When this happened, Paramount returned to Anderson and requested a "director's cut" of the film, only to discover that the fully-finished-but-edited-out 35 minutes of the movie had been improperly stored (in an abandoned Transylvania mine, no joke!), and subsequently had become entirely too damaged to be usable for a new edit to take place.ĭespite all that, Event Horizon still holds up to this day, and what it lacks in originality - aside from The Shining, you can't help but also see shades of Alien and Hellraiser - it more than makes up for with visceral horror and the kind of unique aesthetic you just don't see anymore.
Event Horizon became a massive success on home video. as does often happen with films that aren't properly appreciated initially, it happened with everything from Anchorman to The Shawshank Redemption. When the film was released to poor reviews and bad box office, Paramount blamed Anderson, Anderson blamed Paramount, and the world continued turning. Paramount demanded cuts be made, and with everyone's back against the walls, the final product runs at 95 minutes, which Anderson was reportedly very unhappy with. This resulted in Anderson delivering a rush-job on the first cut - coming in at 130 minutes - and early test screenings had audience members reportedly fainting at the amount of violence, which - if the current cut is anything to judge against - is almost understandable. They wanted a hit in their pocket before they released Titanic, which at the time was scheduled for release in September 1997 (eventually pushed back to December), and they were convinced that massively expensive romantic disaster film was going to be a major loss for them. This is a pretty high concept idea, and Anderson manages to pull it off admirably, right up to the gore-heavy final act which has Doctor Grant from Jurassic Park pull his own eyes out, and then somehow put them back in.īefore he had even finished filming, the folks at Paramount were cutting back on the amount of time Anderson had to edit the finished movie, as they would not budge from the release date of August 1997. but seems to have come back imbued with an evil sentience. A spaceship is capable of travelling through a particular dimensional portal goes missing for a number of years, but then returns one day without warning. While Event Horizon borrows many elements from classic horror films such as "The Shining" and " Hellraiser" it's story is essentially a much darker and gorier version of Stanis³aw Lem's novel " Solaris." Event Horizon was panned by critics when it was first released in 1997, but has been steadily gaining appreciation by both movie go-er's and critcs since then due to it's intricate camera work, special effects, and generally being ahead of it's time.The one-line description of Event Horizon is "The Shining in space", which is actually pretty apt. It is later revealed in the movie that the "Event Horizon" was using an inter-deminsional travel device to go to a far corner of the universe, something went horribly wrong and the ship literally went to "hell" and the ship has become a living being bent on using it's rescuers fears to destroy them. Anderson after his first two films "Shopping" and "Mortal Kombat." "Event Horizon" is set in the year 2047 and tells the story of a rescue crew that has been dispatched to retrieve the derelict space-vessle, the "Event Horizon." After spending time aboard the ship, it's rescuers begin to have hallucinations and other various deleriums. "Event Horizon" was the third film directed by Paul W.S.