YMMV / Event Horizon

• Cult Classic: Despite it bombing at the box office and being torn to shreds by critics, Event Horizon went on to have a strong following on home video and cable TV, and various platforms that came after.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Despite having a rather small presence compared to most of the cast, DJ is well-liked for Jason Isaacs' tormented performance and his gruesome death.
  • Starck is also liked for Joely Richardson's intelligent and composed performance, so it comes as a bit of a surprise that she has somewhat limited screen-time despite managing to survive.
• Epileptic Trees: The final shot of the ship's door closing ominously has many fans pondering about what it's meant to represent.
• Fanon Welding:
  • The movie is considered by many (starting with the community over at /tg/) to be a Spiritual Prequel to Warhammer 40,000, as its storyline coincides perfectly with that setting's history and nature of hyperspace. This isn't enough of a connection on its own to make the instant jump to one particular crossover, but the style and presentation match so well with Warhammer 40k that it's a shock for anyone who watches the movie based solely on this idea to learn that resemblance isn't intentional. Supporting evidence seems to hinge on the film's version of hyperspace bearing a remarkable similarity to what happens to a ship without a Gellar Field.
    • A Warhammer fan who's never seen this movie would easily mistake screen captures showing the horror elements for Chaos at work, right down to the villain's various different looks. The fact that the mundane parts are all dark and gritty helps.
    • Dark, gritty, covered in corpses, Spikes of Doom! and Meat Moss. Don't forget that.
    • Not to mention the "technogothic" architecture, which is all too similar to the Imperium of Man's aesthetics. Especially toward its voidships.
    • And then there's the Gravity Drive having what looks very suspiciously similar to a Chaos star. If that wasn't enough, several of the Hellish symbols and icons Weir inscribes in Medical from DJ's blood are just as similar to Chaos runes.
    • /tg/ even jokes that Event Horizon is a "documentary" of humanity's first trip into the Warp, and that, as (very disturbingly) supported by the Captain's Log, Slaanesh was who (what) they made contact with (ran into) on the other side.
  • Another segment of fans see Event Horizon as a Hellraiser film. Weir even transforms into a Cenobite for the same reasons that other Cenobites were created: from regret, pain, and loss.
  • Good Bad Flicks considers Pandorum (which was produced by Paul W.S. Anderson) a loose sequel of this movie, theorizing that after the wormhole technology proved to be dangerous, humanity decided to invest in the realization of space arks like the Elysium. He also points out that both films are horror-oriented stories that deal with space madness, and that both films have a visual style influenced by Alien.
• Heartwarming Moments:
  • The relationship we see between the members of Miller's crew throughout the movie. From the affectionate nicknames they give each other, to their easy camaraderie and the way they look after each other, it's clear that they all genuinely care for each other and love each other like a family.
  • Miller risking getting sucked out of the depressurizing bridge to save Starck.
    Miller: I'm not leaving you!
  • Even though it doubles as a Tear Jerker Miller sacrificing himself at the end to save the rest of his crew.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • A lot has been made of Interstellar using the same visual demonstration of "folding space" as Weir.
  • Jason Isaacs' appearance in Star Trek: Discovery. Not only does he play the captain of a starship that features an experimental FTL drive, but said starship ends up jumping dimensions through said experimental FTL drive. And just like Event Horizon, the dimension the Discovery ends up in is far from pleasant...
  • Before being Vindicated by History, upon release critics bashed Alien describing it as "just a haunted house in space" ... Well, here's a movie that not only is influenced by Alien, but it's that description played straight.
  • Laurence Fishburne's Capt. Miller briefly talks about having served on the ship "Goliath" in the past. Come Ant-Man and the Wasp, Fishburne's Bill Foster once worked on Project G.O.L.I.A.T.H. In the third act of the film, he also says (to his adopted daughter Ava), "I'm not leaving you!"
• Jerkass Woobie: Weir, at least before crossing the Moral Event Horizon. He isn't that friendly and is too focused on the science of the mission despite the risks, but he also lost his wife to suicide, feels responsible for her death, and is still in mourning, as well as being unsettled by some of what they come across.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "Where we're going, we won't need eyes to see", usually just shortened to, "Where we're going, we won't need eyes."
