Event Horizon (1997)

Director: Paul WS Anderson
Starring: Laurence Fishburne, Sam Neill, Kathleen Quinlan

Synopsis:
An experimental spacecraft thought to be lost years ago reappears and a recovery team is dispatched to find out what happened.

Impressions:
I've been hyping this movie for quite a while now, so it's high time I review the dang thing. I actually hadn't seen it again since the first time and really about the only thing that's diminished in the intervening years is the CG effects, which are very much 90s vintage. The practical stuff is quite good, though. I've called this the real Hellraiser in Space many a time and you can really tell with the eponymous ship's gravity drive, which definitely gives off the vibes of the Lament Configuration's infernal architecture. The cast works really well and as something I've been missing in a lot of recent scifi, they get established fairly quickly and set a good dynamic. I like how the ship works on the characters' minds. The atmosphere is really great and the buildup is executed quite well. Scifi horror seems to miss more often than it hits, but I'd say this is the best example of the sub-genre this side of the original Alien. If scifi horror's your game, it's worth having in your collection or giving a watch at the very least.

Rating:
Own It