Hacker Cinema
Event Horizon
1997 · Film · 96 min
Directed by Paul W. S. Anderson
In 2047, a group of astronauts are sent to investigate and salvage the starship Event Horizon which disappeared mysteriously seven years before on its maiden voyage. However, it soon becomes evident that something sinister resides in its corridors.
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43 comments on Hacker News
Oh my, I saw half of these movies as a kid and all of them left scars on my soul. Watching Poltergeist as a kid is like watching Event Horizon as an adult (I recommend watching Event Horizon though).
It's a great movie! One of the best attempts at capturing a Lovecraftian vibe, maybe only bested by The Thing or his excellent Event Horizon.
The part I liked in Event Horizon was Laurence Fishburn's character seeing the logs of the crew going crazy and immediately turning it off and saying, "We're leaving."
Probably the smartest decision made in a horror film. Time to get out of Dodge.
Chronic “pain” as a spouse is the perfect metaphor. I can’t push through it, I have to use patience and understanding and it’s always somewhere on my mind. That’s the only way to make progress or be sane long term. I’ve grown and matured because of it. I’ve also experienced the post surgery pain that briefly takes you out of this world. For a split second I was in the Hell dimension a la Event Horizon the movie before I had taken my first dose of opiates and had adjusted my arm too much. I don’t mean the pain was hellishly bad; I didn’t cry out which is probably what a 10/10 pain would elicit. It was more like dread and “seeing” but not with vision the mutilated flesh and gore inside my repaired wrist.
The NASA weekly movie selection for the ISS is the classic 1997 film "Event Horizon".
Astronauts: 8O
What a great question! Many interesting movies to check out in these comments!
My own list, I re-watch movies the same way I re-listen to music, often to get in a particular mode of thinking, as they become familiar, I mostly daydream while appreciating some particular concept and whatever new minutiae, or ways of understanding, creeps into my mind.
Hackers - 30+ times, for dreaming about a world that never was and never will be, for reminding myself how cool computers used to seem.
The Crow - 20+ times, for thinking about the world
Koyaanisqatsi - 15+ times, for thinking about my life in the world
Alien - 10+ times, for thinking about the future that passed us by
Terminator 1 and 2 - 10+ times, for examining a time that never was, or passed me by, and because Arnold is awesome!
A Clockwork Orange, 10+ times, to reflect on violence and aesthetic
Event Horizon, 10+ times, mostly for the aesthetic, and who dosen't love spaceships from hell ?
1984 - 5+ times, for thinking about humanity and society
Requiem for a Dream - 5+ times, for thinking about the value of life, and what society is
Once upon a time in the west - 5+ times, for thinking about loss, revenge and justice
Genocyber - 5+ times, to think about what life is for anyway
Stalker - 5+ times, frankly, mostly to look at the pretty pictures.
Lots of other amazing movies, I probably forgot some (time to watch again?)
Bonus:
TV Shows I've watched more than 10 times:
Star Trek TNG
Neon Genesis Evangelion
I think this would be amazing for jank 90's CGI. The movie "Event Horizon" terrified me as a child. I went to rewatch it as an adult, I could not get past the jank CGI, it pulled me out of my suspension of belief.
Event Horizon is the closest we’ll get to a Warhammer 40k film.
Yes! And then I'd follow up Event Horizon with Pandorum. Perhaps not quite as good or as well-known as the other two, but still clever and worth watching.
These two articles in American Cinematographer (1 and 2) give some interesting background on the movie; concerning the ship they write:
> When it first appears onscreen, the Event Horizon craft itself resembles a giant crucifix hovering over the surface of Neptune. "The spaceship was built on a cruciform, like all cathedrals are," Anderson explains. "We began the design process by literally scanning [photos of] the Notre-Dame Cathedral into the computer and then constructing the Event Horizon out of those Gothic elements. For example, the big thruster engines are an adaptation of the Notre Dame towers, repositioned on their sides. A lot of the iron and steel work of the superstructure is based on the cathedral's stained-glass windows. The ship also has a lot of triptych windows and big recessed crosses.
> "When Adrian and I first sat down, we said, 'Let's do something completely different,"' says Anderson. "Since we were going into outer space, I felt we had to have a really strong design concept; otherwise Event Horizon would have ended up looking like [a bunch of] other movies cobbled together. We spent a lot of time coming up with a design concept, which we called 'techno-Medieval.' When the lights are on, everything looks very technological and very spaceship-like. But when the lights go off and the haunting begins, you start looking at the shapes, and the architecture is actually very medieval. We extended that techno-Medieval design idea into as many aspects of the picture's look as possible, without rubbing the audience's nose in it."
