Event Horizon

The other film was called "Solaris," about a deep space mission that caused the crew to exhibit psychotic behavior and to keep living out scenes from their former lives on earth. Solaris, an intellectual film from the Soviet-era genius Andrei Tarkovsky, son of the brilliant but largely untranslated poet Arseny Tarkovsky, is the more complex film. It is not explained whether the hallucinations are caused by an external force from the planet, space fever, passage into a time-space warp, or just the fact that you can't ever run from yourself, not matter how far you go. There are no monsters.

NUDITY REPORT

When he isn't training for the Golden Gloves, the evil alien uses the crewmembers' own memories against them, and the captain keeps seeing the most important woman in his life, lost to him through suicide, for which he blames himself. Luckily, he chooses to see her topless (Holley Chant)

Emily Booth is topless very briefly in some deleted footage.

By the way, don't go out and rent Solaris because of what I've said. Although it sounds like a good idea, and film critics have a way of giving Solaris a lot of stars, I always caution people that Tarkovsky's movies are almost unwatchable for the average viewer. Let me tell you a story. I re-watched Tarkovsky's "Nostalgiya" recently in fast forward, at 8X speed. Even at that, the actors seem to be moving in slow motion. And I'm not joking. This is literally true. I checked my DVD player to see if it was playing properly. Tarkovsky's concept of a two hour film is two minutes worth of plot, two minutes worth of action, a little bit of philosophical dialogue, and 116 minutes worth of atmosphere. It's filled with brilliant imagery and mood, but the pacing is so languid it makes an Ingmar Bergman movie seem like the first scene of Roger Rabbit.

"Event Horizon", directed by "the other Paul Anderson" - the same man who did Resident Evil - is a hybrid of these two legendary deep-space films. The monstrous entity is there, but it inhabits the minds of the crew, learns everything about them, every fear, every memory, and causes their insanity. Who or what is it exactly? The rescuers postulated an interesting possibility. Sartre once said that "hell is other people", but the argument here is that hell is oneself. We have seen the devil and he is us - or specifically a combination of a malicious external force and the worst of ourselves. That idea was pretty damned good, the special effects and visuals are brilliant, and the filmmakers hired a good cast. Some of the moments will scare the beejeepers out of you. Think of the concept as Solaris with some action, which sounds good in theory.

Unfortunately, the execution failed to reach the heights it was capable of because it got dumbed down with fistfights and explosions. The flaws of the movie can best be summed up with a summary of one scene - the all-powerful alien life-form takes over a body of one crewmember, and has a fist fight with another crewmember. Kinda says it all, doesn't it? Imagine God appearing to Moses, then Moses challenging him to a fistfight, and you get the general idea.

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Afterthoughts. There has been a great deal of discussion about the difference between the studio release and Paul Anderson's original cut of the film. I took up that discussion here.

The Critics Vote

General consensus: two stars. Ebert 2/4, Berardinelli 2/4, BBC 3/5. Ebert had a funny line about this movie - plenty of foreboding, plenty of afterboding, not enough actual boding

Rotten Tomatoes summary. 35% positive.

The People Vote ...

IMDB summary. IMDb voters score it 6.6/10. That score has steadily risen over time, as the film has achieved cult status among genre fans.

IMDb guideline: 7.5 usually indicates a level of excellence, about like three and a half stars from the critics. 6.0 usually indicates lukewarm watchability, about like two and a half stars from the critics. The fives are generally not worthwhile unless they are really your kind of material, about like two stars from the critics. Films under five are generally awful even if you like that kind of film, equivalent to about one and a half stars from the critics or less, depending on just how far below five the rating is.

My own guideline: A means the movie is so good it will appeal to you even if you hate the genre. B means the movie is not good enough to win you over if you hate the genre, but is good enough to do so if you have an open mind about this type of film. C means it will only appeal to genre addicts, and has no crossover appeal. D means you'll hate it even if you like the genre. E means that you'll hate it even if you love the genre. F means that the film is not only unappealing across-the-board, but technically inept as well.

Based on this description, this film is a C+. Some genre lovers say this is a truly brilliant scare-fest, many mainstream viewers thought is was a zero-star waste of their precious time. I'm in the middle, in that I think it is a great genre pic, even in the watered-down version that the director was forced to release, but it is much too gory and intense for crossover appeal. It is therefore a classic C+ by our scale.