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If you’re looking for a film to get you good and spooked for Halloween, you can’t go wrong with Event Horizon, the 1996 sci-fi horror directed by Paul W. S. Anderson. The spooky atmosphere, the gore, the violence, the senselessness of the horror, the simultaneous claustrophobia and agoraphobia of a vast, cavernous spaceship in Neptune’s upper atmosphere all add up to provide a unique experience. But more important to us is the existential meaning of such horrors as the movie has to offer.
Event Horizon was released in 1997, as the end of the 90s was beginning. We are now far away enough from that decade to have some historical perspective on what it was, what it entailed, and what it wanted to be. You’d do well to read Travis LeBlanc’s “Life at the End of History” if you haven’t already, and re-read it if you have. The long and short of it is: the 90s were the decade where there were no big worries and all we had to do was keep going until the end of time. Material conditions were good and would keep improving, technology was advanced and would keep advancing, the world was logical and predictable. The basic maxim of the decade was that the great historical dialectic had ended and it would be smooth sailing from now on.
Event Horizon is a film very much of its period. The introductory scenes where we meet the crew of the Lewis and Clarke rescue vessel are all 90s. Laurence Fishburne portrays Captain Miller, providing the black authority figure politically correct America has craved since the early 80s. His second in command is Lieutenant Starck, a white woman, because the film is set in 2047 and the future is female. The white woman has some sexual tension and banter with the very black rescue technician Cooper, but nothing more serious than that. Sam Neill portrays Dr. William Weir, who will later become the film’s villain. Rounding out the crew are the young and very white ensign Justin, the English trauma specialist D. J., and the white and female medical technician Peters. Their hairstyles, their clothes, their interpersonal dynamics, and the interior decoration of their vessel, the rescue ship Lewis and Clark (a problematic name in our day and age) all scream 90s. No sleek iPod-like surfaces here, only the rugged computers emblematic of that decade.
We see a world where the 90s never ended, or at least extended into the 2040s. We see a rationalistic, materialist world with concrete, practical issues, and problems to be solved such as colonizing Mars, asteroid mining, and developing faster-than-light travel. We see cool and calculating Captain Miller make reasonable decision after reasonable decision in an almost automatic manner. We follow the crew of the Lewis and Clark through their ionic drive procedures and listen to Dr. Weir’s lecture about the faster-than-light travel drive of the Event Horizon. We see the very 90s fascination with theoretical physics which arose in the wake of A Brief History of Time and majestic imagery of Neptune and its moons Triton and Nereid. 1989 was still not so far away, and the glorious pictures taken by Voyager were still able to excite the imagination. Compare and contrast to the gloomy and dull Neptune from Ad Astra. There has been a marked shift in how our civilization perceives outer space in the 22 years between Event Horizon and Ad Astra. Space was the final frontier in the 90s, where we would expand. An oft-repeated liberal canard was the need to overcome our divisions and “explore space.” Bill Hicks, a saint of nihilistic, Gen-X Leftoidism, was particularly capable of loading that expression with a sense of smug superiority. Nobody thinks about space travel these days except Elon Musk and delusional nostalgists.
The Lewis and Clark rescue vessel is dispatched to determine what has happened to the experimental Event Horizon space ship which is testing out a drive for opening wormholes as a means of faster-than-light travel. The ship disappeared 7 years before the start of the film and has now reappeared in degrading orbit around Neptune, skimming the ice giant’s upper clouds. Dr. Weir is taken on the journey, as he is the designer and architect of the Event Horizon and her experimental drive. They dock to the Event Horizon, which appears to be part cavern, part Gothic Cathedral, part medieval dungeon IN SPACE! The very architecture of the ship incites to fear and evil. What’s interesting is that the ship may be alive.
