"To Hell and Back"
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What You Need To Know:
This is one of the bloodiest, most fiendish, horror films ever released by a major movie studio. Unfit viewing for anyone, EVENT HORIZON is a graphically violent movie promoting a nihilist worldview of a godless universe in which human perception of reality is meaningless and chaos reigns supreme. EVENT HORIZON makes no reference to the existence of God, let alone to His sovereignty and power over evil. In EVENT HORIZON, the filmmakers devote their energies to creating disturbing visions of hell, rapidly edited to leave an indelible, possibly subliminal impression. Do yourself a favor, and refrain from subjecting yourself to this ghoulish movie. If you do see EVENT HORIZON, pray that you forget it
Content:
(ABABAB, OOO, Pa, LLL, VVV, NN) Nihilist worldview of a godless universe with extreme occult images; 32 obscenities & one profanity; graphic & continual violence & bloodshed including people tearing their own eyes from their heads, disfigured bodies, woman committing suicide in a bathtub, man skinned alive & a man bleeding from his eyes during decompression, hallucination of child used to lure mother to her death, individual possessed by demonic entity, occultic manifestations, & visions from hell including walking corpses, disembodied voices, a flood of blood & rapid-cut montage of people being crucified & tortured in hell; and, female nudity.
More Detail:
Hell is hot − that is, it’s hot in the vernacular of popular culture. This summer, Hollywood is going to hell, and you are invited along for the ride. No less than three big budget motion pictures are taking audiences into the depths of the demonic realm for a look at the devil’s abode. In HERCULES, Walt Disney Pictures gave us a less-than-terrifying underworld ruled by a wisecracking Hades, who, aided by two hapless demons, is just taking his shot at the big time after all. New Line’s SPAWN offered us a “hero” whose super powers are bestowed on him in hell by Satan himself. Now, Paramount wants to take you to hell and back in the science fiction horrorfest EVENT HORIZON.
The year is 2047. Seven years earlier, the interstellar starship Event Horizon disappeared near Neptune. Now, the ship has mysteriously reappeared and is emitting a distress signal from its orbit around Neptune. A search and rescue team led by Captain Miller (Laurence Fishburne) is dispatched to locate survivors and to salvage the vessel. The ship’s designer, Dr. Weir (Sam Neill), goes along for the ride to determine the whereabouts of the Event Horizon for the past seven years. The only clue to the ship’s fate is a brief, fragmentary recording of terrifying, inhuman shrieks and wails.
Although the ominous, crucifix-shaped ship appears uninhabited, there is an unseen, malevolent presence on board which taunts the rescue team with realistic manifestations of their greatest fears. The tension mounts and suspense builds as the rescue vessel is disabled, leaving the rescue team stranded aboard the haunted derelict, with only a few hours of air. Seduced by his own guilt and images of his dead wife, Dr. Weir is overcome and possessed by the alien entity and proceeds to try to bar the rest of the crew from leaving the Event Horizon.
After murdering several of the team members, the alien in Dr. Weir’s body reveals to Miller the secret of the Event Horizon’s disablement. The ship is equipped with a gravity drive designed to transport it instantaneously from one point in the galaxy to another. When the drive was engaged seven years earlier, the gravity drive ripped a hole in the fabric of space, taking it to a different dimension − a dimension of pure evil and chaos −in other words, to hell. Driven mad by what they saw there, the original crew members tore their own eyes out, presumably destroying themselves and one another. Now, the alien in Dr. Weir’s body is determined to return to hell with the vessel and a new crew: Miller’s crew.
Strong production values are just about the only values of which this movie can boast. EVENT HORIZON makes no reference to the existence of God, let alone His sovereignty and power over evil. On even a humanistic level, morality and strength of character are depicted as irrelevant. Sheer chance decides the fate of the individual crew members. In the end, Miller sacrifices himself to destroy Weir and to save the remaining crew members. However, even within the twisted logic of this film, this sacrifice makes no sense. It is not redemptive, because it does not defeat, or destroy the evil. Weir survives, clearly suggesting to the audience the futility of personal sacrifice.
Paramount Pictures is selling EVEN HORIZON to audiences as a psychological thriller set in outer space. This is actually one of the bloodiest, most fiendish, horror films ever released by a major movie studio. Unfit viewing for any Christian, EVENT HORIZON is a graphically violent tract promoting a nihilist worldview of a godless universe in which human perception of reality is meaningless and chaos reigns supreme. In the frenetic finale, the movie unleashes a torrent of horrific images of evil originating (we are told) from the bowels of hell itself.
Perhaps, you think MOVIEGUIDE ® is expecting too much from a horror film, but even a horror movie must have dramatic structure to be effective. The second half of the movie is a mess (in more ways than one). Despite an excellent cast, all pretenses at character development are abandoned halfway through EVENT HORIZON as the crew is dispatched one by one in an increasingly loud and gruesome manner. Entire plot devices are left dangling in space, as the filmmakers devote their energies to creating disturbing visions of hell, rapidly edited to leave an indelible, possibly subliminal impression.
Do yourself a favor and refrain from subjecting yourself to this ghoulish ride. If you do see EVENT HORIZON, pray that you forget it.
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