Characters / Event Horizon

Lewis and Clark

Captain S.J. Miller

"Fuck this ship!"

Played By: Laurence Fishburne

• A Father to His Men: Burdened by guilt at having been unable to save the life of a Goliath crew member, Captain Miller is desperate never to lose another. On a lighter note, having been unable to find a replacement for Peters, who was due some shore leave with her young son, the Captain softly apologizes.
• Foil: Whereas Dr Weir desperately pursues the Event Horizon-conjured phantasm of his suicide-slain wife, Captain Miller is repelled by its conjure of a crew mate whose life he failed to save. While Dr Weir's phantasmal persecutor drives him murderously insane, Captain Miller manages to defy his own - and in so doing, saves the lives of Starck and Cooper.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Sends Cooper and Starck to the Event Horizon's rear section; confronts the possessed Dr. Weir, and sets off the explosions, trapping himself onboard when the gravity drive activates.
• Heroic Willpower: Once more confronted by the burning, raging apparition of Edmund Corrick, whose life he failed to save on the Goliath, Captain Miller - seemingly overruled by the need to save his crew - denies the apparition, whereupon it changes to the possessed Dr. Weir.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Initially hostile to unannounced passenger Dr. Weir, but fiercely devoted to his crew's safety.
• Know When to Fold 'Em: Upon seeing the unredacted ship's log, Miller realizes just how hopelessly fucked the situation is and immediately orders his crew to evacuate the Event Horizon. Unfortunately, the ship (with the help of Dr. Weir) won't let them.
• My Greatest Failure: With the Goliath in flames, he was forced to leave behind crew mate Edmund Corrick.
• Precision F-Strike: Usually keeps his language under control (unlike Cooper), but after he details his plan to reduce the Event Horizon to cosmic vapor, he caps it with "Fuck this ship!"
• The Stoic: On seeing the Event Horizon's log footage of a murderous orgy...
  Captain Miller: ...We're leaving.

Dr. William Weir

"You can't leave. She won't let you."

Played By: Sam Neill

• Being Tortured Makes You Evil: Forced by the Event Horizon to relive his wife Claire's suicide, her phantasmal corpse returns to "life" and offers reconciliation - which lures him to submit to the ship's murderous desires.
• Bizarre Alien Senses: Having pulled out his own eyes, he aims, with casual ease, a rivet gun.
  Captain Miller: You miss me, you'll blow out the hull!
  Dr. Weir: What makes you think I'll miss?
• Break the Cutie: This polite, soft-spoken academic is literally driven insane with grief.
• Covered in Scars: He gets covered in numerous gashes and symbols after being brought back by the Event Horizon.
• The Dragon: Eventually acts as a human agent for the ship.
• Eye Scream: Pulls out his own eyes and sews closed the lids. He somehow gets his eyes back once the ship brings him back.
• Haunted Heroine: A male variant - before reaching the possessed Event Horizon, he dreams of an eyeless vision of his wife Claire - a phantasm of whom, conjured by the ship, torments him with grief over her suicide; lures him to pull out his own eyes, and, implicitly, submit to possession by the ship.
• Humanoid Abomination: Having pulled out his eyes and sewn closed the lids, the ship seems to lend him some insidious sixth sense. Having then been sucked into space, the ship brings him back - bald, naked, and Covered in Scars, but with his eyes restored.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Gets a bit snide in his dismissal of the unaccountable phenomena, but is generally amiable. Even when fanatically determined to further explore the blatantly lethal ship, he's genuinely saddened to find the recently deceased Peters.
• Love Makes You Evil: He genuinely loved his late wife Claire, and the Event Horizon uses that and his grief over being indirectly responsible for her suicide to take control of him.
• Mad Scientist: Eventually turned into one by his malevolently possessed invention.
• Mellow Fellow: Unassuming and generally civil - until the ship drives him murderously insane.
• Plagued by Nightmares: His dreams of his lost spaceship and deceased wife anticipate the possessed ship's penchant for vacant eye sockets.
• The Professor: Designer of experimental spaceship the Event Horizon, he held Oppenheimer's chair at Princeton.
• The Renfield: While it is hinted that he wasn't exactly stable to begin with, being under the influence of the Event Horizon turns him into a homicidal maniac with a slavish devotion to the ship.
• Sinister Nudity: After being flung out into space, Dr Weir is "brought back" by the ship, albeit stark naked, bald, and covered in bloody runes. He shows no interest in getting dressed, preferring to torture Captain Miller with his newfound powers.
• Tragic Villain: His experimental spaceship, against all expectation, returns from across the universe. Desperate for the reunion it seems to offer with his deceased wife, Dr. Weir succumbs to the monstrous force possessing it.

Lieutenant M.L. Starck

"It's as if the ship brought something back with it. A life force of some kind."

