Event Horizon (film)
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Event Horizon is a 1997 science fiction horror film that was directed by Paul W. S. Anderson and written by Philip Eisner (with an uncredited rewrite by Andrew Kevin Walker). Although it did not do well at the box office upon its release, it has since been considered by some as a cult film.
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[edit] Plot
In the year 2047, faint radio signals from the starship Event Horizon, which had disappeared under mysterious circumstances seven years earlier, are picked up on Earth. The ship has been found in a decaying orbit around the planet Neptune, and the rescue ship Lewis and Clark is dispatched to investigate. The crew, which includes the Event Horizon's designer, Dr. William Weir (Sam Neill), must spend a 56-day journey in stasis in order to reach the ship.
The crew, which includes Captain Miller (Laurence Fishburne), pilot Smith (Sean Pertwee), engineer Justin (Jack Noseworthy), navigator Starck (Joely Richardson), physician D.J. (Jason Isaacs), and emergency technicians Peters (Kathleen Quinlan) and Cooper (Richard T. Jones) -- are already tired and unenthusiastic about this assignment, and somewhat confused by Weir's reports. The crew of the Lewis and Clark are convinced that Weir is not telling them something, and when they discover the Event Horizon, they find that that when they scan the ship for life readings, the scanner is showing life signs all over the ship, meaning they are unable to get a fix on any proper life signs.
Resigning to search the ship, Miller, Justin and other members of the team don space suits and cross through an umbilical onto the Event Horizon. (Miller had told Weir to stay aboard the Clark until the ship was deemed secure. Aboard the ship, the team makes several discoveries after they split up to cover more ground. Justin finds the "core" of the ship, which suddenly activates when Justin approaches it. The panels on the large ball suddenly disappear and a liquid wall is left in it's place, resembling a portal. Now curious, Justin sticks a finger into the portal and pulls it out. He puts his whole arm in, finds he can't pull it out and is suddenly dragged through the portal by an unseen force. After this, a shockwave is sent through the ship, which heavily damages the Clark, forcing Miller to order the people remaining aboard the Clark onto the Horizon.
Almost immediatly after this, the crew start having macabre visions of past guilts and horrors (Miller sees a team mate he was forced to leave behind on a previous mission; his entire body is covered in flames and burnt skin and he demands to know why he was left behind; Peters sees her now dead child, his legs covered in scars and Weir has repeated visions of his dead wife, who is eyeless. It is implied she is the Event Horizon's avatar, urging Wier to "join us.")
Justin's body had been recovered and is now comatose in the Event Horizon's medical wing. As the camera follows Peters as she paces the medical wing, you see Justin lying on the table twice, but the third time she passes his table, his body is missing. Peters notices and tells Miller, who is helping Smith repair the Clark. Peters and the rest of the crew rush to the closed airlock and see Justin standing inside, facing the outer door. Peters shouts his name and begs him not to blow himself out of the airlock. Justin replies in a voice that isn't his, saying "I won't go back. If you've seen the things I've seen..." referring to what was inside the portal. Seconds later, Justin seems to shake off what was going on with him and seems puzzled as to why he is in the airlock. After this, his veins start to pop out of his arms and his eyes start to experience sever pain; Justin begins to scream and shouts "It's starting!" The airlock opens and Justin is pulled out, gushing blood from his mouth. A split second later, Miller, who had pulled himself from the Clark to the airlock exterior via a maintenance rail, flies straight into Justin and the two crash back into the airlock, which closes behind them. Justin is then presumed dead (later it is stated that he was only injured).
Before this, a video recording of the crews last video log was found. It shows the Captain of the ship introducing the bridge crew before activating the star drive. In a scene after activating the star drive, the crew is seen to have gone completely insane; committing acts of cannibalism, rape, gross mutilation and grievous self harm. The Captain, who had ripped out his own eyes is then seen to be saying "Liberate tuteme ex inferis" or "Save yourself from Hell."
D.J. then conceives that the Event Horizon, upon activating the star drive had gone "beyond the boundaries of the known universe," into what he states is Hell.
Some time afterwards, Peters, having seen a vision of her son running around the core room whilst they were packing things to put aboard the nearly repaired Clark, is killed after being shoved by the vision of her son down a maintenance shaft.
The Clark is finally repaired and Miller orders the crew to start gathering items to be taken onto the ship and prep it for take off and it's return to Earth. Miller, telling Wier to get aboard the ship, who refuses and when Miller says "you'll be finding yourself floating home", Wier says "I am home" and walks backwards into the shadows and disappears.
