Event Horizon Steelbook [4K UHD]

Simply the best Space Horror movie ever made. I watched the Event Horizon after graduating college and couldn't believe I missed it a few years before while I was in high school. This movie always looked great on SD tv sets and now as a 4K remaster it makes all the actors now look as good as ever in the dark and colorful lightening. This movie was expensive to make, and space horror is just too expensive to produce for today's smaller and tinier and shorter attention spans- and so this is now all we have. Best one folks. RIP Sam Neill.

Short story long, I was returning a Call of Cthulhu product via my local Staples, and the guy behind the counter joked about needing to make a sanity roll. Then he got to saying he liked CofC’s handling of madness, but also liked some other system he had used running a game that involved the stern of the Event Horizon. Had I seen the movie Event Horizon, starting Lawrence Fishburne and whoever else? Well it’s great. A little gory. Gory like Alien, I ask, or like the (horrible) Saw movies? More like Alien (bloodier, but less scary). Anyway I used my refund to buy the movie Event Horizon, got it yesterday, and watched it this evening. It was really very good: good pacing, acting (mostly; one dud moment), effects, plot, cinematography, music, everything. But despite a lifetime around sci fi and other geeks I’d never heard of it. I came here to write a review, thinking this was a great unknown movie, and I see it’s a cult classic. So, unless you can’t stand cuts or people with their eyes removed, or hate suspense, or will have an aneurysm if you hear one more person explain ftl travel by pushing a pencil through a folded piece of paper, get this movie and watch it. Wait, no, there is a very short scene of a shirtless woman committing suicide by slitting her wrist in a bathtub. That’s upsetting to see. But it’s such a short scene you can easily glance away (the nudity is momentary; the suicide is 5 seconds or so). Despite that though it’s an outstandingly good space movie, definitely one I’ll be viewing again, and one that I’d show friends.

Good movie

E.H. came and went in movie theatres in about a week, the victim of an un-evocative title, under-budgeted marketing campaign and needless confusion about what genre it belonged to. The truth will generally out, however, even in Hollywood; and so this flick has achieved a kind of cult status among fans of classy sci-fi/horror. E.H. is the story of Dr. Weir (Sam Neill), a scientist who designs the first-faster than light spaceship, the Event Horizon. Obsessed with his creation, he so neglects his wife that she commits suicide, leaving him half-mad with grief. To make matters worse, the ship, disappears on its maiden voyage, presumably lost with all hands. Seven years later, however, a signal is suddenly received from the vicinity of the planet Neptune which indicates the Event Horizon has survived after all. A rescue ship from Earth is launched under the command of the hard-nosed Captain Miller (Lawrence Fishburne), with Weir joining the small crew (including Kathleen Quinlan and the excellent Joely Richardson) as scientific advisor. Arriving at the planet, they find the Horizon intact, but seemingly empty, which poses our heroes with two questions: where has the ship been all these years, and what has happened to the crew? Exploring the tomb-like ship, the mystery deepens. Frozen bodies...or parts of them...are discovered, but not enough to account for the crew. Records are half-destroyed. Inexplicable sounds emit from everywhere, and one by one the crewmembers begin to experience horrible hallucinations that may not be hallucinations at all. Before you know it, the rescue ship's been sabotaged and the whole lot of them are stuck on board the ghost ship with no way off and only 24 hours worth of air. All that in the first half hour. Then the murders begin... EVENT HORIZON is a combination of many influences; stylistically it is reminiscent of Gothic horror films crossed with ALIEN (especially the "S.O.S." which is discovered, too late, to be a warning) but there are classic themes as well. Wier's gravity-drive represents Forbidden Knowledge, the stuff you tamper with at your peril. The ship itself is the classic Haunted House and/or Cursed Tomb, and the crew the Ten Little Indians, each of whom possesses dark secrets that are forced to the surface by the pressure of events. However, in most horror, there is a very clear dividing line between Who Is Safe and Who Isn't; in EVENT HORIZON, this line is totally obliterated. No sooner do you invest emotionally in one of the characters than they suffer a horrible and gory end. And some of those gory ends are tough to watch. While hardly a splatter-fest, E.H. isn't sparing on the red stuff when push comes to shove: we get glimpses of flaying, cannibalism, open sores, patricide, burned flesh, and decompressed eyeballs. When Captain Miller promises his crew "Everybody goes home!" he might have added, "but not necessarily alive or in one piece." The real star of the movie is not Fishburne, Neill, or Richardson, however, but the Event Horizon herself. If I am a fan of one thing in my horror movies, it is atmosphere, and E.H. has it in spades. The production designers used an old Gothic cathedral as the basis for the ship, and between its green-lit, gray-stone-like interiors, echoey hallways and deep, brooding shadows, it has the worst elements of haunted house, hedge maze, and Dracula's castle. The downside of E.H. rests largely in things that happen during the climax; there is some ridiculously unnecessary exposition and some badly-timed humor which really undermine the ending. I sense the interfering hand of a Studio Suit in some of Sam Neill's final dialogue. Despite this, however, E.H. is a disturbing, brutal, well-acted, beautifully designed film with a first-rate cast, and it deserves your attention.