1: https://theasc.com/articles/unearthly-terrors-event-horizon
2: https://theasc.com/articles/event-horizon-scare-tactics
Event Horizon is a great movie to watch after Sunshine
I feel that Event Horizon is the most effective science fantasy movie produced. I've seen it once, which was enough to leave an indelible mark on me.
Event Horizon combines the supernatural with some elements of vaguely plausible science fiction. The movie comes together in a way that traces back to the present-day with a pretty bright line, especially in prop and spaceship design. It keeps you connected and then dumps the fantasy element on you hard. Disturbing but well done stuff. Deeper nerd-cut, it's a 40K prequel, if only unofficially.
Off topic. Do you have any movie suggestion close or related to this book? I've seen The Martian, 2001 Space Od, Interstellar, and Event Horizon.
A lower-budget production, particularly by an independent studio, will also have far less interference from "producers" who try to justify their salary by giving notes.
Gattaca is from '97, which was right in the middle of a golden era for movies. Independent films took off and even big studios were affected by the shift.
With regards to GP's comment about bad effects, look at the cult classic Event Horizon from the same year. It still holds up in a lot of ways, but there's one laughably bad element: horrible CGI water droplet effects. It was a hot new effect and they shoved it into way too many shots.
"Event Horizon"[0] was a movie in which a spacecraft had a black hole used for propulsion. Somehow the spacecraft went to Hell and came back infested with demons.
[0] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119081/
Tron: Legacy soundtrack was done by Daft Punk. Not exactly your run of the mill movie studio hack job...
Other interesting soundtracks done by musicians not known for soundtrack work you might find interesting: Fight Club (Dust Brothers) Event Horizon (Orbital with London Symphony Orchestra) Chaos Theory: Splinter Cell 3 (game) (Amon Tobin)
“Liminal spaces” are another kind of alleyways, through which one ordinarily just passes through:
https://aesthetics.fandom.com/wiki/Liminal_Space
That kind of space the FTL drive in Event Horizon passes through:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Event_Horizon_(film)
One of the movies that let my hair stand up was EVENT HORIZON - thrilling setting and playing with ones fears of the "hell". Conjuring is also thrilling, with very little scenes that let your bloud freeze.
Beside that, Japanese THE GRUDGE and THE RING are very psychoactive for me, with very little jump scare, but with a lot of long black hair - since that movies I have fear of long black hair :)
Thank you for opening this topic to discussion. I'm looking forward to hear what other fellows say.
The Expanse handles this stuff much better than other shows, as has been noted many times. As entertaining as it is, For All Mankind gets things very wrong in a lot of cases and falls prey to a lot of the 'space tropes' that plague sci-fi. And I certainly don't expect hard sci-fi realism everywhere, but in something like For All Mankind, which is supposed to exist in an alternate timeline but be firmly planted in the real world, it's jarring. When it's in something like the movie Event Horizon I really don't care about realism.
Not sure if there's some pseudo-physical explanation, but I've imagined it has something to do with visualizing the three dimensions that are manipulated.
Interestingly both Event Horizon and Contact (movie) are from 1997...
Wormhole devices in movies keep puzzling me for quite some time - why does a significant number of them look like rings rotating around each other? Contact is one example, another is Event Horizon. The Terminator also had a similar looking time machine.
I don’t see what the fuss is about. “Alien wasn’t a horror movie”: just run of the mill flame-bait that started a flame war. Anyone who actually took it seriously needs to chill out.
And Kevin Smith should make a second movie.
And Event Horizon sucked.
I thought this was simple. You can't go faster than light.
If you go through a wormhole (Or just send information) you go faster than light (Ignoring Hollywood's incorrect movie Event Horizon where you just bend paper), so you go back in time.
So it's not possible.
Because you can kill you father (or something mathematical with information) which is a paradox.
End of story.
Isn't Event Horizon basically just a horror movie, except the haunted house is a spaceship?
If you're going to pick a fictional hyperspace "framework," there are many to choose from, all of which are equally nonsensical.
The author didn't mention using black holes to get around. Hyperspace might be just moving into wherever the events in the movie Event Horizon took place.
Event Horizon - a wonderful blend of sci-fi and horror.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Event_Horizon_(film)
Several Doom games, and also Half-Life. Ripping a hole into Hell for travel purposes has been done in Doom, the movie Event Horizon, and the tabletop gaming franchise Warhammer 40K.
Which goes to show what a terrible idea this all is ;-).
To each and their own. I will say comparatively for video games Dead Space story is actually fairly good albeit much more complicated than other games (ie all other shooters). They even made a animated movie for Dead Space which is sort of cool if you like Japanese animation.
