Event Horizon (1997)

Grief is probably the most complicated emotion you can feel. You normally hear about love and how it can make you feel a whole gamut of emotions, but grief is powerful. It can make or break you completely. 

Unfortunately, our family seems to have been pulling the short straw in the grief department for a little while now. Last year we lost our grandma, the matriarch of my dad’s side of the family and one of the most important women in my life. It was hard and it was horrible to say goodbye, but she had reached a great age of 96. I got to have many happy moments and memories with her, but my grief was for the moments I won’t get to share with her: my wedding, hopefully children etc. All of that hurts, but I can take comfort in the good moments. That’s utilising grief in a powerful way, in my opinion. Reframing you might say. It’s trying to look at the positive side of things and use that to forge your path ahead. 

There’s also an alternative side of grief. A grief that feels all consuming, one where fairness doesn’t come into the equation and you can’t quite believe what’s happened. We’ve faced that grief this year in losing both my uncle and my brother in law. Both passings deeply unfair, too early and incomprehensible. I’m still grieving for both of them but this piece is more focussed around my brother in law, Scott. 

Scott is my sister’s husband. He heroically and stoically battled against a rare and aggressive form of cancer over the past 18 months. He underwent chemotherapy and multiple operations but ultimately lost his battle. It’s cruel. It’s devastating. It’s unfair. It’s heartbreaking. That’s just how I feel, a guy who’s known him for just over 18 months. I can’t even begin to imagine the pain my sister, his family and his close friends are all suffering at the moment. To quote the magnificent film you see before you, “Hell is a word, reality is much worse”. Beautiful, but bleak. 

We said farewell to Scott in a traditional church setting, something I think he usually would have swerved, but I think a religious element brings comfort to some. I hadn’t been in a church setting for quite some time, so in amongst the grieving it was interesting to hear the priest’s sermon. My sister had picked Tonight, Tonight by The Smashing Pumpkins as the entrance song. A great song for a great man. The priest had, fairly obviously, never come across the song before and he explained that when my sister had sent it to him as part of organising the service, he listened and felt it reminded him of Jesus. A comparison I was not prepared for and I did think to myself, “that’s a huge fucking stretch.” However, that’s absolutely his prerogative. 

I’ve written a lot already so you may be thinking, what the fuck does this have to do with the critically panned Event Horizon from 1997? Well, for me, I had a completely different experience watching this film this time around and it’s changed my interpretation. In his last few weeks, Scott told me that his favourite horror film was Event Horizon. I laughed at first because I’d only watched it once before and I’d come away thinking it was a total clusterfuck. I remembered a messy, nonsensical and ridiculous sci-fi film. I couldn’t understand why it had the cult following it did, but I knew I’d rewatch it at some point. I didn’t think it would be in memory of my brother in law though. 

Event Horizon was famously an extremely troubled production, plagued by studio interference and edit room issues leading to box office failure alongside a critical panning. Pitched as a haunted house on a spaceship, the artist formally known as Paul Anderson (he’s now got a fancy WS middle initial) expected a longer period of time with which to edit and finalise his film/vision. As a benchmark, directors in America are usually given a contractually stipulated 10 weeks to edit a film because of the gravity of the work involved. In the end, Anderson got 4 weeks. Those outside impacts hugely hampered his final product but despite that, it has since become universally loved with a huge cult and mainstream following. 

Now, I’m not a man of god or any other organised religion, but some of you might see the direction this is going…

If you’re reading this, I’d assume you’ve watched Event Horizon already. If you’ve not, please stop and go watch it immediately. If you have, you know it’s essentially the story of a group of people who travel across space (and time) to find Event Horizon, a vessel that disappeared 7 years previous, after a distress signal is received. Thematically, it ponders god, science, human nature, grief, family and the nature of horror. On this watch, it hit harder. That’s a lot to get through in a 96 minute Summer blockbuster. So far, I’ve painted a picture of the troubled production and the lofty themes which doesn’t lend itself to this being a good experience. However, there is so much more to the messiness and chaos that clearly surrounded this film. 

Yes it’s got the shit 90s CGI for the space ship and the bits of tat floating around Event Horizon, as well as the questionable moment Cooper is lost to space and then makes a stunning return. The abrasive studio cuts and patchy story line are akin to sitting in the passenger seat of a multi car pile up. Is Laurence Fishburne’s character Miller, inexplicably wearing a Belgian flag necklace? Are there more unanswered questions and plot holes than answers? Fucking hell. That barely scratches the surface of the experience. Are the characters fleshed out skeletally? Yes, the characters are bare bones. The only real character background we receive for the great Sam Neil (as Weir) is that he’s grieving for his wife. This time though, I did think “is that not what grief is?”It’s all consuming and everything else goes to the side.

In work, I often talk about reframing. This reframing view of Event Horizon portrays a film that throws everything out there. The sets and costumes are stunning. The horror, when it hits, hits harder than 90% of horror films. It makes me desperately sad that we’ll never get the Directors Cut because the footage has degraded.

Now, I’m not clever enough or a good enough writer to link this all together more poetically, but I think that lends itself both to this film and the emotions that come from losing loved ones. It will be extremely messy. Your views and feelings might change day-to-day or watch-to-watch. You will be battling all kinds of external and internal parties. Sound like the production of Event Horizon?

What you can do, is try and look at things differently or reframe things. You might not get the time you deserved. You might not get the end result you wanted. In that immediate aftermath, you’ll have a whole range of emotions, but normally it’s going to be overwhelmingly sad, angry and lost. Time can help that. Sound like the reappraisal of Event Horizon?