Before I go off reviewing this cult classic, I'll share my personal history with this movie, which dates back nearly eleven years ago. I remember finishing up the forth grade back in June of 1998 and my brother rented Event Horizon from the local video store at the time and I watched it with him. When it was over, I was scared s***less the whole summer break. Oddly enough, I kept watching the movie throughout the summer, despite the fact that it was the most terrifying movie I've ever seen (and remains so to this day). I remember everyday from that summer, constantly fearing that a deranged Dr. Weir would break into my room and ritualistically end my existence. Even worse, I vividly remember my brother reenacting the infamous "video transmission" scene by holding golf balls covered in fake blood (to look like eyeballs) and covered himself with fake blood as he was saying "Liberate tutame ex inferis." Summer break eventually ended and with school starting up, I was finally able to dispose any memories I had of the movie. Sam Neill advertised for MCI at the time and even though I knew it wasn't really Dr. Weir, I still freaked out at the sight of those commercials. I would stay away from this movie for about seven years. In March of 2005, me and my friends held a "movie night" at my best friend's place over the weekend and I quickly saw Event Horizon on the video store shelf and I told my friends "You want to see a really messed up movie? Watch this." We rented Event Horizon and all of the deliciously evil and terrifying memories flooded back to my head that night; I couldn't sleep for days. PLOT: For those of you new to Event Horizon, here's the lowdown. In the year 2040, a space ship called the Event Horizon was launched to reach Proxima Centauri (Earth's nearest star) by using an artificial dimensional gateway to create a black hole, bridging the two points in space to drastically reduce journey time. When the ship goes about on its mission, it disappears without a trace. It's currently 2047 and the Event Horizon has returned off the orbit of Neptune. The Lewis and Clark rescue shuttle is dispatched to investigate and salvage the ship. As the Lewis and Clark docks with the Event Horizon and the rescue crew probes the ship, things start to go awry. SETTING: To me, this is the perfectly executed sci-fi/horror hybrid movie. Why? Event Horizon has many things going for it, but one of the best aspects is the perfect setting. Think about it; not only does the Event Horizon have a creepy gothic interior, the ship itself is surrounded by stormy conditions in space, you're stranded because your boarding ship was heavily damaged, the Event Horizon's communication functions are shot (not able to contact for help), and the only transmission you have of the ship's original crew truly sounds like screams out of hell. If you were aboard the Event Horizon, wouldn't you be scared? I sure would!! CHARACTERS: The actors do an excellent job with their roles; particularly Lawrence Fishburne as Captain Miller, Sam Neill as Dr. Weir, Kathleen Quinlan as Lt. Peters, and Jason Isaacs as D.J. To me, Dr. Weir is one of the best and most evil villains I've ever seen in film; so much so, I had to namedrop him on my review of Morbid Angel's "Altars of Madness" to describe how evil that album is. Dr. Weir isn't some one-dimensional character that's evil and nothing else; he was originally a man of scientific ambition with his Event Horizon project but his work would cause his wife, Claire, to commit suicide from loneliness. This would haunt Weir and when he boards his long lost creation, it would mentally torment him with his sins and drive him into a state of evil madness. Even prior to Weir's transformation as the antagonist, you can tell there was something messed up about him when he's aboard the Lewis and Clark, playing an intercepted transmission from the Event Horizon with a straight face, despite it sounding so hellish. Lt. Peters and Captain Miller also have interesting back stories involving Peters having to abandon her crippled son and Miller having to abandon one of his crew members on a burning space ship several years prior. Along with Weir's sins, the Event Horizon would use the sins of Miller and Peters to torment them. Rescue tech Cooper (Richard T. Jones) does a good job at providing a little humor in the movie to keep the audience from spiraling into states of madness; I particularly like him telling X.O. Starck as he was giving crew members coffee "Want something hot and black inside you?" SCARE TACTICS AND OTHER NASTY STUFF: Unlike most horror movies that use cliché settings and scare tactics to unnerve the audience, this uses much more original ideas to scare movie fans. In Event Horizon, there's no boogeyman, no hideous aliens, and not even any physical life forms on it!! The thing that makes this movie so scary is that it perfectly utilizes the whole "fear of the unknown" concept as no one investigating the ship knows what they're dealing with. Paul Anderson's interpretation of hell is also more original, making it more unnerving. The cliché fire and brimstone imagery has been replaced with the ship's gravity drive deck filled with some of the most horrendous looking corpses ever put on film. This brings me to my next point. There's lots of gore in this movie, but unlike mediocre flicks like Hostel and The Hills Have Eyes, the gore in this movie is used to enhance the dark, unnerving atmosphere of the movie rather than relying solely