Played By: Joely Richardson

• Hidden Depths: Seems to have some grasp of Dr Weir's Technobabble - heavy explanation of the Event Horizon's gravity drive.
• Not So Stoic: After narrowly surviving the doomed rescue mission, a nightmare vision of the scar-covered Dr. Weir has her scream in abject terror.
• The Stoic: Even-tempered but robust in the face of the ship's sinister phenomena.

D.J., Medical Doctor

"I've been listening to the distress signal, and I think I made a mistake in the translation."

Played By: Jason Isaacs

• The Eeyore: Miller calls him a "gloomy Gus."
• Gutted Like a Fish: He is vivisected courtesy of Dr. Weir.
• The Medic: He also seems to know his way around a surgical knife.
• Mr. Exposition: Translates the Latin pronouncements heard amidst the Event Horizon's garbled transmission - which he deduces to imply its having been to Hell.
• The Quiet One: Soberly soft-voiced.
• Smart People Know Latin: He discerns the Latin pronouncement found amidst the Event Horizon's garbled transmission to mean "save me" - and then, on further listening, "save yourself... from Hell."
• The Stoic: Consistently remains cool, calm and collected.

W.F. "Smitty" Smith, Pilot

"You break all the laws of physics and you seriously think there wouldn't be a price?"

Played By: Sean Pertwee

• Deadpan Snarker: Has his moments.
  Smith: No, I haven't seen anything and I don't need to see anything, sir, but I can tell you... this ship is fucked.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: Set on edge by the possessed spaceship, Dr. Weir's snide scepticism rouses Smith to take a swing.
• Oh, Crap!: He gets one when he finds the misplaced explosive charge, seconds away from going off. He doesn't say anything, but his terrified cringe speaks for itself.

Ensign F.M. Justin, Chief Engineer

"If you could see the things I've seen, you wouldn't stop me."

Played By: Jack Noseworthy

• Break the Cutie: Sucked into a dimensional gateway; driven to the edge of sanity by whatever he saw within, and facially mutilated by a botched attempt to eject himself into space.
• Driven to Suicide: Albeit briefly—in a state of entranced despair, he enters an airlock, and sets it to open—whereupon he comes to his senses.
• Go Mad from the Revelation: After falling through the gravity drive's dimensional gateway, he speaks, in awed terror, of "the dark inside me."
• Mid-Suicide Regret: Having sealed himself in and set to open the Event Horizon's airlock, he suddenly realizes where he is, and calls in terror for help.
• Too Dumb to Live: Subverted—while sticking his hand into an anomalously open dimensional gateway probably wasn't the best idea he ever had, his resultant attempted suicide fails to kill him.

Peters, Medical Technician

Played By: Kathleen Quinlan

• Break the Cutie: Emotionally tortured by the Event Horizon's conjure of her young son Denny, whose disability it severely exacerbates.
• Mama Bear: A brutally tragic example - pursued by a vision of her disabled son, suddenly rendered able to walk; she desperately pursues him, and falls to her death.

T.F. Cooper, Rescue Technician

"Here I come, motherfuckers!"

Played By Richard T. Jones

• Black Dude Dies First: Not only he is a black supporting character who doesn't die first, but he survives the events of the movie. Depending on whether you interpret the ending a certain way.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Kids around a fair bit but is genuinely good at his dangerous job.
• Cluster F-Bomb: Loves to say "fuck."
• Plucky Comic Relief: His role a lot of the time, which is necessary considering just how dark the movie gets.

Event Horizon

The Event Horizon

The titular ship itself. Demonically possessed, it displays numerous traits and emotions. Functionally, it is a character unto itself.

• Big Bad: It has become an Eldritch Abomination that wants to drag more people, if not all of humanity, into Hell beyond the stars.
• Cool Ship: It's a starship with an experimental gravity drive that allows it to go from one point in the universe to another. Its design is based after gothic cathedrals.
• Demonic Possession: Both the ship itself and what it does to Weir. When it went into the chaos dimension, it became possessed by something there, and that thing ultimately possesses Weir and causes him to become its main agent.
• Eldritch Starship: The Event Horizon was an excellent example of one even before it was warped into a tortured consciousness by exposure to a hellish extradimensional realm. Note the interior design of the ship, with its odd cybergothic architecture, including its extremely strange "central core" and the "meat grinder corridor" leading to it, as well as the numerous spikes and other elements of its rather terrifying aesthetic (some of which, like the "meat grinder corridor," are handwaved as being essential to the ship's operation). It's definitely one of the weirdest human-designed ships on this list, even before being possessed by extradimensional evil. It's also one of the closest examples on this list to a Standard Human Spaceship, despite being simultaneously this trope.
• Ghost Ship: Seven years after vanishing, it reappears orbiting Neptune; crew plastered across several walls - but with abundantly scanned life signs throughout the entire structure.
• Genius Loci: Throughout the movie, it has shown itself capable of planning and plotting, such as setting up countermoves to stop Miller from destroying it with the Lewis and Clark's missiles.
• Haunted House: Possessed by an ethereal presence, the ship conjures, from the minds of those who board, tangible phantasms.
• Psychic-Assisted Suicide:
  • Attempts this with Justin, nearly driving him to throw himself out of the airlock before he comes to his senses.
  • Does this later with Peters, using a phantasm of her son to lure her into falling to her death.
• Psychological Torment Zone: Has the ability to make anyone aboard suffer through their fears and regrets, and it does so with a clear glee.
• Sadist: To a horrifying extent, both bodily and psychologically - its phantasms emotionally torture Dr. Weir, Peters and Captain Miller. The video log shows the possessed ship's crew to have killed each other in a frenzied orgy of mutilation.

