solely on it. In other words, the violence in this movie won't bore you. The violence in this movie REALLY is disturbing; the scene where Starck and Peters unscramble the video in the ship's computer showing the original crew killing and eating each other still freaks me out to this day. The scene where Dr. Weir attacks D.J. on the medical deck is really appalling as you can see Dr. Weir's bloody, empty eye sockets and the way he kills D.J. is guaranteed to freak out movie goers. As Weir and Miller duke it out toward the end, Weir forces Miller to see Hell and trust me, it really is terrifying.THEMES AND ESOTERIC THINGS:Religion is a big theme in Event Horizon, as you can already tell with the constant mention of Hell and the use of Latin in some scenes. The concept of creating artifical black holes to reduce time in space travel is really neat; I just hope I'm dead before technology advances that far!! Something that I really enjoyed was when D.J.'s carcass is shown in the medical deck, there's lots of esoteric occult symbols painted everywhere. I'm really glad that Anderson didn't use something typical like the pentagram and inverted cross to represent Hell, and the mysterious nature of these creepy symbols adds to the terror in this movie. These symbols would also appear on Dr. Weir's body when he comes back as some sort of undead creature towards the end of the movie. Everything in Event Horizon isn't tied up in a neat little bow, there's several little things that aren't fully explained. I normally don't like it when movies do this as it usually comes off as laziness, but it works for Event Horizon because they do it in a manner that satisfies the viewer at the end of the movie but makes them wonder about other things. For one, you never really see the "chaos dimension," only images of people getting horribly killed aboard the Event Horizon. So that leaves your imagination to decide what this dimension really looks like.SOUNDTRACK:For the most part, the soundtrack is magnificent; it perfectly fuses hard techno beats with chilling classical orchestra melodies. The weird combination perfectly suits the movie. The only music track I hated was the one at the very end by The Prodigies called "Funky S***," it sounds bad and fits nowhere in the movie, even though it was only on the credits.EXTRAS:The current edition of Event Horizon has a second disk full of bonus features. While these features aren't as abundant as say those in the T2: Extreme Edition DVD set, they are worthwhile. There's featurettes about the making of Event Horizon along with videos of concept art. While I liked the conceptual drawings and 3D renderings provided in the DVD set, they could have added more and I would have preferred that each image was presented as a still frame rather than a video montage with commentary because with DVD programs like Cyberlink Power DVD that include "snapshot" features, I like to make "snapshots" of these art pieces so that I can quickly get ideas when I hit the drawing boards for my own creations. Still, I enjoyed what I got in this area. The "making of" featurettes are a real treat, they show the numerous difficulties filming the movie and the neat props and filming techniques used to make this film possible. After watching these, I wasn't too pleased at Paramount for terribly rushing Paul Anderson and his crew to finish Event Horizon at a certain deadline. These corporate slimeballs would also force Anderson to cut out about 40 minutes of the original edition of the movie because test audiences were too freaked out by the level of violence in it. Some scenes were put on the bonus disk, and while pretty satisfying to see, it's a shame that they couldn't be restored into the film itself. However, given that Event Horizon came out before the DVD revolution and that Paramount wasn't too pleased by the film's poor performance in the box office, the uncut editions of the movie have been lost. Infact, Anderson stated he had to go all over the world to find the lost footage included on the DVD. In short, I can't blame Anderson for this shortcoming as the blame really belongs to Paramount for their unrealistic time demands and the wimpy test audiences for their squeamishness. All in all, the bonus disk is a nice addition to the movie.CRITICISM:The only bad thing I can say about Event Horizon was the song played at the end credits, which I already stated under "soundtracks." This is only noticeable flaw that I could find in this movie, but it doesn't really detract the quality of the film as a whole. Apparently, a lot of people panned this movie for being too violent and scary. That's mind-bogglingly stupid; panning an R-rated sci-fi/horror movie for being scary and violent is like panning The Ren and Stimpy Show or The Simpsons for making people laugh. For the people who didn't like the movie for these aspects, what were you expecting this to be? A family film about Shaqulle O' Neal in space rapping and playing basketball with aliens? Do your homework next time, there's ratings and content descriptions on the movie posters and DVD cases, READ THEM!!FINAL WORD:In Paul Anderson's filmography, Event Horizon is easily his crowning jewel. It's really sad that he'd sink to such low levels in making such junk like Alien vs Predator and Resident Evil. Event Horizon isn't a movie for everyone, but if you want a movie that will give you nightmares and weird things to discuss with fellow cinema buffs, Event Horizon will reward you greatly.

Sam Neill and Laurence Fishburne really go for it in this extreme sci-fi horror flick. Amazing set designs and great make-up/practical effects look outstanding on this 4K disc. The CGI is not used in too often and is passable but not great. Audio was also outstanding. Definitely recommend this one.

This is probably my favorite sci-fi horror movie with the exception of Alien. I hope one day they release a directors cut.

The hokeyness of the CGI and the cast is more than made up for with the story and Sam Neil's performance.A simple story, a ship uses a new form of travel and disappears on her maiden voyage and then one day returns adrift. A recovery/salvage ship is sent out to investigate with the ships designer.The transfer does a pretty solid job of fixing some CGI issues prevalent in these early adopting films (how painfully noticeable it is) but the ships are actual models so they look as amazing as ever.The only thing that really hurts the film is the goofy chair they have Fishburne sitting in. It looks so bad.Anyway, if you don't have this movie in your collection and you love sci-fi horror get it.

One of my all-time favorite sci-fi horror movies. Beware flashing lights.

