Movie Review #7

Event Horizon

Shock Value: 28 of 33
Queasiness: 22 of 33
Suspense: 27 of 34
Total Scare: 77 of 100

This was a good movie to watch and review as I saw many similarities between this movie and Ghost Ship (see movie review #4). Event Horizon opens with a short but frightening nightmare. It is unclear at first but later we learn that the horrific figure is indeed Dr. Weir. He looks demonic, surrounded in flames and screaming or laughing. This is similar to Ghost Ship in that it is an attention-getter scene, not completely related to the current time line of the main part of the story. While Ghost Ship opened with a death scene from before the movie begins, Event Horizon gives us a glimpse of the future. Dr. Weir awakens and we learn that he is responsible for building the Event Horizon which has been missing for seven years. He is working with a search and rescue team on a top-secret mission to go out and find the missing ship. This is just like Jack Ferriman from Ghost Ship. The crew, and especially the captain doesn't want him going with them, and when they arrive at the ship he is ordered to stay behind.

In both Ghost Ship and Event Horizon the victims are followed around by ghostly figures, the primary difference here is that in Ghost Ship they were actually ghosts and in Event Horizon they seemed to be more like hallucinations caused by the ship itself. In both films the smaller ships that brought the crews out to the middle of nowhere are rendered useless. In Event Horizon, however, the crew thinks they can fix their own ship (the Lewis and Clark) whereas in Ghost Ship they try to repair the larger vessel instead.

In both movies the person who brought the crews out are much more at home on board the ships, they don't care about returning to the outside world. Its strange, though, because Sam Neil's character doesn't seem to desire the deaths of the other crew members, he wants them to all come along with him (back to hell). Alive, or dead it's the same principal as Jack's idea, collecting souls to take back with him.

The endings are also very similar : the survivors are rescued by a third party ship. My big complaint about Ghost Ship was that they had gone out of their way to say that there was no distress signal sent, and yet the rescue ship still came. In Event Horizon they do take time to send a distress signal, but I still have a big complaint. Throughout the movie they say “the ship itself is alive...the ship is evil...it knows what we fear, it shows us what we don't want to see...” etc, etc...yet how do the survivors escape? They escape ON THE SHIP! It doesn't make any sense... I'll admit it's possible that JUST THE CORE of the ship was haunted, it seemed to be the thing at the center of all the ghostlike activity...but they never said that specifically....they kept on insisting that it was THE SHIP that was alive...not the core.

Of course, if the whole ship were demon-possessed it would explain Dr. Weir's brief appearance again. Like in Ghost Ship the villain makes one last appearance. They suggest it was a dream, but really, in these kinds of movies, you know they're saying “you cant keep a good bad-guy down”... Neil's character is probably alive and well, popping in and out of hell trying to “collect more souls” just like Ferriman in Ghost Ship.

All in all it is a pretty scary movie – it was a good mix of horror and sci-fi, I would have preferred a darker ending...or at least one that was more believable.