on it. In other words, the violence in this movie won't bore you. The violence in this movie REALLY is disturbing; the scene where Starck and Peters unscramble the video in the ship's computer showing the original crew killing and eating each other still freaks me out to this day. The scene where Dr. Weir attacks D.J. on the medical deck is really appalling as you can see Dr. Weir's bloody, empty eye sockets and the way he kills D.J. is guaranteed to freak out movie goers. As Weir and Miller duke it out toward the end, Weir forces Miller to see Hell and trust me, it really is terrifying. THEMES AND ESOTERIC THINGS: Religion is a big theme in Event Horizon, as you can already tell with the constant mention of Hell and the use of Latin in some scenes. The concept of creating artifical black holes to reduce time in space travel is really neat; I just hope I'm dead before technology advances that far!! Something that I really enjoyed was when D.J.'s carcass is shown in the medical deck, there's lots of esoteric occult symbols painted everywhere. I'm really glad that Anderson didn't use something typical like the pentagram and inverted cross to represent Hell, and the mysterious nature of these creepy symbols adds to the terror in this movie. These symbols would also appear on Dr. Weir's body when he comes back as some sort of undead creature towards the end of the movie. Everything in Event Horizon isn't tied up in a neat little bow, there's several little things that aren't fully explained. I normally don't like it when movies do this as it usually comes off as laziness, but it works for Event Horizon because they do it in a manner that satisfies the viewer at the end of the movie but makes them wonder about other things. For one, you never really see the "chaos dimension," only images of people getting horribly killed aboard the Event Horizon. So that leaves your imagination to decide what this dimension really looks like. SOUNDTRACK: For the most part, the soundtrack is magnificent; it perfectly fuses hard techno beats with chilling classical orchestra melodies. The weird combination perfectly suits the movie. The only music track I hated was the one at the very end by The Prodigies called "Funky S***," it sounds bad and fits nowhere in the movie, even though it was only on the credits. EXTRAS: The current edition of Event Horizon has a second disk full of bonus features. While these features aren't as abundant as say those in the T2: Extreme Edition DVD set, they are worthwhile. There's featurettes about the making of Event Horizon along with videos of concept art. While I liked the conceptual drawings and 3D renderings provided in the DVD set, they could have added more and I would have preferred that each image was presented as a still frame rather than a video montage with commentary because with DVD programs like Cyberlink Power DVD that include "snapshot" features, I like to make "snapshots" of these art pieces so that I can quickly get ideas when I hit the drawing boards for my own creations. Still, I enjoyed what I got in this area. The "making of" featurettes are a real treat, they show the numerous difficulties filming the movie and the neat props and filming techniques used to make this film possible. After watching these, I wasn't too pleased at Paramount for terribly rushing Paul Anderson and his crew to finish Event Horizon at a certain deadline. These corporate slimeballs would also force Anderson to cut out about 40 minutes of the original edition of the movie because test audiences were too freaked out by the level of violence in it. Some scenes were put on the bonus disk, and while pretty satisfying to see, it's a shame that they couldn't be restored into the film itself. However, given that Event Horizon came out before the DVD revolution and that Paramount wasn't too pleased by the film's poor performance in the box office, the uncut editions of the movie have been lost. Infact, Anderson stated he had to go all over the world to find the lost footage included on the DVD. In short, I can't blame Anderson for this shortcoming as the blame really belongs to Paramount for their unrealistic time demands and the wimpy test audiences for their squeamishness. All in all, the bonus disk is a nice addition to the movie. CRITICISM: The only bad thing I can say about Event Horizon was the song played at the end credits, which I already stated under "soundtracks." This is only noticeable flaw that I could find in this movie, but it doesn't really detract the quality of the film as a whole. Apparently, a lot of people panned this movie for being too violent and scary. That's mind-bogglingly stupid; panning an R-rated sci-fi/horror movie for being scary and violent is like panning The Ren and Stimpy Show or The Simpsons for making people laugh. For the people who didn't like the movie for these aspects, what were you expecting this to be? A family film about Shaqulle O' Neal in space rapping and playing basketball with aliens? Do your homework next time, there's ratings and content descriptions on the movie posters and DVD cases, READ THEM!! FINAL WORD: In Paul Anderson's filmography, Event Horizon is easily his crowning jewel. It's really sad that he'd sink to such low levels in making such junk like Alien vs Predator and Resident Evil. Event Horizon isn't a movie for everyone, but if you want a movie that will give you nightmares and weird things to discuss with fellow cinema buffs, Event Horizon will reward you greatly.