You can buy Greg Johnson’s Graduate School with Heidegger here
Sounds like a pretty straightforward haunted house story, but IN SPACE! Right? Possibly. But the setting is not a horror movie setting. It’s a remarkably hard sci-fi setting. Like I said earlier, the universe of Event Horizon is a universe where the 90s never ended, where all the big questions were answered, when all that’s left for humanity is to expand, fungus-like, across the infinite universe. It’s a universe of practical problems demanding rational solutions. And all of a sudden, out of left field, a crew of remarkably competent and rational rescue specialists find themselves stranded on a spaceship which has been to literal Hell and back, and brought some of Hell back with it. Material reality is pierced and materialist realists are confronted with the age-old problem of evil.
Now, contrary to what the New Atheists would have you believe, the problem of evil isn’t just something you use to BTFO Christians in online discourse, but a serious question of ethics, theology, philosophy, and other big-brained disciplines. Now, Christianity here has a series of theodicies, which are answers to the problem of evil, and so do all religions. But the nihilistic materialism characteristic of the 90s is one of the very few worldviews without an answer, no theodicy, not even a puny little anthropodicy or sociodicy. Even the crazy liberal SJW so mocked by the skeptic community, the contemporary intellectual descendants of 90s nihilism, have an answer for the problem of evil: white men did it. But whence comes evil in a materialist universe? Does it even exist?
Evil, genuine evil rudely inserting itself into a neat and orderly materialistic universe is like the literal boogieman manifesting himself in the middle of an Indian summer day and disrupting the barbecue. This guy wasn’t supposed to exist. Why is he now overturning the tables and pouring the beers out into the creek? Oh, God, he’s going for the cake! Not the cake!
Yes, the cake. And not just the cake. Your children too. And while we’re at it, why not inflict rape, mutilation, murder, and obscure Latin phrasing upon you as well? One of the harshly criticized aspects of Event Horizon is the excessive gore, but it serves to drive home the totality and senselessness of evil. Genuine evil will not stop at pouring the beer out in the creek, or murdering one man, or raping one woman, or bombing one children’s hospital. It exists to inflict torment, anguish, fear, and pain for their own sake.
The happy-go-lucky 90s were rudely derailed by two events that reinserted History and the problem of evil into the American zeitgeist.
The first was internal: the Columbine High School shooting, where REB and voDKa went on to play Doom in meatspace, apparently for the lulz. The materialist worldview tried to explain this event away. They tried to medicate it away. Spree shooters are now more — not less — common, as medication is more — instead of less — common, and besides, Harris and Klebold were themselves medicated. “No, no, the boys were bullied.” This has been proven false over the years. In fact, Harris was himself a bully. The sheriff investigating the matter resigned himself to impotently asking “why.” I have a neat answer for ya: evil. But we can’t shoehorn that explanation into a materialist worldview. And so Columbine shocked America.
The second event was a certain happening in Lower Manhattan that may or may not have inspired an Israeli dance party. Yes, I’m talking about September 11th, 2001, when radical Islam (with or without Israeli support) slapped liberal modernity in the face and erected itself as an opposing idea that was yet to be defeated in the great dialectic of history. The one-two punch of Columbine and 9/11 shook America out of its complacency, though sadly, the result was first full-gas-in-neutral messianic Neoconservatism that wore out its welcome pretty fast and was replaced with self-destructive antiracism and woke-ism in the second Obama term.
Event Horizon foreshadowed the impotence of materialist society to deal with pure evil. Every decision made by characters in the film leads to more suffering, more pain, and more death. This is because the living ship has entered their heads and is warping their perception of reality, with the ultimate goal of inflicting unspeakable suffering upon them. . . for the lulz, I guess. The film’s end hints that all of the efforts of the courageous black captain may have been in vain and that the evil is with the survivors.
Event Horizon was panned by critics and flopped commercially because it told a story that nobody wanted to hear. That the story was well-told and its aesthetics were very much of its time did not matter. Nobody at the beginning of the end of the 90s wanted to hear about evil. They doubted it even existed. This was a culture that took the Oklahoma City bombing in stride. But whether they liked it or not, Event Horizon foreshadowed the deep, dark evil that would burst out into the world in the sunset of the decade. The Trenchcoat Mafia and Al Qaeda barged into the barbecue, overturned the tables, poured the beer into the creek, ate the cake, and then proceeded to remind everyone present that evil exists in ways better not described here. Event Horizon, a masterfully-made box office bomb with a 28% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, was the prophetic and unheeded voice in the wilderness.
