Event Horizon

BIG film. Visually amazing. Enormous sets, good acting, and pretty scary in places. One of my friends, who isn't easy to scare, came out of it saying that it was the only film he's ever seen that deserved an 18 certificate. He also wanted to sign up to be a Christian, for reasons which will be explained.

The plot centres around a space ship called the Event Horizon, which set off for Neptune in about 2040, carrying a graviton drive. This drive enables the ship to open up a gateway in space and travel to any other point in the universe. The ship got to Neptune, enabled the drive, and disappeared without trace. The film starts seven years later, onboard a search and rescue ship heading towards Neptune in order to investigate the Event Horizon, which has mysteriously reappeared.

They go onboard, and find no sign of life. Well, sort of. They do a scan from their ship, and find evidence of life across the entire ship, so go onto it to scan room by room. Once on the ship, they can't find the crew, but they do find one or two big red squashed messy bits spread across a wall, which isn't really going to inspire confidence in your safety. One rescuer finds the room with the graviton drive in it, which suddenly opens, revealing a sort of vertical black liquid. He puts his hand into it (any horror film fan is screaming "don't stick your hand into the mysterious substance!"), and promptly gets sucked in. One of his friends pulls him out, and he gets taken to the medical bay.

The rescuers then start having hallucinations - one woman sees her dead son, Sam Neill's character sees his wife, who committed suicide, and Laurence Fishburne sees a crew member he was forced to abandon in a burning ship years ago. The ship then starts flashing lights and making odd noises....the usual.

Eventually they decode the ship's log, and find images of the entire crew being disembowelled, tentacles, spikes, needles, all sorts of sharp spiky nasty things. A sadomasochist's dream, basically. They translate a message they hear in Latin, which says "save yourselves from hell".

This is the point of the film. This ship, which should have been able to travel anywhere in the universe, has in fact travelled outside the universe, and gone to hell. No metaphor this - the actual, trident selling, fire burning, tormented soul, the whole punishment bit. They realise that the ship has been given some sort of life force, and is trying to keep them on it forever. So they start trying to survive......

This film is gory in places - you see one man being cut apart, and other occasionally nasty bits. However, most of it is tension - the typical shot of man walking around a dark room, low music, then suddenly something nasty happens. Or not. The most scary thing is that you do get a good impression of the genuine terror of the crew members - all the images of their past that they see, the feeling of being pursued, tormented, whatever.

It's a thought provoking film on occasion, and this is why my friend wanted to be a Christian - he said that if hell is anything like the images we see, he wants to avoid it at all costs. It's hard to classify this, really. It's definitely a scary horror film, without being overly gory - a lot of horror films are too funny and gory to be scary, whereas this is definitely dark and intimidating.

It's worth seeing as a good horror film - different to Scream, because it's not really a stalk and slash type of film. It's more about the characters trying to find courage within themselves against an enemy that they can't really "see". Towards the end it takes on a more human form, making it easier to cope with. It definitely won't appeal to all, and religious people might object to the use of hell as a film plot. Of course, on the other hand, they could well approve of using it, because of the persuasive nature of eternal damnation. Basically, worth seeing if you're into scary films, or even if it's just a slow evening - not everyone will find it terrifying.

Updated 29/5/98 by JWES