Wier heads into the core room and finds the dead Peters and is then accosted by a vision of his wife, urging him yet again to "Join us". He is then plagued by the replay of his wife's suicide, finally driving him over the edge, causing him to scream into the air and rip his eyes out, much like the Captain of the Event Horizon before him. He then brutally kills the rest of the crew (except Cooper, who is blown out into space when the Clark is destroyed and Stark who is rendered unconscious).
Miller, finding D.J. strung up to the ceiling in the medical bay with his chest cavity cut open and his innards spread over the table beneath him, vows to kill Weir. He grabs a drill gun and heads to the bridge and finds the knocked out Starck. He puts the drill gun down and wakes her up quietly. When Miller reaches for the gun again, he finds that it has disappeared. Just as he is about to leave the bridge with Starck, Wier, in the Captains chair, turns around and confronts Miller and Starck, holding the drill gun, which he is pointing at them. He tells them that the Event Horizon had gone to a "dimension of evil... of pure chaos" and threatens that the crew will be killed over and over and over in Hell and activates the star drive, which is on a ten minute countdown.
Suddenly, Cooper, who had used the air tanks on his space suit to propel him back to the Horizon smacks into the bridge window (he doesn't break it) and distracts Wier who fires a drill at him, which ruptures the window. Wier is sucked out and Cooper is thrown back out into space and Miller and Starck exit the bridge and seal it off from the rest of the ship.
An alert tells them that an airlock is opening and the two, beleiving that Wier had somehow survived, arm themselves with blunt weapons, but find out that Cooper is the one in the airlock. Cooper berates them about threatening him with weapons. Miller and his team then arm the bombs in the Event Horizon's main corridor, which would destroy the corridor and separate the command module from the star drive core. As Miller is arming the last bomb, he takes the remote detonator and is confronted by the vision of the burning man and is forced into the star drive core room.
The burning man apparates into the room and Miller, defeating the vision, tells it that it isn't real. The vision then transforms into a hideously scarred Wier. Wier then states that "she won't let me leave, she won't let anyone leave." The two fight, but Wier prevails, thanks to his superhuman strength and places his hand upon Miller's head and says in a demonic voice "Do you see?!" The scene is then inter-cut with short glimpses of Hell, with the core in the background and the crew members being killed in gruesome ways (Smith's head is seen to be impaled, with his brains covering the pike that went through his head). Miller, grabbing the remote detonator replies "Yes. I see." He presses the button just as the star drive activates.
The front half of the ship is safe, and the half in which Miller and Wier were in is sucked down into Neptune and through what looks to be a hurricane, presumably into the chaos dimension (Hell).
Days later, a rescue team boards the remains of the Event Horizon and finds the surving crew members in stasis. When Starck starts freaking out, one of the soldiers says to her "It's okay now, we're here." He then lifts his mask up to reveal Wier's face, who then says in an evil tone, "We're all here..." Starck then wakes up from this nightmare, going crazy and forced to being sedated. The camera moves away from the stasis room and the door closes, giving the viewer the impression that the evil presence never left the ship at all.
[edit] Cast
- Laurence Fishburne as Capt. Miller
- Sam Neill as Dr. William Weir
- Kathleen Quinlan as Peters (Med Tech)
- Joely Richardson as Lt. Starck (Executive Officer)
- Richard T. Jones as Cooper (Rescue Tech)
- Jack Noseworthy as Justin (Engineering)
- Jason Isaacs as D.J. (Trauma)
- Sean Pertwee as Smith (pilot)
- Peter Marinker as Capt. John Kilpack
- Holley Chant as Claire (Weir's wife)
- Barclay Wright as Denny (Peters' son)
- Noah Huntley as Burning man/Edward Corrick
- Robert Jezek as Rescue 1 technician
[edit] Production and design
The first draft of Philip Eisner's screenplay was written in 1992. The film borrows elements from others in the science fiction and horror genres, such as Stanisław Lem's Solaris, 2001: A Space Odyssey, 2010: The Year We Make Contact, Alien, Aliens, Forbidden Planet, The Haunting, Disney's The Black Hole, The Shining, Flatliners and Hellraiser. For instance, the interior of Lewis and Clark was inspired by the starship Nostromo from Alien. The film is thematically similar to The Haunting and The Shining, complete with the added homage of a tidal wave of blood. The film's basic premise of a forbidden portal to a hostile alien dimension that generates madness, nightmares and violence on a supernatural level is derivative of the fiction of H.P. Lovecraft, especially his Cthulhu mythos and stories such as "The Dunwich Horror" and "Call of Cthulhu".
