60 Nights of Horror 2022 # 4: Event Horizon (1997)

I know we all like to joke about this movie and call it Hellraiser in Space, and I was excited to watch it again with a critical eye. I wanted to remind myself why I love this movie so much, why I consider it a comfort film. And even now, having watched this movie again, having slept on it, I could watch it again, right now. I could watch Event Horizon anytime, anywhere. Why? Certainly not because it’s good.

I have read a lot about what was going on behind the scenes of this production, how Paramount basically fucked everyone on the schedule and they had half the time to do what they wanted and even less time to edit it down to where it made any sense. There was a stray fireball that burned down one of the soundstages and lost quite a bit, Titanic was shooting on an adjacent lot and taking up a lot of the attention for obvious reasons, and a lot of hubris on the part of the post-production team.

Baby 32 year old Paul W.S. Anderson (then known as Paul Anderson the only, because nobody had seen Boogie Nights yet), fresh off of Mortal Kombat, was basically given carte blanche to make a haunted house movie in space while waiting for Kurt Russell to get into shape for Soldier. So young and full of hope was he that when he said “We’re building Notre Dame in space but the plot is Warhammer 40K and can’t be TOO much like Alien but you’ll see the similarities, and it will also be The Shining and we’re gonna take some lines directly from Hellraiser but they’ll be in context so it’s fine,” the powers that be believed him entirely. And rightly so because Mortal Kombat fuckin ruled.

I’m not saying anyone should have told him no. On the contrary I think if they’d given him the time and the money, his love would have won out and goths, nay, we ALL (but especially the goths) would be remembering this movie with the same fondness as we do The Crow. It would be a masterpiece with several shitty sequels, probably rooted firmly in the Warhammer 40K universe. A young Jensen Ackles probably would have been there. And Adrian Paul doing his best Charles Dance.

One of the things I love about this movie is the sets. Production designer Joseph Bennett was hired ten weeks before principal filming began, and created a gothic spectacle that appeared as frilly as it was cold. The fractals and spikes, the vacuum doors with teeth, the coffin shaped hallways, the octagons, biohazard symbols unnecessarily stamped on tool cabinets (it’s a Hull Repair toolkit, why is that a biohazard- you know what, fine), stained glass for no reason, the clitoral Virgin Mary and wishbone shapes that are absolutely intentional, the amount of work put in over the course of ten weeks is phenomenal. Especially the room with the core in it, I know it’s just a big goth gyroscope but you show me someone who wouldn’t go to a club called Event Horizon where they have a blood orgy every Sundee with a Prodigy soundtrack and I’ll show you a liar.

Speaking of calling it Event Horizon. The scientific definition of “event horizon” is the boundary of a black hole beyond which nothing can escape from within it. It is literally the Point of No Return. Alexa, play the scene where Baby Bear gets sucked into the portal but overlay it with this. It’s okay if you’d rather watch Ramin Karimloo seduce Sierra Boggess than watch Jack Noseworthy get sucked into some terrible CGI, honestly, same, but like…. Baby Bear :’(

WHY THE FUCK WOULD YOU NAME YOUR SHIP THAT YOU NIHILISTIC FUCK?! Doodie-doo, I’m Doctor Weir, I’m gonna convince everyone and their mother to sink BILLIONS into a fancy space station that will attempt the basic tasks of a Guild Navigator (seriously booboo if you wanna travel without moving) but I’m also going to put fail-safes in to split the dick-shaped church/ship in half if shit goes down, let’s fold space because we can, is that it?? Let’s not only try to create a black hole, but it’s try to control it? Is that it? Weir, for fuck’s sake, the HUBRIS. No wonder your wife didn’t stick around to see whether or not you’d succeed.

Yike, that was a low blow, I’m sorry, baby.

There was a scene that didn’t make it into the movie that involved Weir and Starck on the bridge talking about the suicide of Weir’s wife, Claire, which occurred eight years prior to the events of the film. (Claire died in 2039, the Event Horizon was completed in 2040, it disappeared on its maiden voyage, and reappeared in 2047, which is where we come in.) Weir says that Claire accused him of loving the Event Horizon more than he loved her. He said that wasn’t true, and that he just knew the ship better. Spoken like a true scientist. Anyway, according to all the extra material I’ve been able to dig up, NOBODY knows why Claire died, but Dr. Weir feels super guilty about it because the ship tells him to.