You can read up on the plot via wikipedia. Other than the very beginning Doom is devoid of plot (and even then I didn't even know it took place on a moon of mars).
Dead Space reminds of the movie "Event Horizon" which I guess is now a very dated movie (damn I'm old).
I also liked the mechanic of requiring dismembering of the aliens. I guess for the ADHD Crossfire of shoot em in the head it is tedious but I think it brilliantly slows the pace of the game which is sort of needed for horror games.
Event Horizon.
I am fascinated with the concept of evil existing outside of the context of humanity and this movie is what planted that seed.
Event Horizon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Event_Horizon_(film)
While some aspects of that scene do seem to line up with the article, others don't.
For example, if the timeline of the movie is to be believed, the crew member is only exposed to a vacuum for about 10 or 15 seconds before his eyes seem to bleed massively or explode (actually, an apparent plot hole -- only a few seconds later, he's seen without any blood around his eyes). The article suggests that this wouldn't happen.
At the end of the day, Event Horizon was a pretty gory horror movie and they obviously took a lot of liberties in depicting depressurization.
I watched it on TV, late at night, as a kid. I remember barely being able to fall asleep out of fear, and I think it took a week for the effects of this movie to wear off. I'm older now and I've seen enough sad, scary and disrupting movies that it doesn't affect me anymore, but I'm pretty sure that if I tried to show it to my SO, I'd have my own Event Horizon right there in the apartment.
EDIT: I also had the "next time I'm picking the movie" moment after I took my then-girlfriend to see Prometheus. The TED2023 trailer looked so cool and I didn't realize it's a prequel to Alien...
I went to see Event Horizon in the cinema when it first came out, with a couple of schoolfriends. There was an oldish couple in front of us, maybe in their 50s, possibly expecting a repeat of 2001.
Eventually the film finished, and we all got up, slightly dazed - couple included. The woman said to the man, with pursed lips - "Next time, I'm picking the film" :)
The drive home was about 40 minutes, and my friends and I were silent the whole way. But I'm sure if I saw it again, it would seem adorably tame.
Caution: Event Horizon is also one hell of a mind-fucking horror movie. It's not for the weak-minded. Liberate tuteme ex inferis. You have been warned.
I think the movie Event Horizon got it right. For anybody who hasn't seen it, someone is ejected out into Space. He's saved within about a minute. Though, he definitely suffers internal bleeding and other damages, he survives.
Had my ex-partner's oldest kid (age 14) hiding behind the sofa. I too was not popular when he woke up in the middle of the night by a nightmare and blaming it on watching Event Horizon.
I thought he could handle it because we'd just watched all the Alien movies and he quite enjoyed them. He saw Aliens first and I suggested we watch the original/rest, he was quite drawn into suspense of the first film which the others have never quite matched in intensity. I guess Event Horizon was a bit too dark and visceral for his tastes.
I think my brother still hates me... first time in our lives we were alone (I think I was 13 or 14, my brother 11 or 12), dark stormy night with lightning, my father was going out for a few hours, so of course, I got to choose a (VHS) movie.. it was Event Horizon.
He couldn't sleep for days (I had a nightmare but I could sleep), my father was SO mad.
Watching Event Horizon at home, on a big TV, in the dark, with a proper 5.1 channel surround system cranked up is one of the best horror movie experiences you can get. Even if you've seen it enough times that you can quote the whole movie.
"Where we're going, we won't need eyes to see." :D
I had a similar experience, no other film scared me before or since, but event horizon was terrifying
I think it depends.
When my sister saw it, it was very early on, prior to any pub or wide release, at a festival (or something) were it was presented as basically a true found film/documentary. She called me almost immediately after seeing it and pestered me for months to go watch it, presenting it as truly great.
When I saw it, I knew it was fake, had read about the making of it, etc. We were laughing at it in the theater (especially the "found my cigarettes" part). So, while a little scary in parts (especially that ending), it wasn't anything special to us. We still point to Event Horizon as our favorite horror movie, partly because we didn't know it was going to be what it was. We thought it was more of a space exploration thriller.
A bit offtopic but relevant to your post: When I was an SGI customer support engineer, I repaired an SGI system for one of the film video production companies in SOHO in London - one of the SGI's was being used to render a scene in Event Horizon in which a fire extinguisher was being blown past the camera by an explosion.
Loved the movie when it came out.
I saw Event Horizon in the theater when I was seventeen or so and I was traumatized. That movie was pretty twisted. I felt completely exhausted when I came out of the theater.
I'll grant you Event Horizon (I haven't seen the other too). I was scared shitless for a long time after this movie.