To think he made this and Boogie Nights in the same year.

Such incredible versatility.

I will forever mourn the 2 hour cut of this that supposedly went full Hellraiser inter-dimensional sex and gore but the version we've got is still a pretty nasty piece of textured sci-fi horror design work from anderson that owes a lot to Alien, Warhammer and Doom and has enough vividly rendered possessions, mutilations and portals to space hell to keep me coming back to it. Love how much time is spent observing these beautifully designed spaces in carefully considered compositions like the ships heart and the microchip vents in the first half so that we know exactly where every burning, rotting and dissected body is later on. The rapid cut log of the previous ship's crew raping and cannibalising each other is one of the most disturbing things I saw when I was too young.

full discussion on episode 131 of my podcast SLEAZOIDS.

This movie is so disappointing because it’s not just bad, but it has suuuuuuch promise. Like, the psychological concept of a ship creating hallucinations to defend itself is so cool and has such potential that in the right smart hands, it could be a truly great fucking horror movie. Instead, we got a few quick frames of hellish images and a truly confusing lead character whose arc and motivation are (????) It’s like Paul W.S. Anderson went to a studio like “Remember Alien? Well, what if it kinda sucked?” “We already did a few of those.” “Okay okay, but the thing about mine is that you’ll be able to remake it way better in several years without my involvement.” “We’re listening...”

This is Nu Metal cinema at its peak. The only time in history you could get away with ending your film with Funky Shit by The Prodigy and keep a straight face.

asked my roommate what she wanted to watch and she simply said “space or ghosts.” 

went above and beyond by picking something with space AND ghosts AND sam neill being weird 💯

I wish all stupid derivative genre crap looked this good. Gets crazy just because it can, funny without shitty ironic winking.

"FUCK this ship" has to be the most satisfying line of dialogue I've ever heard

cenobites in space, I REPEAT, CENOBITES IN SPACE

As far as I'm concerned, this director has made only one film and this is it.

This is not so much an all out scary horror film, but more an atmospheric piece. Sure, it has a couple of cheap jump scares, but all in all Event Horizon is a haunted house story with Lovecraftian influences.

It cleverly builds suspense by hinting at extreme horrors in stead of full out showing them. It then proceeds to more psychological horror feeding on the fears of the characters and concludes with a riveting, if somewhat predictable, finale.

Cast, special effects, production design, all just seem to work here in one of my favourite horror/sf genre crossovers.

This is utterly delicious trash. The kind of film made for watching while high as fuck late at night. Sure, it rips off a host of greater films feeling like Hellraiser meets Alien. Sure, the studio apparently mangled the hell scenes leaving them as brief flash. You can of course see the outline of a greater film given the wicked premise of a ship going through an alternate hell dimension and coming back alive and riddled with demonic energy that slowly drives the crew mad. But I enjoy this schlock. Isn’t it fun seeing Laurence Fishburne and Sam Neill play against each other? Isn’t refreshing watching a film that avoids winking, far too meta humor for something more fun and digestible?

Hell is just a word. The reality is much worse. 

One of those movies that I would kill to see the Director’s Cut because so much of what doesn’t work seems to be the result of a lot of studio interference, but even with messy story and even more perplexing characters, I adore Event Horizon.

How does a movie from 1997 feel so much more brutal than most of what is released in 2024? Might be time to go back to the basics. 

Podcast- Event Horizon (part of “Rotten” Horror month”