Cheap thrills, rivers of blood fail to save lost 'Horizon'

By Joshua Rich
Daily Arts Writer

Jack Noseworthy explores the Event Horizon in Paul Anderson's preposterous science-fiction film.

"Event Horizon," a preposterous new science-fiction movie, starts with one of those typical introductions of beeping computer type running across the screen. It is a tired cinematic preface that always serves two purposes: to establish the action of the film and, more important, to excuse the filmmaker's decision to place the movie in an unknown time and place.

The film begins accordingly:

"2015: First permanent colony established on moon.

"2032: Commercial mining begins on Mars.

"2040: Deep space research vessel Event Horizon launched to explore boundaries of solar system. She disappears without a trace beyond the eighth planet, Neptune. It is the worst space disaster on record.

"2047: Now ... "

It is surprising that with such a history to tell, director Paul Anderson and screenwriter Philip Eisner forgot to include one important thing, besides the occasional article - why.

REVIEW
	Event Horizon Two stars At Briarwood and Showcase

As is the case with most of the action in "Event Horizon," the significance of the planet Neptune and the year of the drama (other than that it is 50 years from now) are never realized. I don't really care when people will settle on the moon, or that Mars will be strip-mined someday, especially when neither fact has anything to do with this film. For all I care, "Event Horizon" could have taken place in 1997 in Los Angeles. Located then and there, its existence as a sophomoric creepshow would have remained unadulterated. The whole film takes place almost exclusively inside a space ship - that is, a film set - anyway.

Masked, therefore, as a veritable hi-tech drama of mass proportions, "Event Horizon" offers half of what its forebear, "Alien," provided. This film has all the spooks and none of the sensibilities that would make it truly scary. It seizes upon human beings' innate detestation of visceral imagery, startling us with rivers of blood and freaking us out with creepy ghosts and rotting corpses.

The scheming Dr. Weir (Sam Neill) hitches a ride on the misnamed Lewis & Clark search-and-rescue ship so that he may retrieve the Event Horizon that he launched seven years earlier. On arrival, Weir, along with the Lewis & Clark's ethnically diverse crew, finds the enigmatic long-lost probe haunted and deadly. As prescribed, some characters are threatened, some are killed, all are spooked (except for the requisite street-rapper-slash-linebacker technician), and then they go home.

Laurence Fishburne, Sam Neill and Kathleen Quinlan star in "Event Horizon."

But where has the Event Horizon been? We never find out. Some place worse than hell, we are told. Another dimension. Another universe - something like that. Unfortunately, it is hard to be afraid of a film when even the filmmakers admit they don't know what they are talking about.

To their credit, however, the concurrent use of Latin dialogue and gouged eyeballs effectively makes one nearly soil his pants. "Event Horizon" no doubt succeeds in terrifying its viewer at the occasional lucky moment. And the utterly wasted cast, including Laurence Fishburne, Kathleen Quinlan and Joely Richardson, does a fine job of what it needs to do - basically running around and screaming a lot.

Still, so much is left to be desired. Unlike in "Alien," from which "Event Horizon" took some of its production staff, there is little anticipation for attack and no evident threat. That is to say that "Alien" had a killer alien, while all "Event Horizon" has is this notorious some-place-worse-than-hell (ie. nothing). Even pop-horror hit "Scream" has a few killers and a neat twist that keeps our interest for the duration.

"Event Horizon," on the other hand, gets increasingly tedious, a sensation shepherded by the fact that the movie just misses making clear the essential metaphor that its writer undoubtedly hoped to offer. The film would have certainly increased in profundity if a character - or even those pesky opening titles - were to briefly mention that an event horizon is the term for the rim of a black hole. In this situation, therefore, the Event Horizon is a comparable barrier between order and chaos.

Perhaps if its creators spent a few more minutes making this motion picture more interesting and intellectually frightening, rather than inventing lines like the idiotic "God help us," the entire experience would have been more worthwhile. Cheap thrills only go so far, and they certainly can't make it to Neptune and back.

09-03-97