 Next we're checking out this movie review video. This is for the 1997 release event horizon Now I decided to do this one because it's come up in some conversation I've had with people recently One on the live stream that I did recently Which if you wanted to see it the videos on the channel at the moment and I will be doing more live streams But also there were like two other conversations that randomly came up in so I was like I'm gonna watch it event horizon So when I'm posting this review, it's available on Netflix for streaming So you can go ahead and watch it there. Now, I will say it's been a while since I had originally seen event horizon I'm gonna say probably over 10 years I remember enjoying the film and then I rewatched it literally last night. I'm posting this the day the next day Gotta be honest, I didn't like it nearly as much as I remember it This is one of those moments where I was like, oh, I really like event horizon. That's great And then I watched it again many years later, and I'm like Maybe not so much so I know there's some people probably already strongly reacted to me saying that we're like, oh my gosh Are you kidding me event horizon is amazing because I know it has a cult following and there are some really good things there But stay with me. We'll talk this out. You'll see there are good things There are things I really like about it, but there are things I really don't like about it And I'll explain all that and then of course as usual I want you to put some comments down there, especially if you disagree with my Views on this film because I loved to hear other people's perspectives. Why do you love it or why do you also dislike it? I don't know so Let's get into it though. This is directed by Paul W. S. Anderson. So this was him coming off of Mortal Kombat. Yes the film Mortal Kombat that he directed He had the opportunity to do Mortal Kombat Annihilation, but he decided no to that. He also Excuse me. He also had I don't know if I wrote it down, but he had an offer for something else. Oh, yeah He also had an offer to do the first X-Men film So it was you can do Mortal Kombat 2 Annihilation You can do the first X-Men film or you can do Event Horizon and he chose Event Horizon because he wanted to go with horror He didn't want to have to do PG-13 again. He wanted to be able to go for an R rating So that's why he ended up choosing Event Horizon Also, he liked the script even though he made a lot of changes to the script and I think maybe That's part of where some of the problems come for me personally, but I'll talk about that in a little bit Now Paul W. S. Anderson also went on to do a bunch of the Resident Evil films Actually, I think he may have directed all of the Resident Evil films I believe he's married to Mila Jovovich who was the star of the Resident Evil films Now if you keep that in mind and you watch Event Horizon you can see a lot of the same aesthetics And some of the same kind of set design like things will look a little similar so things feel a little similar So you can tell that working on Event Horizon Anderson took that and applied some of it to Resident Evil so So the the script was written by Philip Eisner now this guy hadn't done a whole lot else He wrote a script for a fire starter to TV series I didn't even know that was a thing and mutant Chronicles. I Don't know. I don't know what that is. So less or no So Sam Neal One of the big actors in this I did a rip I Recorded a review for in the mouth of madness by the way and that's part of what got me thinking originally about doing Event Horizon because Sam Neal is in in the mouth of madness and in event horizon So Sam Neal is a big name in it You know him from Jurassic Park the hunt for red October and in the mouth of madness Which I will say right now in the mouth of madness in my opinion is a better film than Event Horizon Just saying and like I said, I've reviewed for that coming up in a few weeks I think Lawrence Fishburne the best part of this film acting wise There's decent acting in this but my favorite actor in this Lawrence Fishburne. He's a seasoned actor. He's great He always brings it Did a good job. Obviously He's done apocalypse now Nightmare on Elm Street 3 and the Matrix movies that those are the things I like a most for So just some other references Sean Pertwee is in this one And he was in dog soldiers, which I have a review for on my channel. You can check that out He did a good job in this as well. I and I wasn't thinking about him and then he popped up on screen I was like, oh my gosh. It's it's Sean Pertwee I literally Within the past like month or so did a review on dog soldiers. That's cool But then there's also another person who I perked up when I saw and that was Jack nose worthy Now he was the guy who plays Justin in Event Horizon You know the guy who goes into the airlock and gets spit out in the space and like blood all over the place So he was in idle hands, which I really like idle hands, you know horror comedy That is another one. I need to do a review on but when I saw him He has such a recognizable face. I was like, dude, the guy from idle hands. I have to admit I didn't know his name. I had to look it up, but it's Jack nose worthy So the budget on this film was $60 million and in the box office it own in the US box office. It only made $26.7 million. It was a failure There are a few things that I think contributed to that So Paramount actually rushed the filming and editing of this because of delays with the film Titanic they were very very focused on doing with things with Titanic making sure that they put as much effort into Titanic and Event Horizon was kind of a lesser priority And this is one of the very Frustrating things about production companies when they step in and they're just like oh do this film We'd we'd love to sign you up as the director and you as the writer and you as the actors And then they step in and they say