Event Horizon, 1997 - laserdisc

This film is a combination of a few films. Alien, Hellraiser... I think those are the two main influences. People compare this film to those... in a way that makes the story out to be a carbon copy... just changing the scenery a little bit. Even though the comparison to Hellraiser is more than accurate... I think that that is a positive aspect of the film, since Hellraiser is, by far, one of the best modern horror films ever made.

Event Horizon has a ton of things going for it... especially taken in the context of when it was released. By 1997, Sam Neill had given us Dr. Alan Grant in Jurassic Park. And he gave us a great performance in John Carpenter's In the Mouth of Madness. But he didn't explode onto the acting scene. Neill has always been a strong voice, as an actor... giving straight laced performances that are better than most. Taking Event Horizon, he certainly gave us his all in his role as Dr. Weir.

Laurence Fishburne hadn't exploded quite yet... with his Matrix films. Sure, he'd proven himself almost twenty years earlier, in Apocalypse Now. He was incredible in that role... and continued to keep his level of professionalism up. One of my favorite roles of his was in King of New York. He also did great work in The Color Purple, Pee-Wee's Playhouse, Red Heat... Searching for Bobby Fischer... but, I must admit that he took a number of shallower roles as well... which is something that is apt to happen to actors in Hollywood. Especially black actors, since there are so few of them with talent. He is certainly an actor with talent.

Kathleen Quinlan, Joely Richardson, Richard T. Jones, Jack Noseworthy, Sean Pertwee, Peter Marinker... they all did stellar jobs in their respective roles. And all of them have gone on to some pretty solid careers.

Philip Eisner. I think this script was incredibly smart... although, as already stated, borrowed from a few sources. The dialog is pretty fresh, the plot is solid, the characters are very well developed... and he went on to write one other script, for television: Firestarter 2: Rekindled. Not sure what happened... might have lost his ability to write well after Horizon... I thought the writing was very well done, and provided a great blueprint for the production team, the effects supervisors and Paul Anderson, the director.

For some reason, one that I cannot understand, Paul Anderson has gotten a bad rap as a director. His earlier work isn't fantastic. His first mainstream film was the destined to be panned Mortal Kombat. One of the first high profile video-game adaptations (besides Mario Bros.). The video game itself was in full swing all over the world... I think they were up to Mortal Kombat 2 when the film came out... and you have to say that it took guts to shoot a movie that had a budget of $20 million, had a semi-star (Christopher Lambert) and a fan base that was just enormous... hell, the movie cleared $70 million. It was a garuanteed money maker.

Luckily he was smart enough to say no to the sequel.

His first film, Shoppers, is an independent treat with some stars, including Sadie Frost and Jude Law. I've never seen that film, so I can't comment on it... but there must have been something there for him to get Kombat.

Following Kombat, Anderson shot Event Horizon, and proved he had what it took to create a suspenseful and shocking sci-fi / horror film.

Unfortunately, Anderson would follow up with David People's script, Soldier. People's has a very strange career. He helped pen the script that would turn into Blade Runner, with the help of Hampton Fancher. He would write Ladyhawke, write and direct The Blood of Heroes (one of the 80's best b-movies), Leviathan (a very poor copy of The Abyss, Terminator and any other undersea horror film)... and then he would go on to win an academy award nomination for his script Unforgiven.

Then, as if going backwards, he would write Hero... which was a less than stellar film. Twelve Monkey's would be next, an adaptation written with his wife Janet, taken from the french film La Jetee (1962) a short film by Chris Marker.

Soldier is the last thing we've seen from People's in four years. With his back and forth ability to write... I'm looking forward to seeing what he comes up with next.

Soldier was a bad script. The direction of material that is bad... well, it's hard to get out of the loop. You have decent actors (Kurt Russell, Jason Lee), you have the production value, the sets, the visual effects... but if the story is lacking, I'm sure most people would blame the director and writer... but not equally.

This is one of those reasons I don't understand why people don't enjoy Anderson's movies. Mortal Kombat is what it is, a film based on a video game. Event Horizon is a piece of cinematic genius, in my opinion, with some of the best visual effects and cinematography I've seen in a sci-fi / horror film. It's clean, the shots are very well thought out... there are some very clever moments that make this film worthy of continued viewing.

Anderson went back to adapting video games in the 2002 release of Resident Evil. That was a project that had a few directors involved, initially, including George Romero... who would have done that project proud. In addition to directing the film, he also wrote it... taking into consideration all of the things that the fans of the hugely popular video game would need... and created a very cohesive script... again, based on a video game.

This time, though, in regards to story, structure, characters... and budget, Anderson took the sequel. Resident Evil: Nemesis will be written by him and Stephen Monforte (must be a friend of Anderson's or something, because he has no film credits at all) and directed by Anderson as well. Should be a fun movie... since I enjoyed the first one.

One thing I will mention about this film that really took me by surprise was the music. Paul and Phil Hartnoll (of Orbital), and Michael Kamen (who has extensive film experience) created some incredibly atmospheric scores for this film. They worked incredibly well to help the suspense... and I think they did about as good a job as I've heard, in regards to sci-fi scores. I think they were on par with how well the Dust Brothers worked, in the Fight Club soundtrack.

I won't go into the work of Adrian Biddle too much, since I spent some time going over his credentials in his latest film Reign of Fire... but I will say that he did a spectacular job shooting this film. I was blown away by how clean and crisp the entire movie was. Biddle is one of the great DP's of the last twenty years, and I hope he continues to get work that is worthy of his abilities.

All in all, a brilliant sci-fi / horror film, with some great acting, a solid (borrowed) script and some incredible effects. Now all we have to do is see the additional 20 minutes of violent footage that was taken out of the film, to give it an R rating. That, I would love to see.