If you've played Dead Space 1 and 2 then you need to see the movie that inspired it! This is by far Paul's best effort by far, it feels like an actual movie was made here, if you enjoy films like Alien and Hellraiser then you'll love this movie. The 4k transfer is done really well it looks great a thankfully they didn't go buckwild on the CGI that could've hurt the movie being transferred into 4k, unfortunately the movie was the only thing that got the 4k treatment. I really wished Arrow Media did it because their RoboCop 4k work is amazing. The steelbook case is awesome though, BUT for the love of all why doesn't Paramount do art on their discs, I love disc art. But yeah on the 4k disc it's just the money, no commentary or special features, I guess the guys at Paramount decided having all that stuff on the Blu-ray disc is good enough. Next time Paramount show some actual love to your physical media products.

For the fans of this bewilderingly underrated masterpiece - rest assured, this is a fantastic effort. You will be happy.The film looks pristine with clear, sharp, natural film detail and perfectly judged use of hdr. A vast improvement on the blu ray, which was perfectly adequate anyway given it's status, but someone over at paramount has finally given this the love it deserves.For newcomers - jump in, it's a glorious mix of Alien, Hellraiser, The Shining, with a dash of Solaris. A pitch perfect blend of hard scifi, horror, great set pieces, well written characters and a compelling plot.Hell of a cast too, all on top form giving it their all.This film has aged like a fine wine and should be far better known than what it is.

Kurz zum Inhalt: 2047 bricht ein Raumschiff auf zu einer geheimen Rettungsmission. Erst auf dem Flug klärt der mitgereiste Wissenschaftler Dr. Weir die Besatzung über das Ziel auf: Es soll das von ihm erbaute Raumschiff "Event Horizon", das seit 2040 verschollen ist, gefunden werden. Tatsächlich wird die "Event Horizon" gefunden.Eine Bergungsmannschaft geht an Bord und findet das Schiff scheinbar verlassen vor. Es stellt sich schnell heraus, dass alle Besatzungsmitglieder tot sind und anhand des wiederhergestellten Videologbuchs wird ersichtlich, das sich die Besatzungsmitglieder gegenseitig zerfleischt haben.Im weiteren Verlauf erkennt die Bergungsmannschaft den Grund für diese Morde: Die "Event Horizon" war in der Lage ein künstliches schwarzes Loch zu erzeugen (dafür war sie auch von Dr. Weir konstruiert worden). Der Flug durch das schwarze Loch, so die Hypothese, soll das Schiff in ein Paralleluniversum transportiert haben.Auf unerklärliche Weise mutierte dabei die "Event Horizon" in eine Art intelligentes, aber höchst bösartiges Wesen, das die teuflische Fähigkeit besitzt, die schlimmsten Ängste eines jeden Besatzungsmitglieds real werden zu lassen. Die von grauenhaften Visionen gequälte Besatzung der "Event Horizon" brachte sich bedingt durch einen grenzenlosen Paranoia Rausch gegenseitig um.Nachdem dies der Bergungsmannschaft klar wurde und schon Tote in den eigenen Reihen zu beklagen sind, wollen sie wieder zu ihrem eigenen Schiff zurück und den Ort des Grauens verlassen. Doch ein Mitglied der Bergungsmannschaft hat ihr Schiff zerstört und die Mannschaft ist gezwungen, auf dem Horrorschiff "Event Horizon" zu verweilen und -an den Rand des Wahnsinns gebracht-um ihr Leben zu kämpfen.Sicherlich hat der Film Logik Fehler und die Handlung mag etwas weit daher geholt zu sein, aber davon abgesehen bietet der Film Hochspannung pur. Gerade der Kampf der Besatzung mit/gegen ihre schlimmsten Ängste und Wahnvorstellungen, bei dem keiner mehr dem anderen traut, erzeugen eine unglaublich intensive, unheilschwangere Atmosphäre, die den Zuschauer bis zum Ende beschäftigt.Zudem liefern Laurence Fishburne als Captain Miller und Sam Neill als Dr. Weir eine schauspielerische Glanzleistung ab.Obwohl der Film geschnitten wurde, um die FSK 18 zu umgehen, gibt es dennoch etliche deftige Horrorszenen zu sehen.Fazit: Trotz der angesprochenen Schwäche in Bezug auf die Handlung, bietet der Film ansonsten hochspannende Unterhaltung und zudem ein relativ überraschendes Ende.

A sci-fi horror classic. Dr Weir has been sent to the Lewis & Clark to investigate the disappearance and reappearance of the Event Horizon beyond Neptune. Things turn ugly once they board the ship an engineer Justin gets pulled into the gravity drive causing a wave that damages the Lewis & Clark. All crew have been ordered to board the Event Horizon. Dr Weir struggles to find answers as to where the ship has been and what happened. Meanwhile the individual crew members start to experience hallucinations relating to their personal lives. The ship seems to have a sinister energy that gets inside the minds of the crew. Things then turn to breaking point!Event Horizon is a must watch! A science fiction movie with some disturbing sequences.

This film is given the 4k treatment but the overall image quality could have been better. I know the film is 25 years old but have seen better 4k presentations in older films. This is still the best it has looked. Better detail, the CGI is dated but the zoom in cinematography still holds up. The Dolby vision gives more realistic colour in the ship and allows the space scenes to be darker with better contrast. Soundtrack is good but would have been better in Atmos. Still easily Anderson's best film. Don't have nightmares.

been amovie buff since zthe 1940 era remember first wide scene the robe blown away by that Now to event wow what a transfer when there was no gravity bits and pieces flying all over the screen thought some of it was going to end up on my lap.For a film of its age i thought it was fantastic,Some other 4k are a bit of a let down to say the least. First 4 star trek my dvd of these are better than the 4k issue.Another wonderful upgrade was the new War of the Worlds tom cruise great .