  • The smartest thing said in a horror movie.^ExplanationMiller's reaction to seeing the footage of what happened to the previous crew ("We're leaving") is notable for averting the general stupidity usually displayed in horror movies. Him also saying that he intends to vaporize the ship with TAC missiles, complete with his verbal condemnation of the Event Horizon ("Fuck this ship"), is also cited as another such moment where he averts horror movie stupidity.
• Moment of Awesome: Miller's Heroic Sacrifice, where Weir screams at him, "Do you see? Do you see? DO YOU SEE?!" Miller grabs the detonator and tells him, "Yes. I see." and then sets it off.
• Moral Event Horizon: No Pun Intended considering the title of the movie, but Weir is The Woobie dealing with crewmates who have a mutually tense Scientist vs. Soldier vibe with him — but then he deliberately crosses the Moral Event Horizon by refusing to let the others leave because he has nothing to live for anymore.
  Weir: You can't leave. She won't let you.
  Miller: You just get your gear and get back on the Lewis & Clark, Doctor, or you'll find yourself walkin' home.
  Weir: I am home.
• Narm:
  • Weir's scream when he sees his eyeless wife at the end of the nightmare sequence "oooOOOOAAAAAAAH!" can come off as laughable to some. Sam Neill is a great actor, but being a scream queen isn't his thing.
  • There's nothing too ridiculous with Miller's hanging captain's chair aboard the Lewis & Clark. But it becomes pretty awkward during the difficult approach to the Event Horizon, when a dead-serious looking Laurence Fishburne sits on this chair that is being dangled like a punching bag during an otherwise tense scene.
  • Despite being incredibly terrifying and very well done, the final battle between Weir and Miller still uses rather silly stock sound effects for each punch. It wasn't so much a problem in 1997, but in today's world you hear the effects in almost every modern Flash animation or cheap cartoon. One almost expects to see Batman (1966) style speech bubbles saying BIFF! and POW! accompanying each hit.
  • Also, the fact that a blink and you miss it cut of Weir kicking Miller shows Weir's junk. This could have been avoided with a more judicious choice of camera angle.
  • The moment near the end where Weir is revealed to have lost his eyes is initially creepy... but it quickly comes across as absurd due to Sam Neill's delirious smile, his huge appetite for the scenery throughout the whole sequence, and the mere fact that Weir is completely unaffected by the small issue where he's missing his freaking eyes. Cooper's quipping and cursing when he arrives on the scene doesn't quite complement the horrific imagery, either.
  • The interior design of the ship can be this for some. Sure, it looks scary with its spiky, techno-Gothic appearance, but then you wonder just why the hell someone would design a spaceship to look like that.
  • The camera quickly zooming in on Weir as he lets out a Big "NO!" when Miller sets off the explosives to blow up the ship is amusingly over-the-top.
  • Justin's scream when he's pulled into the core is rather lengthy and comical and suggests a far more lighthearted adventure than this will become.
  • The decision to play "Funky Shit" by The Prodigy over the end credits, which in no way fits the movie we've just watched.
  • In the final scene, Cooper's dialogue is very obviously dubbed on after the fact; not only do his lips not move but the quality and reverb to his lines is clearly different to the medic standing right next to him.
• Nausea Fuel:
  • Shiploads of it. Let's start with the ship's log and the images Weir shows Miller. Special mention has to go to the scene where Weir vivisects D.J., then leaves his gutted body hanging there for Miller to find.
  • Peters's hallucination of her quadriplegic son with rotting, sore-covered legs.
  • The Hell visions of Smith, Peters and D.J. being dismembered and literally left to rot on Spikes of Doom. Peters (who is bloodied and dismembered to the point of non-recognition) even has maggots crawling in her wounds.
  • A real life example of Gone Horribly Right. Andersen and the rest of the creative staff intended this to be a major factor and proceeded accordingly. Unfortunately they did far too good of a job, resulting in negative test screenings (as in several people in the test audience outright fainted) and the footage being heavily edited.
• Older Than They Think: The movie The Dark Side of the Moon (1990) already tackled the idea of a spaceship becoming infested by demons from Hell.
