Daily Archives: August 11, 1997

Event Horizon

The pits. Borrowing liberally and unintelligently from both Alien and Solaris, this space opera, set in 2047, follows a rescue mission near Neptune as it checks out the title spaceship, which has been missing for seven years. (It’s creepy to imagine that the same Hollywood stereotypes and plastic rock music will be with us 50 years from now.) It seems the mad scientist who designed the faster-than-light spacecraft created a black hole in the universe, unleashing some sort of onboard hell where everybody goes bananas; but the storytelling is so clumsy we can’t be sure of that. If you haven’t lived until you’ve seen Laurence Fishburne and Sam Neill duke it out in a vat full of red paint, here’s your chance; personally, my idea of hell would be having to see this stinker again. Written by Philip Eisner and directed by Paul Anderson; with Kathleen Quinlan, Joely Richardson, Richard T. Jones, Jack Noseworthy, and Jason Isaacs. (JR) Read more