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Dom Robinson reviews
Paramount
- Cert:
- Cat.no: PHE 8039
- Running time: 92 minutes
- Year: 1997
- Pressing: 2001
- Region(s): 2, PAL
- Chapters: 17 plus extras
- Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1, Dolby Surround
- Languages: 4 languages available
- Subtitles: 10 languages available
- Widescreen: 2.35:1 (Anamorphic Panavision)
- 16:9-Enhanced: Yes
- Macrovision: Yes
- Disc Format: DVD 9
- Price: £19.99
- Extras: Trailer
Director:
- Paul Anderson
(Event Horizon, Mortal Kombat, Shopping)
Producers:
- Lawrence Gordon, Lloyd Kevin and Jeremy Bolt
Screenplay:
- Philip Eisner
Music:
- Michael Kamen
Cast:
- Miller: Laurence Fishburne
Weir: Sam Neill
Peters: Kathleen Quinlan
Starck: Joely Richardson
Cooper: Richard T. Jones
Justin: Jack Noseworthy
D.J.: Jason Isaacs
Smith: Sean Pertwee
Burning Man: Noah Huntley
launched to explore boundaries of
solar system.
She disappears without trace beyond the
eighth planet, Neptune.
It is the worst space disaster on record. 2047Now…
Event Horizonstarts where the above prologue ends. A signal from theaforementioned craft has been detected and the United States Aerospace Commandresponds. Hurtling toward the signal’s source are a fearless captain(Laurence Fishburne), his elite crew and the lost ship’s designer(Sam Neill).
Their mission: find and salvage the state-of-the-art spacecraft. Beforereaching the ship, Sam Neill tells the crew of the rescue ship, Lewis & Clark,about the Event Horizon’s most important feature – a gravity drive, whichenables the ship to pass from one point of time and space to anotherinstantaneously by briefly joining these two points up for long enough to passthrough. Naturally this is met with scorn, but as events begin to turn the shapeof pear everything gets as bizarre as is possibly imaginable…and then some.
The film has been dubbed ‘“The Shining” in space’, which gives you a fairdescription of some of the problems the crew are due to face, although itborrows elements from a number of films including that one, Alien,Hellraiser, Poltergeist and many other sci-fi or supernatural thrillers.There are, however, a few plot-holes and silly moments throughout the film,such as the crew’s periodical hallucinations all of which serve to create thestrange spectacle on display.
All of the cast are not the sort of people you’d normally associate withsci-fi nonsense, but they do well to carry the material from start to finisheven if it isn’t designed to make perfect sense.
The stand-out cast members are Sam Neill and to say his character has a hidden agenda is an understatement; plus British actors JoelyRichardson – who provides what babe quotient there is – and SeanPertwee, who thinks everything can be carried out with a cocky attitude.
Also in the cast are Jason Isaacs who features in the summer 1998 hitArmageddon as one of those boffins who knows ‘everything abouteverything’ in a five-minute potted version of his role here, while TV soapopera Emmerdale‘s Noah Huntley has a cameeo as “Burning Man” (!)
Sam Neill never learned *not* to hug the ship’s angry cat.The picture quality of the disc is excellent. Sharp detail and vivid coloursbring the special effects, be they models or CGI, to life and the anamorphic widescreenframing of 2.35:1 replicates the original theatrical ratio. Quite how anyoneis able to make sense of such a weird film in fullscreen format is beyondbelief.The average bitrate is a high and fairly steady 7.20Mb/s.
The sound is also perfect. Explosions aplenty, dramatic ambience, MichaelKamen’s score, plus The Prodigy’s “Funky Shit” all blend together to providean aural assault on the senses. At first I didn’t think that The Prodigy orthe fast-paced opening music fitted in well with the film, but then followingShopping and Mortal Kombat, director Paul Anderson wasnever known for his subtlety. Dolby Digital 5.1 is available in English andGerman, while the Czechs and Hungarians are relegated to Dolby Surround only.
The disc needs more chapters with only 17 spread throughout the film itself,the only extra is a 2-minute 16:9 anamorphic trailer, the menus are silent and static andsubtitles are available in 10 languages ;English (and hard of hearing), Arabic, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, German,Norwegian, Polish, Swedish and Turkish.
PICTURE QUALITY
SOUND QUALITY
EXTRAS
OVERALL
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.