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36 comments
Interesting theme aside, the film is objectively bad. Dialogues are boring and all characters are too close to stock. You could look at Aliens and the Thing for how you can draw interesting characters even when you’re using some stock.
Event Horizon is an interesting idea, poorly implemented. Since the idea is basically lifted from Warhammer 40k (my apologies if it’s the other way around, but I can’t see how, as Chaos was a well-established faction by 1996-97) I wouldn’t have given this movie a positive review either.
40k is 80s and greatly precedes event horizon.
I watched the movie based on the rec of someone at this site, and I hated it(which is unusual for this site of course.) it just about the usual suspects torturing these people they are after. I got nothing else out of it but silly and macabre. It doesn’t flesh out or explain its premises at all. I played 40k. That may be the connection.
Almost all movies are about this. I watched The Swimmer, which is in contrast a well done movie with something of literary heft. But it’s only about this business man they were after and how they reduced him from a lavish New England lifestyle to penury and then they all come out and put him down at the end. The doctor boy is the little flautist.
40k didn’t get fleshed out until the early 90s.
Just watched The Swimmer and I see what you mean. Interesting, they made the Jewish characters some of the most despicable in the film (Buswagers were Jews, I reckon); meanwhile the guy who looks like an Italian in the public pool scene is the most likable. The douche Buswager simply shoving Meryl down without repercussion, looks like a victory strut on their part; while the pool scene, when the WASP does something similar to the Italian-looking kind heart, is meant to convey that “Meryl deserved it, goy because that’s how he does things himself, goy!”. Notice that Meryl never gets physically aggressive to anyone else except the person who helped him the most.
Thanks for the recommendation! I wouldn’t have watched past the first 40 minutes of late-60s cheese otherwise.
Yeah, it’s based on a John Cheever short story. You picked right up on what I meant. What you would never believe is that I think the Meryl character is based upon a true person and all these things were really done to him.
Chaos grew out of fantasy battle, as all the 40k stuff, correct? I played mostly fantasy, but chaos was there in the early 90s for sure. I may get a 40k army. I was looking at the space marines the other night. Weird how so many readers like war hammer here. Definitely 120+ readership.
I read that Warhammer’s creators admit to having lifted the Chaos concept almost unaltered from British speculative fiction author Michael Moorcock. I’ve read one of his “Elric of Melnibone” books and found it entertaining. As a fellow WH fan, you might enjoy it.
Be warned that politically, Moorcock identifies as an anarchist. But I think his understanding of anarchism is closer to Ernst Junger than Peter Kropotkin — the hero Elric is an aristocrat and an Emperor. There’s plenty for Big Brain Rightists to like here – I picked up on Nietzschean, Heideggerian, and Platonic themes.
Yeah, it’s in dnd too. The cosmology and metaphysics of fantasy were created as a kind of group endeavor in the American twentieth century fantasy tradition. Each author played on the other a little bit. Moorcock got the chaos/law dichotomy from Poul Anderson’s Three Hearts and Three Lions, actually.
So I ordered the “Ultramarines: A Warhammer 40,000 Movie on Netflix. This was based on your recommendation. When I went to their portal they had some advert for a woman marine movie. I’m really tired of all these ultra-PC things being put out by Hollywood these days. You’d think they must be losing $ eventually.
By the way I loved the Event Horizon movie. Not everything can be “Aliens” and also EH goes into the technology of space travel which the Alien series completely avoids.
I can recommend watching “Hellsreach” on youtube for an amazing 40K experience. Also the “Astartes” short film is one of the best Space Marine depictions available tbh.
All similarities between this movie and 40k universe are incidental. That being said, its’ quite fun, that two independent works happen to share such themes and still happen to be perceived as related to each other. Gothic design, omnious latin phrase, warp travel and the encroachment of Ruinous Powers upon ship’s very body could make this movie into a Warhammer spin-off with some few adjustments to the script and crew characterization.
