Event Horizon 

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Director: Paul Anderson
Cast: Laurence Fishburne, Sam Neill, Kathleen Quinlan, Joely Richardson

Jim Steele has always been a friend to Chapel Hill moviegoers. As the owner of the Varsity Theatre, he has let me in on trade secrets, movie gossip, and special previews since I started reviewing films as a 17-year-old freshman. Like me, he has an undying love for the movies and, like me, he's willing to give "bad" movies the benefit of the doubt. That's why I knew we might be in trouble with "Event Horizon" when he told me, "Well, my staff hates it...."

In the year 2047, the spaceship "Lewis and Clark" is sent to answer a distress signal from the ship called, strangely enough, "Event Horizon." Built by a slightly-unhinged scientist played by Sam Neill, its mission was to "fold the space-time continuum" and thus travel to another location faster than the speed of light. Lawrence Fishburne is the space captain in charge of the rescue mission. The minute they find the lost spacecraft, things begin to go terribly wrong.

Much the same could be said about the film itself. Brimming with cheap horror-film tricks (people walking backwards into unknown terror, the "it was only a dream" sequence, etc.), "Event Horizon" actually plants the seeds of a terrific idea, then abandons it for the grassy fields of cliche. Suggestions abound that the ship didn't just breach the space-time continuum, but went to another "plane" altogether, the kind Dante warned us about. But none of the theological implications are ever explained; they're just implied with brief, excruciatingly silly edits of people pulling their eyes out and children being crucified.

Every moment in the movie reminds us of other, better ones: Sam Neill's creeping madness is a lot like Jack Nicholson in "The Shining." A ship that animates itself against the humans is a whole lotta "2001: A Space Odyssey." And the rest of the plot was handled with tons more class in "Aliens." "Event Horizon" had potential of biblical proportion, invoking the nightmares of Hell, hopelessness, and death—yet, it ends up doing nothing but killing Lawrence Fishburne's career.

But this is summer, and as I say, I give bad movies a lot of slack. On the way into the theater, I asked the young woman serving popcorn if the movie was truly all that awful. "Oh no," she replied. "I mean, it's like Melrose Place. It's terrible, but totally watchable." She was right. Melrose Place on Neptune.

—Ian Williams

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