well, let us put our hands all over it And we're gonna change what you just did like when they step in and they start making edits and they tell you to rush your Your filming schedule. It's not gonna be the best product. So why did you even hire people? Why don't you just do it yourself? It just drives me nuts when they do that so I think we could have gotten a way better product out of Event Horizon and it is Arguable that there is a way better product of Event Horizon out there somewhere But I don't think we're ever gonna see it I'll talk a little bit more about that in a second first I want to finish this thought about paramount sticking their hands and everything so they rushed the filming and editing They then forced heavy heavy cuts to this film The original runtime was about two hours and ten minutes which for a horror film That is pretty long but depending on what that extra stuff was, you know the cut footage was either lost or destroyed That's the problem And apparently a lot of what was cut out was kind of extra gore now This is frustrating because when I was watching the film last night I kept thinking to myself this needs more gore for the type of film that it is and let's be honest It is a little bit light on story. It needs more gore The other thing is the moments where you do see something gruesome You do see something creepy shocky Shocking disgusting those are the moments where the film shines the most also with the set design set design is amazing And it looks really great cinematography directing is very very good But it needed those gore scenes now the problem was they did a focus group Screening before the film was coming out and a lot of people were put off by the gore I don't know who the hell they got to sit in on this But obviously it wasn't actual horror fans because they didn't like all the gore and Then the studio happened to be there some executives from the studio happened to be there to see it for the first time The original cut for the first time and then they got wrapped in the hole Oh, no, it's too much gore and then that's why they forced these heavy cuts stupid so But apparently one of the producers has actually found a VHS with the original cut on it Now the problem is Anderson hasn't even watched it yet and it kind of seems like from from interviews I've kind of read with him He doesn't really feel like going down that road and going and getting together a director's cut now That's sad because I'm very very interested to know what it was originally like I think it could be a lot better And I think with how much of a cult following it has there's a good amount of money to be made there with a director's cut Maybe people just need to force the issue. I don't know but Let me jump over real quick and actually well, let me figure finish this off and then I'll and then I'll tell you before I talk about the actual movie Do do do so once it actually made it to home video it actually started selling it sold pretty well So the problem was in the theaters, which maybe part of that was a marketing issue I don't know. It's hard. It's hard to tell those things Then then it became a cult cult film Anderson did a large rewrite on the script and and It a lot of it was because he felt like the the script was very much Like the script for alien that it played like that now I can see what he's saying because in the beginning of the film it does feel a lot like alien It looks like it borrows a ton from alien especially with like the the look and feel of the design of The inside of the spaceships very very alien oriented with with how the makeup of the crew how the crew interacts with each other All the things they're doing in there and their roles Yeah, it feels heavily heavily Borrowed from alien now To be honest when I was watching the beginning of it and knowing that I was kind of like You know what with the way that this feels and the way it's playing out because I like the beginning of the film I was like, I feel okay if it goes down that path right now. I really do So I don't know, but I just feel like this was potentially a situation where You had an original concept and then you had the director step in make heavy heavy edits and really change the script up And at that point it's kind of hard to come away with a very cohesive story and a really good script when The original idea just gets turned into something else a lot of times it can end up just not making sense or not coming out well, and I feel like It came out, okay, it could have been a lot worse, but I Want to see what the original script was to be honest So apparently when he was doing the rewrites Anderson actually borrowed heavily from The haunting as well as the shining and he said that he wanted to have the unknown evil that has Mysterious ambiguity to it and you do get that in this film. There is that mysterious ambiguity as to what happened to the ship event horizon and what is this actual evil now, I would argue that We need a little more explanation because while I see you can see how he's pulling from the shining in particular and Event horizons kind of like the overlook hotel There were there were hints and there were talks about the overlook hotel They give you more than what event horizon gives you to be honest like we know about what the shining is We know that it's explained in there that people can have the shining but places can also have the shining So that's more of an explanation and then the fact that the hotel was built on a Native American burial ground Like there's a bunch of that type of stuff that's thrown in there that doesn't exist in event horizon to really Make you understand anything. It seems lazy in my opinion to just be like We'll just keep it ambiguous and a lot of that just seems to be because I couldn't come up with any reasoning I couldn't come up with anything, you know, I don't know. Go ahead comments. I know some people are gonna disagree with that