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Well...

It reminded me of a few films. No idea about budget though.

Alien (trapped on a scary ship, murder beast running around)

Black Hole (some ridiculous experiment with black hole travel (iirc), mind screw near the end.)

Virus (Trapped on a scary ship, scary murder bot running around)

Ghost Ship (trapped on a scary ship, the ship is Eeevulll!)

The Sphere (trapped in a underwater facility, weird stuff happen)

Event Horizon was probably the most extravagant (barring Black Hole, who's setting was pretty out there. Typical late 1970s sci fi that was)
Anyway, to me, it was just another generic horror movie that dropped suspense in favor for gore.
Then again, I found Nightmare on Elm street boring, so I guess I'm strange like that.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Well...

It reminded me of a few films. No idea about budget though.

Alien (trapped on a scary ship, murder beast running around)

Black Hole (some ridiculous experiment with black hole travel (iirc), mind screw near the end.)

Virus (Trapped on a scary ship, scary murder bot running around)

Ghost Ship (trapped on a scary ship, the ship is Eeevulll!)

The Sphere (trapped in a underwater facility, weird stuff happen)

Event Horizon was probably the most extravagant (barring Black Hole, who's setting was pretty out there. Typical late 1970s sci fi that was)
Anyway, to me, it was just another generic horror movie that dropped suspense in favor for gore.
Then again, I found Nightmare on Elm street boring, so I guess I'm strange like that.

Thank you! Unfortunately, nothing new for me to watch.... But I just learnt about Powerwolf thanks to you so I am happy

It took me a while to remember Black Hole. Cool movie. It is a Disney movie though, not that dark (except for some random mind screws).

Doom (both the meh movie and the brilliant FPS game Doom III) is about "teleportation through hell" too. Also Hellraiser: Bloodline. Another one is Supernova.

Dead Space and Half-Life were also clearly influenced by Even Horizon (imho). There is a little flash game that I enjoyed a lot called The Breach that copy-paste the concept: http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/542858

And of course, this is all taken from Lovecraft.



Another thought: the ship in Event Horizon is lost in the Warp at the end of the movie. What happens when the ship returns.... 40000 years in the future?

Spetulhu wrote:

 Centurion Cajun wrote:
Yep, the setup for Event Horizon pretty well screams Warhammer 40k.

Actually 40K Chaos screams Lovecraft, and Michael Moorcock. If Event Horizon reminds you of 40K it's because it has taken inspiration from the same sources.

I'm in no way denying that. I've been a huge Lovecraft fan since childhood. So, one of the things that draws me to dark Sci-fi, Horror, and things like Warhammer are the inspirations they take from the mythos. However, I think we can all give Cthulhu, Yog-Sothoth and friends a little more credit than the Chaos Gods. They at least do a pretty decent job keeping themselves a secret whereas Khorne and pals are blatantly flaunting their existence at everyone. Takes a lot of the mystery out of it.

On a semi-related note I'm still heartbroken that Guillermo del Toro's Mountains of Madness movie is never going to happen. Kudos to him for sticking to his guns and refusing the PG-13 it. Also, Dagon is a pretty amazing little film about the Shadow Over Innsmuth and I'm almost positive was part of the inspiration for Resident Evil 4.

Alright, I'm done now.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 da001 wrote:


Dead Space and Half-Life were also clearly influenced by Even Horizon (imho). There is a little flash game that I enjoyed a lot called The Breach that copy-paste the concept: http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/542858

And of course, this is all taken from Lovecraft.

Dead Space does have a touch of Event Horizon, with it's marker influences driving people nuts, much like how exposure to hell drove the people on that ship insane.
You can also say that Dead Space took some bits from alien as well.

Half-Life was inspired by Doom though; confirmed by one of the game devs. In fact, Doom (1993) predates Event Horizon (1997)

Another thought: the ship in Event Horizon is lost in the Warp at the end of the movie. What happens when the ship returns.... 40000 years in the future?

Clearly the Grey Knights have some cleaning up to do.
I thought the ship was destroyed though? It's been a while since I saw it.

Somewhat. They destroy the tunnel separating the engine and crew quarters parts of the ship. The engine activates and sucks the rear of the ship back to "Hell". So, as a functional ship it's pretty well totaled but it didn't completely get blown to pieces.