In keeping with the naturalistic science fiction setting of the film, costumes are based upon present day flight suits complete with shoulder patches and modified navy rank insignia. The sailing ship in the center of the Lewis and Clark's mission patch is a United States Coast Guard Cutter in reference to the ship's search and rescue role.
The flag depicted on Dr. Weir's uniform is a variation of the flag of Australia with the Aboriginal flag replacing the Union Flag. Other crewmembers also have modified flags on their uniforms to suggest political change prior to 2047; one shows the flag of the United States with fifty-five stars, while another shows the European Union flag with an extra circle of stars within the original one, suggesting an enlarged Union, although in reality the European flag has a fixed number of 12 stars deliberately lacking political connotations.
After releasing the highly successful Mortal Kombat in 1995 Anderson was offered the movie. The release-date had already been set and Anderson agreed to do the movie, despite that the deadline meant that the post-production period was severely reduced. On the commentary Anderson cited this as the main-cause for the many troubles faced during production and especially when Anderson was to make decisions on the final cut.
On the commentary Anderson mentioned his wish to direct an R rated picture after the PG-13 rated Mortal Kombat and mentioned he turned down the opportunity to direct X-Men in order to make Event Horizon.
Anderson claims that his initial cut of the film, before the visual effects had been completed, ran to about 130 minutes in length. The film was even more graphic in this incarnation, and both test audiences and the studio were unnerved by the gore. Paramount ordered Anderson to cut the film by 30 minutes and delete some of the violence, a decision that he regrets. Some of the lost scenes were offered as special features but were taken from poor-quality video tape, the only form they now exist in; the studio had little interest in keeping unused footage and the original film has been lost.[1]
[edit] Soundtrack
The score of the film was written and performed by Orbital and Michael Kamen. The end credit theme was the song "Funky Shit" by Prodigy. The movie has been extensively sampled by many bands, notably on Zao's 1999 album, Liberate Te Ex Inferis, (a phrase which is similar to one that occurs in the dialog of Event Horizon), and Massachusetts Death/grind band Terminally Your Aborted Ghost (sampling "Where we're going, we won't need eyes to see"). Finnish black metal band Flauros has also used that dialog on their song "Monuments of Weakness" Several samples also appear in the song "The Technogoat" from The Codex Necro album by Anaal Nathrakh as well as on The Ichneumon Method album by The Axis of Perdition, the song "Fun with Knives" (from the album of the same name) and "The Dark Inside Me" by Velvet Acid Christ and on the song "Age of Suffering" by Norwegian death metal band Bloodthorn from the album Under the Reign of Terror. Popular trance producer John Graham under the alias Space Manoeuvres created the track "Stage One" which took samples from the theatrical trailer of the film. Industrial band Front Line Assembly also made liberal use of such samples on its Implode album, most notably on the track "Synthetic Forms." The phrase "have you ever seen a fire in zero gravity? It's beautiful" was sampled by drum and bass producer Dom And Roland in 2001.
[edit] Reference to "Event Horizon" in "Lost"
The Latin phrase translated as "Save yourselves from Hell," at a key point during the film appears in a remarkably similar setting in the TV-show "LOST." During the episode "Lock down" in the second season, a cryptic map appears on a blast door within the mysterious Swan hatch. Along with many other obscure references, is the same Latin phrase. "LOST" fans have speculated as to whether this is merely a shout-out to "Event Horizon," or may imply that phenomenon related to the gravity drive was being tested by the Dharma scientists whose "incident," forced the creation of the button system featured prominently during the second season of "LOST." The entire hatch and button system were destroyed in an unexplained phenomenon that may have distorted the space-time continuum at the conclusion of Season 2. The series has also featured a number of other references to black holes.
[edit] References
- ^ Special Edition DVD Commentary
[edit] External links
- Event Horizon at the Internet Movie Database
- Event Horizon at Rotten Tomatoes
- Event Horizon at Box Office Mojo
Films directed by Paul W.S. Anderson |
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Shopping (1994) • Mortal Kombat (1995) • Event Horizon (1997) • Soldier (1998) • The Sight (2000) • The Glow (2002) • Resident Evil (2002) • AVP: Alien Vs. Predator (2004) • Death Race (2008) |
de:Event Horizon – Am Rande des Universums fr:Event Horizon, le vaisseau de l'au-delà it:Punto di non ritorno nl:Event Horizon (film) ja:イベント・ホライゾン ru:Горизонт событий (фильм) simple:Event Horizon fi:Viimeinen horisontti