And that's good. That's good. I want to hear what you think so anyway You don't often see a seamless transition to the film From a production company logo. So this is me actually talking about the film spoilers if I didn't say it already All the spoilers because it's an older film Yeah, so you don't really see It's cool because I've never actually I don't think I've ever seen this before when they have like the production company logo come up Then they just like panned up and it goes into space and goes into the film I've not seen anyone do that. It's usually just production logo. Then it fades to black. Then they start the film I like this. We should do this more actually transition in the film from the production company logo. It's cool It's creative. I like that It's a small thing, but you know the shots of space still look good They look great actually all the like space shots from the outside look really really awesome The only one that they really bothered me was the one where in the beginning where they're inside the spaceship And then they pull out the window and their turn like they're slowly turning the camera as they're panning back That actually made me a bit queasy to be honest And I could definitely do without that if they would have just pulled out straight Would have looked amazing would have loved it because like I said all the space stuff It looks great and that's the thing about this film. Like I said, it looks awesome. It is so crisp They did a really good job of bringing it to HD. It looks crisp. It looks amazing The set designs are so very interesting and that's why I think it's fine that they barred barred heavily from Alien especially in this instance for the sets Love the way it looks it looks so good. The only big problem though Well, I'm not a big problem this the computer graphics don't look very good And this is one of those things I talk about all the time if you can do practical effects do practical effects They had a 60 million dollar budget for this you could do practical effects They should have done practical effects because the computer graphics now don't look that good They just don't I will say other films from the same year They're prep their computer graphics do look worse So I was actually a little bit surprised that they didn't look worse But they still don't look good and this is a lesson computer graphics will continue Continue to get better and better and better. So if you can do practical stay with practical that stuff holds up computer graphics never does Even the Marvel films some of the older Marvel films computer graphics aren't looking so good right now The opening ship looks heavily inspired by Alien by the way Yes heavily inspired by alien the inside the outside so I was talking about There's already a very sour attitude about the mission amongst the crew Be and they don't even know what they're doing It seemed like a weird situation where they're just thrown into things and immediately There's just a bad attitude amongst the crew about what's going on. I guess it sets you up a little bit for the The Level of dysfunction that's gonna end up occurring where people kind of like go off on their own and Yeah, they don't work as a very cohesive unit They try to and you know Lawrence Fishburne's character Miller tries to you know corral everyone But it just doesn't work and that is set up early because they have all these issues and terrible morale What about that recording of screaming and monster noises sounds like anyone should go find the ship when they Play the recording and they're like we got this we got this recording though. So we're gonna go check it out It sounds terrible. It's just a bunch of people screaming and it's like monster noises What about that says yeah, we should go check this out with a very small crew and a scientist We should go check this out This is one of those things that doesn't really make sense in the film It doesn't make sense. It would make more sense if they found that recording after the fact Let's do it then that maybe once they get to the outside of the ship And they're already ready to go in they're able to like hack into the computer system and they pull out that audio file That is better that makes more sense to me and they're like while we're already here might as well look into it The design of the ship just looks menacing the event horizon that is it really does with the way it's laid out It almost looks like a very long-necked bat Which also kind of makes me think a little bit of a vulture, which would be appropriate because It's gonna pick your bones clean. You're gonna die and a lot of people do The outside scan of the ship shows trace life, but it's all over the place. They say I think this kind of is set up to indicate That it's picking up the souls of the lives that it's claimed on the ship That's my interpretation of it, but you can let me know in the comments your interpretation of that When they turn gravity back on in event horizon the body that breaks apart that was frozen looks awesome That's one of the coolest scenes in the film by far. It reminded me of the liquid nitrogen face-smashing scene from Jason X But it's it's good it looks great like the whole body just falling down is just Shattering everywhere and there's real texture to it and you can see like all the frozen viscera. It's cool One of my favorite parts of the film So I don't think that we're who is Sam Neill's character would be as abrasive as he is in this film since he needs the crew and This really occurred to me when he was calling Cooper delusional when Cooper You know went in and saved Justin and then you know baby bear, which I'll get to that later When he saved him and he's like this is what I saw and he's telling him and then say and then we're it's just like I think he's delusional like his attitude was terrible He was so abrasive he was acting like he's better than everyone and they were