Thursday 27 May 2010

Event Horizon (Not Just A Paul W. S Anderson Rant)


Lets start by giving credit where credit is due I absolutely hate Paul W.S. Anderson; I'm sure he's a lovely person and all but what he does as a film maker is to chooses a franchise that I love and butcher it, 
I love the Resident Evil Series - He makes a series of terrible films that couldn't be further from the games,
I love both The Alien and Predator franchises - He makes the abomination know as Alien vs Predator....Do you see what I'm getting at?

And the problem is that he creates idiot level films that are incredibly simple watching and so will get a huge return allowing him to then go out to create more idiot movies.
But there must have been something good he made to start with that made the studios willing to give him money, and that film ladies and gentlemen is "Event Horizon"

Now I specifically watched "Event Horizon" after hearing that it was A) an Anderson film and B) Surprisingly was actually quite good and as you may expect i went into this movie not expecting brilliance or even a particularly interesting movie but what I found was in fact a well rounded and highly enjoyable movie so lets begin.

"Event Horizon" is a 1997 Sci Fi Horror film Written By Philip Eisner and Directed By Paul W.S. Anderson staring Sam Neill (Jurassic Park) and Laurence Fishburne (The Matrix) and tells the story of a search and rescue crew dispatched in order to aid the huge Starship known as the Event Horizon that disappeared seven years prior and has suddenly reappeared orbiting Neptune, but all is not well in a galaxy far far away as shortly after arriving the rescue team's ship is totaled and the crew begin having hallucinations of their various fear and regrets, as it begins to appear there is something very sinister going on within the ship.

This film is quite cleaver in the way in which the film uses the hallucinations of the crew as a drive for them to develop as characters with Fishburne's Captain Miller haunted by the memory of the one member of his crew he couldn't save, Sam Neill's Doctor William Weir suffering visions of his dead wife. its through these hallucinations that the film is able to give the characters a real sense of depth.

The structure of the movie seems to go against the conventional Sci Fi horror structure in that there is never anything physically attacking the crew except each other, the horror comes from assaults on the mind as opposed to something crawling around in the vents, which raises the terrifying question of how do you protect yourself from your own mind?

Supporting characters are the fairly standard stereotypes you see in Sci Fi Horror films set up to be bumped off by one another and themselves as the insanity spreads.


Fishburne is brilliant as Captain Miller, a man who simply wishes to get everyone out alive due to his failures to save everyone in the past and Neill also stands out as the Doctor who memories of his wife are slowly corrupted driving him closer and closer towards the power of the ship, setting him up against Captain Miller. As mentioned the reason these characters are so well rounded is because through the use of horrific flashes into their lives we begin to feel that we really know them almost as much as the ship seems to.
My only minor issues with this film is some of the anti gravity scenes that feature blobs of liquid floating around the screen with the blobs getting so close it looks like they were hoping for 3D to be improved early, but I willing to forgive these due to the effect when gravity is restored and and liquid is given mass and is sent suddenly crashing down which looks simply fantastic, and the other issue is that during some of the fight scenes some of the sound effect seem to have been taken from 1966's Batman, but as I said these are only minor issues and since this film inspired "Dead Space" one of my favorite video games I'm willing to forgive them .


So check this film out as it's actually a very good and enjoyable film and Anderson I'm willing to forgive and forget as long as you never again make a Resident Evil film.......What? Resident Evil Afterlife! DAMN YOU ANDERSON!!!!!