Captain John Kilpack

"Ave Atque Vale."

Played By: Peter Marinker

• Ax-Crazy: Over filmed footage of the Event Horizon's crew murdering each other in a frenzied orgy, Captain Kilpack, with an urge for anyone listening to evade Hell, gloatingly offers his own detached eyeballs.
• Go Mad from the Revelation: Whatever he means by "Hell" drove him, and his crew, violently insane.
• Eye Scream: Self-inflicted, although he seems quite happy about it, displaying his eyeballs in his open palms while sporting a Slasher Smile.
• Ironic Echo: Embarking on an experimental voyage, he bade a ceremonious Latin farewell. In rather less wholesome circumstances, he made, again in Latin, a rather different pronouncement.
• Smart People Know Latin: His use of Latin in the Apocalyptic Log seems to be there partly to show how educated he is.

Claire Weir

"I'm waiting."

Played By: Holley Chant

• Affectionate Nickname: Addresses Dr. Weir as "Billy."
• Bath Suicide: Two years before the story takes place, she killed herself in the bath.
• Came Back Wrong: Eyeless; quite calm about it, and out to lure her husband into Hell.
• The Corruptor: By entreaty for reunion with her widower husband, her phantasm lures Dr. Weir to embrace the ship's murderous desires.
• Dissonant Serenity: Hasn't got any eyes, yet speaks with a calm, disorientated wistfulness.
• Evil Is Deathly Cold: Her phantasm, conjured maliciously, mentions being "so cold..."
• Eyeless Face: Although, for re-enactment of her suicide, she gets them back.
• Expy: A space explorer's suicide-slain wife recreated by a fantastic otherworldly force, Claire recalls Solaris's Rheya. Conversely, her taste for mutilation-induced extra-sensory exultation recalls the Cenobites.
• The Lost Lenore: With her photographs, widower Dr. Weir adorns his space station residence.
• Knight of Cerebus: Arguably the darkest of a very dark bunch - whereas the other phantasms seek to torment and kill those to whom they appear, Claire tortures Dr. Weir with bereaved longing, thereby luring him to embrace the ship's self-destructive, murderous appetites.
• Mouth of Sauron: Of all the ship's phantasms, she's the most instrumental - forcing her widower husband to relive her suicide compels him to submit to the ship's will.
• Nightmare Fetishist: Considers boundless mutilation to be "wonderful."
• Sinister Nudity: In all of her appearances on camera, she's completely naked save for a thong, but no bra - because she killed herself in the bath. As such, her scenes are played for horror and tragedy rather than titillation, especially when her eyes snap open to reveal empty sockets.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Her neatly absent eyes give this impression.

Denny Peters

Played By: Barclay Wright

• Came Back Wrong: A pre-death example - while Denny is still alive back on Earth, the ship's recreation of him torments mother Peters with an exacerbation of his disability; then, driving her to the edge with grief-stricken longing, lures her to fall to her death.
• Enfant Terrible: Subverted; a phantasm, conjured by an evil force from an innocent young boy.
• Littlest Cancer Patient: He suffers from an unspecified condition affecting his legs. So, naturally, the ship uses this against Peters.
• Psychotic Smirk: A memorably chilling one on having lured Peters to fall to her death.

Edmund Corrick

Played By: Noah Huntley

• Came Back Wrong: Constantly burned by the fire which killed him.
• Evil Is Burning Hot: A phantasm maliciously drawn from a man who burned to death.
• Foil: Whereas Claire softly claims to be "cold" and entreats her bereaved husband for reunion, a literally flaming mad Edmund Corrick attacks Captain Miller, who blames himself for the lad's death.
• Man on Fire: Having burned to death on the Goliath, his Event Horizon-conjured phantasm has him constantly burning - and able to shoot tongues of fire.
• Vengeful Ghost:
  Edmund: YOU LET ME BURN!!

Other

Rescue Technician

Played By: Robert Jezek

• The Cavalry: Part of the rescue team who attend the Event Horizon's eventual wreckage.