there to work for him I don't think he actually would have been that way because he knows he needs something He needs people to work with him So his his character doesn't feel very believable when it's set up initially just saying The increased co2 levels as an explanation for hallucinations I think is a very good one on this one because it helps to really cast doubt of Are these people just actually hallucinating or is the ship actually doing something to them? And I really do like especially early on to like midway through a film when things are up in the air It's like what is really going on is it a or is it B and you keep going back and forth between it So I like the whole co2 explanation in this film The hallucinations as an immune system for the ship is also a cool concept I believe it's stark who comes up with that and says I think that This is like an immune system for the ship and the ship is alive And it's using these hallucinations to kind of combat these people who have come into it And that's interesting because if you think about it from that perspective They literally latched on to the ship like a virus and then had the people come in Like a virus invading cells in the body So the body the ship is then deploying its white blood cells aka the hallucinations to fight those things off I think that's a really cool concept, and I think that really does work with this film It's super stupid that they call Justin baby bear. Why? Why would you call one of the crew members in this baby bear? And this is one of those terrible decisions in the film It just makes you it takes you out of the film because during these very intense moments where there's very important Stuff going on. They're like come on baby bear. We got you baby bear. It sounds dumb It clashes with what's going on and the whole ambiance and environment of the film It takes people out of it. It's awful. Why is he called baby bear? It's stupid terrible choice There's an aspect of mind control or possession with the ship which I enjoyed You see it best when we're says that they need to open the door when the door was kind of like being beaten in And you could tell like he got kind of blank He got a little bit zombie like and he's like when you'd open the door and he starts walking towards it And then you see once he was tackled while grabbed in his you know half Nelson After that he's he's kind of like, you know grabbing his head and like shaking his head like getting out of the fog of that So that was a cool indicator of the like the ship can invade your brain Not just with the hallucinations, but can kind of control you at times so that's interesting and but maybe I was gonna say maybe it was more so with we're because where was the creator and he was more open to it But it does happen to Justin as well. Obviously when he gets into the airlock. So The scene of weir's wife killing herself is effective, it's a good moment But why is she wearing underwear and a tub? Now so this is one of those things where I understand it was probably a situation where the actress did not want to get Fully nude for it. So there are better ways to work around that and that is she doesn't need to be in a tub to kill herself That's a that's one way to solve that issue. The other one is she doesn't get out of the tub after she kills herself That's another one. So you don't see the underwear It's weird and it takes you out of it when you're like this person's wearing underwear while they're in the tub They managed to take they went to the trouble of taking everything off except their underwear It just doesn't make sense. It's a small thing, but it just kind of bothered me The character of Cooper is too over the top. This character is awful Just awful for the film his joking around and yelling when he gets shot out in the space is Terrible it's laughable. Once again, it messes up the flow of the film It kills the ambiance it kills the environment of the film the whole feel of it because it's dread This is supposed to be a horror film. It's not a horror comedy But if they wanted to put comedy into it, they integrated it very very poorly I know Cooper's character has a lot more of the comedic lines. He yells a lot He's very angry about getting shot in space when he was just like why is this stuff always happened to me? I was like What what are we doing? These are very poor choices with this character. It's a terrible character He's written in the worst way possible And I understand they were trying to inject a little bit of comedy into us But they did it horribly and it doesn't work and it is a big disservice to the overall film in my opinion terrible Miller hitting weird and saying a word after each hit also Awful it's so laughable and corny and just to remind you This is when Miller's hitting weird with like that big pipe and he says this is how he does it you Won't take my crew Why why are we doing this? It's a horrible decision. It's laughable. It's stupidity. It's just like the baby bear thing It's just like Cooper yelling. Why does this stuff always happen to me? You're killing the feel you're killing the ambiance You're killing the story in the movie when you do corny laughable dumb stuff like this and There's a bunch of these throughout the film It's one of my big issues, but it's not my biggest issue with this movie to be honest There might be a hint that Stark would become weird now listen to this There could be a hint in this film that Stark is going to become weird if there was a second film or if the story continues When she comes out of the stasis pod at the end and Cooper is trying to hold her after she has that terrible nightmare That's exactly what happened to weir the first time he goes comes out of stasis in the beginning of the film But it's I forget what character it was because she died relatively early ish The other female crew member not Stark He came a weir came out of the stasis He had had that terrible