EVENT HORIZON
An icky, creepy blast
Not a lot of movies are panned quite as widely the way this one was, but I loved this movie! It's clearly a combination of Alien, The Shining, and Hellraiser, and my hat is off to anybody who can make that work. Additionally, I'll take this film any day over two of the films mentioned above (which, incidentally, were bad movies centered on great ideas).
The Event Horizon is the name of a starship that disappeared seven years ago and is assumed to have been destroyed. But it's back, and the crew of the interstellar tugboat Lewis & Clark (that's a rather unwieldy name for just one ship) and the EH's designer (Sam Neill, who's great) go all the way out to Neptune (some of the most striking outer-space visuals I've ever seen) to intercept this ship and board her to find out what happened. As you might imagine, when they see all the crusty blood inside and have a look at what's on the log tapes, they wish they'd stayed home.
The cast for a movie like this is usually somewhat beside the point, and while nobody but Neill really stands out (and maybe Sean Pertwee), they seem as a whole to be very much a real starship crew. Their lines are rather ho-hum, but the cast delivers them with conviction.
The effects and sets are fantastic; in particular, the spike-lined spherical chamber in the EH where that...that thing lines. (What's that called? A cyclotron, I think.) It's extremely gruesome (that R rating must have been a close call), and the atmosphere is creepy, isolated and almost entirely devoid of humor (except for that irritating comic relief guy); nevertheless, what emerges is a pretty fun movie, because the "stark and humorless" school of horror is pretty refreshing these days.
I must also praise this film for borrowing a number of wonderful moments from John Carpenter's In the Mouth of Madness, a film which I adore but isn't likely to be much imitated.
It's a great mix of good ol' fashioned popcorn horror and the kind that leaves a lingering chill. But then, I've always had a weakness for movies that tease us with the notion of eternal torment. It's also easily the best combination of SF and horror since Aliens and The Fly - but then, there hasn't been much competition since then, has there? (Hellraiser: Bloodline, anyone?)
Highly recommended, thought I can't really say I like how such a wonderfully creepy final shot was capped off by pulsing, awful techno music over the closing credits.