 Centurion Cajun wrote:
Somewhat. They destroy the tunnel separating the engine and crew quarters parts of the ship. The engine activates and sucks the rear of the ship back to "Hell". So, as a functional ship it's pretty well totaled but it didn't completely get blown to pieces.

Ah, so there's half a ship floating around Tartarus / Gehenna / <Insert another name for Infernis here> then.

Fun fact about the film - Paul W. S. Anderson, same guy who directed Mortal Kombat, really wanted to make an R rated film after making the PG-13 Mortal Kombat. I guess getting forced to make a normally violent game into a tame movie didn't suit him, so he went all out.

 Psienesis wrote:
The way you can tell EH is obviously a horror movie in space is because of how the ship looks. It's dark, it's Gothic, it's got sharp edges and spikes all over everything....

... and yet, it's claimed to be a government-funded project. Sorry... if the government had footed the bill to pay for that thing, it'd have been beige, with fluorescent lights in the ceiling, and an OSHA inspector every ten feet telling people to put a guard-rail on every walkway, safety-cages around anything with spikes and, for the love of God, round off those corners! In what could be a zero-G environment in an emergency, you don't want people drifting onto sharp corners!

But... but... those are OSHA approved Safety SpikesTM They keep you from impacting on the hard surface of the wall or floor during rapid accelerations and decelerations by impaling your body! That way, you don't suffer blunt force trauma during high-speed maneuvers or during a collision! Everything on that ship is up to code!

On a (slightly) more serious note, I've always had a soft spot for EH for years now. I saw it when it first came out and thought it wasn't too bad for a ghost-ship-in-space movie. Apart from the copious use of gouged-out eyes and the death of the EMT, the film had very little gore and relied more on atmosphere (and Safety SpikesTM) for scares. In fact, I've taken to using the phrase "gouge my own eyes out and speak Latin" as shorthand for having encountered something IRL that is shocking or horrifying enough to make me lose sanity points (like certain things you find on the internet involving pluralities of girls and single cups...)

I'm sorry, I will have to disagree with the notion that there is very little gore in EH

Let's see...

-Walls covered in blood

-Scenes of Hell

-Lady falling off a railing and breaking her legs clean off

-Dude with no eyes

-Disemboweled medical guy (I suspect Anderson may have seen Genocyber for that scene)

-Satanic murder-orgy on video

- Dude with no eyes in Satanic murder-orgy on video

- Suicide scene, which, iirc, involve wrist slitting

- kid with bloody, rotting lesions on his leg

- guy caught out in space, who's eyeballs explode, making him a dude with no eyes.

- Wasn't there a severed hand at some point? It's been a while, so I can't remember.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

(...)Half-Life was inspired by Doom though; confirmed by one of the game devs. In fact, Doom (1993) predates Event Horizon (1997)

I don´t quite remember Doom I & II. I was thinking on Doom III (2004). The "Teleportation through Hell" thing was all over the place

Another thought: the ship in Event Horizon is lost in the Warp at the end of the movie. What happens when the ship returns.... 40000 years in the future?

Clearly the Grey Knights have some cleaning up to do.
I thought the ship was destroyed though? It's been a while since I saw it.

What Centurion Cajun said.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
I'm sorry, I will have to disagree with the notion that there is very little gore in EH
(...)

Objection! That´s gore, but there is a reason for it. In many horror movies, you get lots of gore for the sake of gore itself. Not here.

Event Horizon focuses on atmospheric horror, with a few really strong gore moments, made more brutal by how well they blend in the story.

 Centurion Cajun wrote:
(...)However, I think we can all give Cthulhu, Yog-Sothoth and friends a little more credit than the Chaos Gods. They at least do a pretty decent job keeping themselves a secret whereas Khorne and pals are blatantly flaunting their existence at everyone. Takes a lot of the mystery out of it.

Objection!
The very existence of Chaos is a well kept secret in the setting. In fact, knowing about it is enough for a man to be killed, or for a planet to be destroyed if the man can not be found. I think that part they got it well.

On a semi-related note I'm still heartbroken that Guillermo del Toro's Mountains of Madness movie is never going to happen. Kudos to him for sticking to his guns and refusing the PG-13 it. Also, Dagon is a pretty amazing little film about the Shadow Over Innsmuth and I'm almost positive was part of the inspiration for Resident Evil 4.

Alright, I'm done now.

Dagon? That movie was on my list but someone told me it was a bad one. I am putting it on the list again.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
I'm sorry, I will have to disagree with the notion that there is very little gore in EH

Let's see...