nightmare and she like grabs him is like consoling him So it's literally the same situation, but it's stark instead of we're this time So it makes me wonder if that was kind of a subconscious like set up for If there's a second film event horizon comes back and it's stark who is focused on and not you know Instead of we're because we're gone at this point Just a thought I feel like the movie has no real development. There is not really any developed characters Don't develop in this film. They're very one-dimensional in my opinion They do make attempts at some backstory like quick flashes of backstory like the one character with her son Obviously we're with his wife who who committed suicide, but they don't take enough time for that It doesn't feel like it matters all that much. It's just a quick thing that they throw in there There's not much backstory. You need it a lot more back story Especially for the character of we're needed a lot more back story and there needed to be development in people and there was Pretty much no development with any characters So it feels like a stagnant film a very stagnant film So honestly because of all that because and because there's not a whole lot of an explanation To anything that goes on it leaves me in the end having this feeling of so what? What is the purpose of what I just watched so what is it just entertainment is the story? You were trying to tell meant to have some sort of impact because it doesn't really play that way It's just not They should have spent more time with the script is my point Maybe they shouldn't have changed the script as much as they did in the beginning Maybe they just needed some more time with it to tweak things. I don't know, but it doesn't really work that well for me Yeah So some other things about it the set design like I said set design cinematography look great I cannot emphasize that enough. It is a beautiful film to watch Aesthetically super pleasing and that's what I like most about it. Sorry talked about the CG not holding up, but not holding up It could have been a lot worse There's not much downtime. That is a positive about this once things actually really start going There's not a whole lot of downtime it moves moves moves moves moves and so it does keep you engaged So that's another big positive of the film It plays like a haunted house film in space pretty much so I'm not huge on haunted house film So maybe that's a part of why I don't like this movie all that much Although I love the shining which could be considered kind of a haunted house I see the strong connection between with the shining event horizon is a lot like the overall hotel They even did the blood water scene, you know, like the gushing blood like in the shining They have coming out of the elevators. They did it in event horizon. They took it I guarantee that's where it came from guaranteed because it's very similar Where that big like water tank fills up with blood and then it just breaks and gushes forth Guaranteed it was taken from the shining So wanted to leave people with this little bit of information if you're interested and I am kind of interested in this based I mean, you might find it weird because I've talked some crap about this film But in 2019 just last year Paramount was in talks with Amazon to create an event horizon TV series for Amazon Prime Now this would be helmed by Adam Wingard who's the director of a horrible way to die You're next the VHS films the Death Note live-action version which I've heard is not that good and Apparently Godzilla vs. Kong which will be coming out. So That's another thing I want people to comment about what are your thoughts about getting a an event horizon series I would be interested in that because I would like to see what someone else would do with it to kind of update it There's a lot of potential material there If you take some of the bare bones of what was set up with event horizon You can make something awesome and once again like I said I want to see what the original cut was because maybe the original cut was a lot better And it kind of fleshed out some of the things that I felt were missing for me. Just saying But alas it seems we're probably not gonna get that director's cut unfortunately But you know if people get on social media and call for it enough and call up Paramount and say Where's that director's cut of event horizon? Maybe they'll get on it. I don't know So anyway now comes the hard part because I feel very conflicted on this film There are things I really like like I talked about there are things I really don't like about this film as well So it makes it hard for me to rate it but out of five stars with half stars in play. I Think I'm going to give it Two stars I'm between two and two and a half part of me wants to put it directly in the middle because I do feel Conflicted and it's like there's really good and there's really bad I think Ultimately because the story in my opinion is so lacking I think it's got to go down to the two instead of the two and a half So sorry, I know a lot of people probably disagree with me on this rating, but that's what the comments are for let me know Thank you so much for checking this out. Do me a quick favor though hit that subscribe That's your best way to encourage me to keep doing this stuff I'm not making money or anything You can do the thumbs up if you've already subscribed to say hey, I'm still watching and good job on stuff The other thing is if you're gonna do the subscribe also hit the notification bell That way you not only know when I'm putting up my next video But you also know when I'm gonna be doing live streams because I'm gonna do those and they're gonna be kind of ad hoc from For now for now, I'll schedule some at some point But for now they're just gonna be kind of whenever I feel like I have time so do that for sure And the comments, but thanks for checking this out and until next time keep it brutal