Event Horizon - Inspiration for Gory Bastardized Remakes?
"Event Horizon" is a 1990's horror classic, but I do not even know if it is Anderson's best movie. The man operates from derivatives, so nothing is ever expected of him. But, he is the only director that you expect cool 3-D from, so there is at least a niche he is filling and thus some talent. This leaves me to ponder if that was even present with his first American non-established IP film.
In 2040, the experimental spacecraft Event Horizon traveled to the orbit of Neptune to test its gravity drive. The intention of this was to create a mini black hole that would suck space time in allowing the craft to travel to a different location instantaneously. But the intentions of the craft were not made public, so all anyone is suppose to know is that the ship was lost. So it is quite the surprise for Captain Miller and the crew of the Lewis and Clark to find out that they are suppose to salvage this craft and rescue the crew seven years later.
The crew arrives at the craft to find it in a seemingly state of deep freeze. At subzero temperatures, surely the crew is dead, but life form readings are detectable through out the ship. As the crew inspects the ship, one of them, Justin, tries to turn the power back on. When this occurs, he seems to be sucked into the gravity drive and the accompanying power surge cause a breach of the Clark's hull. To survive, the entire crew has to board the Event Horizon while they wait on repairs to the ship that got them there.
Justin is essentially spat out of the gravity drive in a catatonic state. His rescuer describes the incident to Miller, but his believability is immediately questioned by Dr. Weir. Weir is accompanying the Clark's crew since he was one of the scientist who designed the ship. Logic and physics are soon thrown out the window as other crew members, including Miller, start seeing what can only be considered hallucinations. Miller's lieutenant has a theory. This theory is that whatever the life readings are must be creating these experiences.
Once Justin awakens only to soon enter an air lock without a spacesuit to run from the darkness he saw, surviving becomes paramount to actually finding out what happened. Too bad Dr. Weir does not see it that way.
My synopsis for "Event Horizon" may have excluded the pitch for this feature: Spaceship returns from hell. With that said, going with a gothic horror approach to the premise is unique when you consider that the video game "Doom" is very similar. Horror was on a downturn in the mid 90's as we recovered from 80's slasher fatigue, so this was a brave 60 million dollar gamble on the "Mortal Kombat" director. The initial loss was 20 million, but after home release, it is surprising that there were not attempts to capitalize on the IP.
In the end, the movie ended up managing to be a hit in some form, and that tends to indicate great quality. That quality is provided by the cast and script. Anderson's direction is adequate, but there are not many set pieces that show his strengths when it comes to directing. If anything, it seems to me that the off-and-on auteur can only see in 3-D. I do not find this to be a weakness though when you take in to account how his "Resident Evil" franchise was able to have three additional sequels solely because of 3-D filmmaking's popularity. A 3-D re-release with some polished computer-generated effects would be worth telling streamers to bugger off.
I implied that the special effects are not great when it comes to the CG. They may have been great for the time, but like "Mortal Kombat", FDR/HDR does not do them any favor.
If there was one more flaw, it is the pacing. This is gothic horror on a spaceship which had been done before in the greater classic, "Alien". When you move from one scene to the next without anytime to revel in the horror of the situation, you are watching for the cool suggestive imagery of hell instead of being at the edge of your seat. This is primarily the reason that I am not going to declare this feature to be Anderson's best. I am leaning towards the first "Resident Evil".