By Robert Scucci
| Updated
Event Horizon is one of the most unrealistic sci-fi horror films to come out of the ‘90s, and I love it for this exact reason. If I knew anything about complex mathematics, space travel, physics, or how to fold-space time using gravity drive, I’d be more scathing in my assessment of how nothing in this movie is physically possible, but I don’t so it’s really easy to just celebrate Event Horizon for what it is: diet Alien, but with no aliens, a crapload of explosions, and enough gore to keep things interesting as we travel to another dimension that may or may not be Hell.
If you’re willing to suspend all of your disbelief, sit back, and enjoy the show, you’ll be able to appreciate Event Horizon because its special effects and set design are on point (albeit dated), its on-screen chemistry is second-to-none, and its violence is so over-the-top that you can’t help but be enthralled as you’re whisked away to the outer limits of the known universe, where mysterious forces are at play, putting everyone’s life, and sanity, at risk.
Doomed From The Start
Set in the year 2047, Event Horizon begins with an impossible mission, which is for crew members of the Lewis and Clark rescue vessel to locate and retrieve the titular spacecraft that mysteriously disappeared during its travels to Proxima Centauri, only to appear orbiting around Neptune years later.
The Lewis and Clark crew led by Laurence Fishburne’s Captain S. J. Miller already has a bad feeling about this mission, namely because the Event Horizon’s distress call is the reason why they’re not all on vacation. Joining the crew is Sam Neill’s Dr. William G. “Billy” Weir, who designed the Event Horizon, and knows how its experimental and potentially unstable gravity drive works.
When D.J. (Jason Isaacs), the medical doctor working on the Lewis and Clark, listens to a recording of the distress call coming from the Event Horizon, he surmises that he’s hearing a Latin phrase that translates to “save me.”
Billy, who would honestly piss me off if I had to work under his instructions because he’s not being fully transparent and I’m supposed to be on vacation, is haunted by visions of his (eyeless) wife, Claire (Holley Chant), and other crew members on the ship find themselves having equally disturbing visions involving their own lives– Peters (Kathleen Quinlan) has nightmares about her son covered in lesions, and Miller is haunted by the brutal death of one of his subordinates from an earlier mission.
All Hell Breaks Loose On The Event Horizon
Realizing that the Event Horizon is functioning as some sort of gateway to a hellish dimension, Captain Miller is ready to abort the mission, but now without resistance from Billy, who becomes increasingly fascinated with what his gravity drive could accomplish, and doesn’t want to abandon the ship.
Defying every law of physics (to the best of my knowledge), Event Horizon relies on airlock trickery, the creation of black holes VIA gravity drive, demonic forces from another dimension inflicting horrifying hallucinations upon the Lewis and Clark crew, and, at one point, an Olympic-sized swimming pool’s worth of blood exploding from the ceiling for dramatic effect.
To say that Event Horizon is more style over substance wouldn’t be an inaccurate statement, but that doesn’t mean you can’t appreciate its face-value offering of gratuitous space violence as a terrified crew tries to figure out a scientific explanation for everything they’re witnessing. Fortunately for them, Mr. Knowitall Billy is around to gaslight them into sticking around long enough to experience the horrors of deep space instead of hightailing the Lewis and Clark back home so we can bear witness to everybody on board figure out how to travel to Hell and back in one piece (or pieces).
As of this writing, you can stream Event Horizon for free on Tubi.