Those images, that were flashing during the final clash with the antagonist, could be used to explain how the chaos realm of Slaanesh works. “Where we’re going, we won’t need eyes to see”
It should be pointed out that anyone prone to nausea induced by constant circular motion, 3d games, certain amuse park rides etc may find it difficult to watch this film.
I figured that out after the first three or four opening sentences of the post, though I am curious about the story, and what actually happened. However, I learned years ago these sorts of movies were not for me, and I assigned my avoidance of them to ‘protecting my psyche’. I first experienced it dramatically after seeing “Jaws”, and being unable to sleep at all for three nights. Same with that movie about 3 or 4 guys on a fishing trip down a river in the South — can’t remember the name — I had nightmares about that one. But I finally got wise when someone took me on a date (!) to see “Platoon” — how bad could it be, it won an Academy Award, right? I walked out after the first five minutes. I’ve also experienced it with books — Lovecraft novels, which I had heard oodles of praises about, come immediately to mind, as does “Heart of Darkness”, which is considered great English literature. Good grief — who in their right mind goes down the Congo River in a rickety old tramp tugboat to rescue some old guy that everyone agrees is insane. That whole book is insane! I think maybe it’s a ‘woman thing’, but not necessarily, because many women just love horror stories. Or maybe it’s an inborn DNA thing. I’ve never figured it out.
I believe the movie you are thinking about is “Deliverance” starring Jon Voight and Burt Reynolds. Speaking of evil…
A finely crafted article. Even as a college kid, I knew at the time that the whole “end of history ” idea was bullshit.
It is odd how we had that brief little time of budget surpluses and could draw down the military for lack of any major threat, and then surprise! Back to decades of conflict in far corners of the world. And the chance to get the budget under control was forever lost.
It’s almost like there wasn’t a single adult to take responsibility in DC for the social security/Medicare budget bomb that we had all known was coming.
As an objective lesson, one could take the past 23 years of governance in the United States and conclude that representative democracy is a stupid way to run a country.
Representative democracy that does not represent whites, in a white country, THAT is a stupid way to run a country.
Not all of us missed the rather obvious trends that were already under way at the time. America was turning dark and alien thanks to mass Third World immigration. The culture was being Africanized and coarsened. The 90s were when “rap”—which for a few months I honestly thought was called “crap music”—arose. It happened because Jewish music executives and critics finally managed to push it onto the mainstream after years of trying. At the same time, sodomy became fashionable, legally sanctioned, and placed above all criticism. These happenings were magnified by the disgusting Clinton administration being in charge of the country. Anyone who thought America had a bright future when it was nominally under the charge of a vile shabbos goy like Bill Clinton was myopic indeed. We are talking about an individual who used his two Supreme Court appointments on Jews (one of whom the Notorious RBG—may she RIP—roast in perdition) and who had an all-kosher National Security Council, who bombed the Serbs for defending themselves against Moslem supremacy, who crowed at a university commencement—and was loudly applauded for it—that the future of America was non-White and that it was “un-American” to oppose it.
The 1990s were not an era of good feelings. Rather, they were when the United States became the odious entity that it is today, the foremost enemy of the White race and all that is good and decent.
The trends were underway. My recollection was a technological hopefulness, but of a definite suspicion of the government and rampant conspiracy theorizing. Ruby ridge, Waco, the federal building bombing were all emblematic. The zeitgeist expressed itself in art like Xfiles, the matrix, dark city, etc.
The neocons want an aggressive foreign policy in order to keep us on war footing. The logic is something like “if we bombed the Serbs for something as trivial as this, then we definitely have to bomb Iraq and Iran for that, right?”
A small but notable detail I remember from this film is that all the characters have their national flag on their uniform’s shoulder. Sam Neil’s character is, like the actor, Australian. The Australian flag has been modified in this timeline to replace the British Union flag with the Aboriginal black, red and yellow banner.
F- that. Always some jackass film maker.
The way things are going the Union flag itself will likely get replaced by an African one (or the Rainbow flag).
