Penny Thoughts ‘14—Event Horizon (1997) **

R, 96 min.

Director: Paul W.S. Anderson

Writer: Philip Eisner

Starring: Sam Neill, Laurence Fishburne, Joely Richardson, Richard T. Jones, Kathleen Quinlan, Jason Isaacs, Sean Pertwee, Jack Noseworthy

Having just watched Christopher Nolan’s “Interstellar” (review coming in the next couple of days), I had a hankering for some space adventuring. For some reason, I felt compelled to re-watch the 1997 space/horror flick “Event Horizon”. This was a particularly strange urge since I didn’t like the movie when I saw it in theaters. I saw it a second time on video some years after that, but no time recently, and I still didn’t like it. Something made me connect this movie with “Interstellar”.

SPOILERS ahead! I once again did not like the movie in the end because the power behind the ship’s secret once it reappears from its journey is too much to be contained within what is essentially a dead teenager plot. That’s a plot where each character is picked off one by one by a single killer. The problem with “Event Horizon” is that the killer is for all intents and purposes Satan. His power is so great why do any of these characters have any chance against him. The plot is essentially “Prince of Darkness” in space, but the difference is that Satan has already found his way onto the Event Horizon, so how is stopping him even a possibility?

However, there is most certainly a reason that my experience with “Interstellar” pushed me in the direction of “Event Horizon”. It turns out that before director Paul W.S. Anderson gets too carried away with the action to reconcile the premise, there is actually some solid science presented in this fiction. The theory behind the Event Horizon’s gravity drive is exactly the same as the use of black holes and gravity theory in “Interstellar”. The first half hour of  “Event Horizon” is actually filled with some pretty good space/time theory and is rather interesting to watch. Even the notion of the ship crossing dimensions into one of the circles of Hell is a pretty compelling plot point. It’s too bad its evil entity only wields his otherworldly power when its convenient to the plot and other times he’s just as vulnerable as any human.