• One-Scene Wonder: Captain John Kilpack, a.k.a the guy that shows us his eyeballs during the "Blood Orgy".
• Signature Scene:
  • Two scenes, which are well known for being extremely violent and disturbing even after being cut down to achieve an R-rating:
    • The "Blood Orgy," where the Lewis and Clark crew discover the fate of the Event Horizon's crew on a video log where they graphically rape and kill each other, a scene that is infamous for being heavily cut down to achieve an R-rating and still being horrifying.
    • A close runner up is the finale dubbed "Visions of Hell," where Captain Miller fights a demonic and naked Weir and is shown horrific hallucinations of his crew being killed and tortured.
  • Also, partially featured in the trailer, is Justin's space walk without a suit.
• Special Effect Failure: Some of the CGI is glaringly obvious, particularly the objects floating in the Event Horizon's corridor in zero gravity at the beginning.
• Spiritual Adaptation:
  • An anime OVA from The '80s named Roots Search already contained a spaceship in a rescue mission finding a derelict ship in which a supernatural presence lurched. Said presence would follow them to their ship, where it would kill their crew with visions of their worst fears, one of them even having a vision of his dead lover (whose death he caused) bleeding on a bath, another being mind-controlled into jumping to space (only for him to wake up moments before his death), and the last one claiming the presence to be an emissary from God (with other characters discussing whether it was God or the Devil). If by this point one isn't convinced that Anderson was obviously familiar with the OVA, even the ending was suspiciously similar to Event Horizon's.
  • This movie is also considered to be an unofficial adaptation of the Warhammer 40,000 franchise, or at least a prequel that focuses on humanity's early experimentation with Warp travel (see Fanon Welding).
  • Doom fans see it as a Spiritual Licensee, and many fans consider this movie more like Doom to the actual Doom movie. It wasn't called Doom, but it was rather faithful to the background story of the game, which was that some scientists in space were experimenting with teleportation, and they created a portal, but instead of taking them from point A to point B, it led straight to hell. And hell's army comes out of the portal and threatens to doom our universe. That's the plot of the movie Event Horizon to a tee, made in 1997. Even the teleportation trip in the movie accidentally breached Hell, releasing all sorts of nastiness when it comes back. There even exists a rather popular Game Mod for Doom 3 that's based on this film.
  • Dead Space could be seen as one to this film.
  • Some see the movie as a de facto Darker and Edgier remake of the Disney space horror flick (yes, really) The Black Hole, which also features a spaceship encountering an abandoned Gothic vessel and a mad doctor obsessed with traversing a black hole and ultimately ending up in Hell.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: DJ is one of the better developed crew members and has a good Badass Boast when Weir goes rogue, but all he gets to do in the climax is suffer a fatal Curb-Stomp Battle at Weir's hands.
• Values Dissonance: This 2047 crew sure has a 1997 view of smoking.
• Vindicated by History:
  • The film was a critical and commercial bomb when it was first released, but contemporary reviews have been much kinder, naming it one of the scariest films ever made and comparing it to John Carpenter's The Thing (1982), another Sci-Fi Horror film that was poorly received at first, but been regarded more favourably with time. Learning that it was utterly butchered by the producers also helped people go easier on the film over the years and make them crave for a more complete cut, which sadly cannot be compiled anymore.
  • According to IMDB, director Paul W.S. Anderson screened this movie for the cast and crew of his later film, Soldier, before they began work on that. Kurt Russell (who starred in the aforementioned The Thing) told Anderson, "Forget about what this movie's doing now. In fifteen years' time, this is going to be the movie you're glad you made."
• Visual Effects of Awesome:
  • While some of the CGI is rather dated, the film is notable for using a fair bit of practical work for the spaceships and gore. Special mention goes to the design of the Event Horizon sets, the Gravity Drive, and the sequence where Justin goes into the airlock, which used a practical effect for when his veins start to erupt in his arms with minor bits of digital enhancement.
  • Weir's scar prosthetics. They took anywhere from seven to eight hours to apply, and it certainly shows.
• The Woobie:
  • Justin. "If you saw what I had seen, you wouldn't try and stop me."
  • Dr. Weir, before he crosses the Moral Event Horizon.

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