The Event Horizon has a wonderful way of figuring out whatever is haunting a person and using it to exploit them into feeding the core, which was for all intents and purposes inactive until there were people around. We are led to believe that the original crew all died in a massive gory gruesome blood orgy worthy of Bosch or Bruegel the second the core activated and the portal to Hell ( liberate tutame ex inferis, I GUESS) was opened.

And Hell? Is that where we went? Is that what we brought back? Cause it just looks like a standard night at the club. This is a really uh….. western idea of hell, in that it firmly sits in sex and violence. Big fuckin deal. Y’all ever see Vivarium? THAT is my idea of hell. But everyone has their own idea of it. Mine happens to involve gaslighting and repetition, and apparently Paul W.S. Anderson’s Hell is as cool as it is unsurvivable. What a way to go!

So the deaths in this movie, poor Baby Bear was in the wrong place at the wrong time. The core (and the hellish dimension seeping through it) is able to exploit the guilt of Dr. Weir (over his wife’s suicide), Peters (a failed marriage and the sickly son she left on earth), and Miller (who left a comrade behind to die in order to save the rest of the crew). It manifests in visions of their loved ones and leads them down paths they otherwise wouldn’t have taken and ultimately they get claimed. No word on whether their energy is consumed or whatever, I’m sure that was covered in the 40 MINUTES OF MATERIAL LEFT TO ROT IN A TRANSYLVANIAN SALT MINE (true story, it was all ruined and that’s why we don’t have a director’s cut). Smith, the most sensible of our crew, murdered. Indirectly, but still murdered.

Starck and Cooper survive because the only thing either one of them has to feel guilty about is being right all the time, good at their jobs, and not funny. Cooper, I know what archetype you were trying to fill, it did not work, especially so soon after Independence Day. I know you tried. I’m still throwing the cake in the trash, because I’m thinking again about some of the things you said.

There are so many things that didn’t make it into this movie, so much exposition that would have given this crew that YES while I did manage to care about them all a lot, I felt like more mundane scenes would have made the Lewis and Clark feel more lived in. I wanted some dinner table scenes, some engineering, where they’re just talking to each other, about themselves. Because I know those scenes are there, damaged and irretrievable. This crew has plenty of chemistry, I just wanted more of it, because even though it hurts to see each person suffer, I am at heart, a goth. I want it to hurt MORE. It can’t rain all the time? Ahaaaa, bet.

I’m not asking why the manmade black hole opened a portal into a nightmare dimension that causes hallucinations. I don’t need to know. I know it was the wrong thing to do, and yet I’d do it just to see what was on the other side. Even when the Lewis and Clark is gone and there is literally nothing else to do, and Weir is inviting Miller to join him in piloting the Event Horizon through the black hole, I was yelling “ADVENTUUUUUURE LET’S DO IT!” Seriously Miller what else are we doing right now, we are sitting ducks stranded in space with a couple hours of oxygen left, or we can go through the black hole and see what is on the other side. Don’t be a baby.

Okay so after the real Dr. Weir is dead and Miller has blasted the two halves of the Event Horizon apart and he’s running from the hallucination of his dead crewmate (y’know the one he left behind so he could save the rest of the crew) and he’s all on fire in zero gravity so it’s moving like liquid, and his feet are on fire even though he’s knee deep in water (maybe)? That was fucking cool. But also, right after that, a naked cut up Victor Zsasz version of Dr. Weir shows up and he is FIIIIIINE. So sidebar, anyone who doesn’t know this about me, here’s some news. I am a proud sadist.

Cut up slice and diced Victor Zsasz Dr. Weir make me feel all SORTS of feelings. I was telling my bf on the couch, “I wanna come at him with a pint of salve, and a lookalike pint of tiger balm, and I’d be putting the salve on his cuts and asking him what happened, but then I’d accuse him of not telling me the whole truth, and then I’d put tiger balm on a cut and press my fingers in really hard. And then I’d just tell him that Id pressed it really hard, showing him the pint of the salve like ‘I don’t know why you’re wincing so hard, it’s just salve and it’s helping, you just need to tell me the whole truth, now we have to keep you awake, so keep talking….. I don’t beLIEVE you, you expect me to beLIEVE you?” and I’d begin to cross-contaminate the pots, blowing on his shiny wounds to cool them, and then smack em real loud, and then jerk him off while I apologized for being so hard on him. “You believe me don’t you, baby? You believe I’m sorry?”

YES WITH THE SALVE.

…. or is it?

Do you see?