-Walls covered in blood

-Scenes of Hell

-Lady falling off a railing and breaking her legs clean off

-Dude with no eyes

-Disemboweled medical guy (I suspect Anderson may have seen Genocyber for that scene)

-Satanic murder-orgy on video

- Dude with no eyes in Satanic murder-orgy on video

- Suicide scene, which, iirc, involve wrist slitting

- kid with bloody, rotting lesions on his leg

- guy caught out in space, who's eyeballs explode, making him a dude with no eyes.

- Wasn't there a severed hand at some point? It's been a while, so I can't remember.

Well, I said "apart from the gouged out eyes (of which there were many... it was a theme or something) and the EMT's death (the disemboweled medical guy)" so you need to pull those two off your list. As for the rest, most of what you list was only glimpsed in quick shots or through grainy film footage (the Captain's recording of the aforementioned satanic orgy) and barely registered. The rest was so poorly lit as to be difficult to discern. Compared to the average B-grade horror movie, this film had very little gore. Heck, compared to Saving Private Ryan, it had very little gore and that wasn't even a horror movie. I'm not a fan of horror movies, specifically because they tend to revel in gore effects and forget to actually be scary (ie: almost anything made by Clive Barker). Event Horizon was of a higher quality than most of the schlocky horror flicks we get. It wasn't great but it was pretty good, and compared to others in its genre, was fairly tame blood-wise. Compared to the PG-13 horror movies of today, however, I'm sure it looks like a blood-soaked fountain of gore committed to celluloid.

Fair enough.
I suppose the eye removal theme had something to do with the idea that the "eyes are the windows to the soul"

The fact that only those who come into contact with Hell seem to be the ones who lose their eyes lends credence to this theory.

Which is a fairly interesting concept, really.

Can't describe why I don't like EH. I just couldn't get into it. I think it might because it was too much like the other films I've seen where a bunch of people are trapped in a scary place and bad things happen, like Alien or The Thing.
It just came across as yet another horror film. I suppose it might have something to do with the characters. Something about them just bothered me.

 da001 wrote:


Event Horizon focuses on atmospheric horror, with a few really strong gore moments, made more brutal by how well they blend in the story.

Too true, especially the EMT's death. When his shirt is pulled off, the guy is seen to sport a very large scar that runs from below his navel to his neck, with a split that takes it around his shoulders. That looks unnervingly like the kind of incision that gets made on a cadaver in an autopsy, and it is a scar the character has before he is killed (the actor has a scar from a motorcycle accident, but they made it bigger and more impressive for the film). That means the character lived through something very close to being disemboweled while alive already, and it is likely the only thing that could terrify him again. Since the evil on the ship got its jollies from exposing peoples' worst fears to them before killing them, it looks like the EMT was killed in the only way that he would find terrifying...

Naw, the autopsy scar is a Y-incision.
Both sides of the belly and up the centre of the ribcage.
Not straight up the belly.

 chromedog wrote:
Naw, the autopsy scar is a Y-incision.
Both sides of the belly and up the centre of the ribcage.
Not straight up the belly.

So this looks like an inverted autopsy scar, then. Ok. Still, you have to admit that something in that character's past messed him up to the point where nothing less than live vivisection would scare him.

I always assumed that the spikes in the engine room were a neccesary part of the design.

In a behind the scenes interview they said the ship was designed that way to help with the horror feel of the film. Having read other posts it now seems like a poor choice on the crew. Should have looked like something Humans would actually build.

chaos0xomega wrote:
Just throwing it out there, I believe there is a line in the film, towards the end I think, that refers to 'chaos'

Sam Niel's character describes where they're going as "a dimension of pure evil. Of pure chaos."

The way I see it is if they hadn't given a date in the film it could almost be a part of the 40k universe. Or used as non-canon material.

Yeah, that's a terrible design decision.
You just can't make something scary by making it look scary - it still has to fit in the internal logic of the film.

If all of the vessels looked like mini-gothic cathedrals then it would work out, but right now it just looks like the film's creators were trying too hard.

One of my favorite movies. I think I'll get a copy and rewatch it.. its been AGES since I've seen it.

It's available on Netflix.

And Dagon was an awesome movie.

So...she has tentacles. (shrugs)

 MWHistorian wrote:

So...she has tentacles. (shrugs)

Hey, some guys think that's a bonus.