Interesting and intriguing sci-fi movie with excellent cinematography and acting.

One of my favorite movies! The rescan quality is no joke. I got this specifically because they scanned the original film for a better quality. I don’t have a 4k player so I can’t use that disc. I was concerned the Blu ray wouldn’t be the higher quality. But it is! The Paramount intro screen is in the original low res. Some of the special effects are, too. It’s a little jarring against the actors and environment but is really a testament to how good the scan went. The actors and scenery look like a modern day reshoot due to the high resolution. Excellent way to get an old classic with modern quality. Even if you have a potato blu ray player from a thrift store like mine! One day I’ll get a 4k player so I can enjoy it in full glory.

4k video and audio is amazing. Great horror sci fi concept with great actors.

宇宙とホラーと科学を見事に詰め合わせた作品だと思います。 題名は宇宙船の名前で、その船のクルーが消息を絶つ。救助船が向かうが、現場で様々な事態が起きる。 救助隊員が次々とヤバイ状況に追い込まれ、ドキドキして鑑賞しました。 面白い作品でした。

Fab just as I remembered it.

Una gran película. Acción grandes actores y grandes actrices

Amazing movie, a really great Horror-Science Fiction movie from the late 90’s. I wish they still made amazing horror movies like this. There have been a few solid horror entries recently, but this movie is something special. Also, this Shout Factory special edition is well worth the money, so do yourself a favour and buy it. Event Horizon is a must see for any true science fiction or horror fan!

Ich hatte vor Jahren von einem Freund über Event Horizon gehört und dann lange Zeit den Film aus den Augen verloren. Mittlerweile hatte ich das Spiel Dead Space auf der Xbox 360 durchgespielt und sehr genossen und irgendwann gehört, dass dieser Film letzten Endes große Teile der Inspiration des Spiels ausmacht, und war erneut neugierig auf den Film. Als ich ihn dann schließlich meinem Bruder bestellt hatte, um ihn dann einmal auszuleihen, kam ich schließlich dazu, ihn anzusehen. Der Film ist meiner Meinung nach ein herausragender Teil des Sci-Fi-Horror-Genres, durchaus in der Nähe von Alien anzusiedeln. Ohne etwas zu spoilern, möchte ich sagen, dass die Story, auch, wenn sie auf einige sehr weit hergeholt wirken möge, eine angenehme Hintergrundhandlung für den Grusel bietet. Mit Sam Neill und Laurence Fishburn (Beide herausragend!) in den Hauptrollen, beschreibt er die Geschichte eines Teams, das einen seltsamen Funkruf eines lange verschollen geglaubten Schiffes empfängt. Die Köpfe hinter Event Horizon haben versucht, die Geschehnisse im Film so realistisch wie möglich zu erklären, aber natürlich geht bei den ganz harten Horror-Szenen etwas Glaubwürdigkeit verloren, das war auch bei ALIEN nicht anders, als das tatsächliche Alien sich nicht auch nur um einen Meter bewegte, sondern der Kopf immer nur wieder umpositioniert wurde. Jedoch störte sich daran niemand, und auch hier soll es so sein! Ganz groß punktet der Film bei mir in Richtung Atmosphäre. Die nötige Gänsehaut ist kaum zu unterdrücken, darüberhinaus ist der Film ordentlich brutal, die FSK-16-Kennung basiert wahrscheinlich auf der Unglaubwürdigkeit der gezeigten Geschehnisse. Ich möchte nunmal nichts verraten, daher kann ich kaum spezifisches erzählen, aber sollten Sie ein Fan von Horror- oder Sci-Fi-Horrorfilmen sein, dann sollten Sie sich diesen Film unbedingt ansehen. Er macht natürlich alleine großen Spaß, jedoch ist er auch sehr gut geeignet für einen heiteren, gruseligen Abend mit Bier und FreundInnen. Sollten Sie des Weiteren ein Fan der Dead Space-Spiele sein, oder auch einfach nur die "Christmas Critters"-Folge von South Park genossen haben, dann sollten Sie diesen Film auf jeden Fall ansehen, denn Sie werden einige Dinge wiedererkennen!