Why Event Horizon Is Underrated (& Why It Bombed At The Box Office)
In the same year that Titanic headed out to the open sea, a modest little horror movie called Event Horizon cruised through outer space, a sci-fi horror action amalgam that seemed to have something for everyone and yet appealed to almost no one. It bombed in the summer of 1997, but in the decades since has gotten some love for being a cult classic.
Far from being the movie that killed genre auteur Paul W.S. Anderson's career, it didn't resonate with audiences who couldn't quite decide if it was too original or too derivative of other plots. It featured sophisticated camera work and a top-notch cast, but was lampooned as a rip-off of Ridley Scott's Alien with too much blood and guts, putting it into a niche category of box office bombs that are actually underrated.
10 Underrated: Amazing Cast
Event Horizon features a bevy of top tier talent prior to appearing in some of their most iconic roles. With the exception of Sam Neill as Dr. Weir, hot off his success as Dr. Alan Grant in Jurassic Park, Laurence Fishburne appears as Captain Miller before he was Morpheus in The Matrix, and Jason Isaacs appears as D.J. before he was Lucius Malfoy in Harry Potter.
With a supporting cast that includes Sean Pertwee (Alfred Pennyworth in Gotham), Joely Richardson (prior to The Tudors), Kathleen Quinlan (Apollo 13), and Richard T. Jones (the Why Did I Get Married? franchise), their acting quality ensures that viewers always take the material seriously.
9 Bombed: Unoriginal Idea
If Event Horizon feels like a couple of different movies rolled into one, that's because it is; its plot takes its inspiration directly from some of the most iconic horror movies of all time. Its Frankenstein-ed narrative is one of the reasons it's persevered, but also one of the reasons why it was persecuted at the box office at the time of its release.
According to The Making of Event Horizon, a haunted ship gripped by spirits after a passage to a hell dimension takes its cues from The Shining (but in space), and The Haunting. Towards the end of the movie, the obvious Hellraiser homages can't be ignored either (especially Weir's savage imagery).
8 Underrated: Sympathetic Characters
One of the key components in a horror movie is developing characters audiences can sympathize with. It's what separates a truly great horror experience from a typical slasher fest with nameless teens at a summer camp getting killed one after another.
As with Ridley Scott's Alien, the movie takes its time in setting up the plot, letting viewers get to know the characters, and making their plight sympathetic enough so that their fates are cared about. As bizarre events start happening around the ship, they're targeted to the fears and anxieties of each person, making them more visceral and profoundly jarring.
7 Bombed: Too Much Competition
1997 was a year for big genre blockbusters, including The Lost World: Jurassic Park, Tomorrow Never Dies, and Men In Black. All of these movies were critical and commercial successes, utilizing elements like extraterrestrials, monsters, and suspenseful firefights, which were all similar to Event Horizon.
Not only did it face stiff competition in science fiction, it also had to be careful around one of the highest-grossing movies of all time, Titanic. Event Horizon was forced to change its release schedule around James Cameron's historical epic, placing it in an undesirable spot in the dog days of summer.
6 Underrated: Great Special Effects
With a combination of practical effects and the latest CGI the movie managed to marry time-tested special effects with the most cutting-edge technology. It may not have been as good as other '90s classics like Jurassic Park in that regard, but it's managed to look pretty timeless since it debuted.
Looking through a modern lens some of its effects might be dismissed, but because it used them effectively and efficiently, saving its coup-de-gras for the momentous finale, it doesn't seem as dated as its more CGI-heavy peers of the era like Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace.
5 Bombed: Rushed Editing
Elsewhere in The Making of Event Horizon documentary, director Paul W.S. Anderson explains that while most of the time the Directors Guild of America verifies that movies get a standard 10-week period in which to be edited, this movie only received six. The short production schedule and its release date necessitated the first cut before principal photography had even finished.
Promising an August release date so as not to compete with Titanic's supposed September premiere (it ended up getting delayed), Anderson maintained a six-week editing schedule despite also needing to juggle the second unit shooting schedule. This invariably meant that he needed to edit within four weeks, which made the first cut rough, weak, and unfinished.
4 Underrated: Genuinely Terrifying
The late '90s launched several semi-scary franchises like I Know What You Did Last Summer and Scream, but those movies capitalized on scream queen tropes and the bank-ability of their hot young stars. Besides a few jump scares, they're more entertaining than terrifying, and aren't considered the sort of movies that will keep a viewer up at night.
Event Horizon on the other hand has a pervasive feeling of dread that only gets worse the further into madness Weir goes. Not only does it have several horror hallmarks, but it also pushes the boundaries of the genre in new and unexpected ways.
3 Bombed: Too Gory
With glimpses of a blood-covered orgy, fantasies involving severed limbs, and Weir's descent into madness, the movie is a gorefest of the highest caliber. Ironically, the first cut had even more gore, including a longer cut of the Hell Scene, and more emphatic horror imagery for the orgy and the death scenes.
According to a Q&A with Anderson on Youtube, adult movie stars were hired to make the orgy more realistic. Critics' reviews on Rotten Tomatoes reveal it was considered too gory and shocking for its own sake to be taken seriously.
2 Underrated: Iconic Horror Villain
There's Pinhead and Freddy Krueger, and then there's Dr. Weir, an amalgamation of both horror icons and yet something else entirely. Unlike the other two, who were played by relatively unknown actors, Weir is played by Sam Neill, who had been America's hero saving young children from rampaging dinosaurs just a few years before.
Neill plays Weir as profoundly curious, whose interest in science begins to strain his compassion for his fellow humans, but he remains charitable, soft-spoken, and kindly. It's what makes his transformation towards the middle of the movie so effective, and his complete unraveling at the end of it so impressive. Weir is a horror figure that deserves to be counted among the great titans of terror.
1 Bombed: Unbelievable Science
While it's unlikely viewers and critics would consider Event Horizon hard sci-fi, the fact that it focused on black holes positioned it to be criticized for its lack of tangible science. Those looking for any actual information about the effects of black holes will be disappointed.
Unlike Jurassic Park, where real science was blended with pseudo-science to make a nominally convincing plot by MD turned author Michael Crichton, Event Horizon makes no such attempts at being plausible or realistic.
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