England’s flag — the St. George Cross, a red cross on a white background — is not allowed to be flown in public anymore, nor sold in tourist shops. I saw a few being flown defiantly in backyards in the suburbs and farmlands, while traveling through on the trains, but they can’t be hung in windows in the city nor on public building s’ flagpoles, which sport only the British Union Jack.. The reason for this? It offends the Moslem immigrants, who ‘remember’ the Crusades. How close are we to allowing that here?
St. George’s Cross, on the English flag offends Muslims? It should be flown more often.
That’s almost as good as attendees at Chuck Schumer’s pressers now shouting routinely: “Jesus loves you!”
Sam Neil is actually a New Zealander, though he was born in Ireland.
This film came out the same year I started playing 40K. I remember watching it on a movie theater with a cousin of mine who had just watched it the day before.
I enjoyed it, though I remember thinking that things were moving too quickly to properly savor them. Looking back it seems to be some proto-40K setting, when Humans first become aware of the Warp.
I noticed, a few years ago, how the aesthetics of the computers and ship interior is similar to the ones from The Matrix. Again, that 90s thing about functionality and rationality. The eternal futurism and optimism that ended with the death of the millennium.
Turns out there were no spaceships and flying cars after the year 2000: only navel gazing and censorship.
The review is better than the film, and really good; yes, the late 1990’s really did feel that way, with all of the caveats introduced by other commenters. One of the interesting things about getting older is watching eras that you yourself lived through become “history”, with all the falsification, overgeneralization, and simplification that entails. My parents contempt for the misrepresentations of the “histories” of the 1940’s and 1950’s they had to live with makes a whole lot more sense to me now.
Can’t believe the 28% rating. One of my favorite movies of all time. Scary as hell. Check out Critical Drinker’s review on YouTube. He agrees with me.
I agree that the film was great. Cosmic horror has always been my favorite. The idea that beyond the known universe or in a parallel dimension exists some type of chaotic evil has always fascinated me. I guess that’s why I took to the writings of Lovecraft and have always been a horror buff in general. I wonder if there is a certain personality type that makes ones prone to this or if it is fostered when you are young somehow?
Much of the negative ratings tell more about the reluctance of the movie critics’ and surrounding culture to accept the message of Event Horizon. It is telling that such an unsuccessful movie has become a cult classic and is enjoyed 23 years after its production.
The Critical Drinker is great. He’s how you do right wing content on YouTube without being banned. Dissidents could learn a lot from him.
Definitely.
Even though it HAS been overdone, the theme is the pure irrationality, suprarationality or infrarationality of evil. Event Horizon shows what happens when Guenon‘s Great Wall is cracking. By the way my favorite Sam Neill film, In the mouth of madness being a close second.
Anyone on here read Sutter Cane?
Talking Pictures recently showed a 1979 British heist movie “Sewers of Gold” (aka “The Great Riviera Bank Robbery”). Ian McShane is our hero tunneling into a bank in Nice and we, the audience, are expected to be rooting for the gang. But here’s the thing: McShane is a neo-fascist! We’re expected to be cheering on fascists!
The film-makers had no choice as “Sewers” is based on the true story of ex-OAS man Albert Spaggiari’s break-in at the Société Générale bank in Nice, France in 1976. They don’t downplay the right-wing motivations either: a meeting takes place under a swastika flag and a portrait of Hitler, and the purpose of the raid – to finance the smashing of The Reds – is repeatedly mentioned. There is even no attempt made to portray McShane and his gang as delusional. He’s just a committed idealist.
This must be the only British or American film ever made that portrays fascists in a non-judgmental way and so is worth watching (IMDb rating 6.3) for that novelty value alone.
One for Trevor Lynch to review!
Here’s the trailer . . .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJYGWde1BU8
The ending of the film is proper foreshadowing for everything post-90s. A White woman in her underwear (In The Future, everyone wears regulation space panties and sports bra) backing away from her White rescuers into the arms of a black man, who casually gropes her breast to comfort her.
The 2009 film Pandorum (with a 90s script) is a spiritual sequel to Event Horizon with a more realistic premise. Overpopulation causes one last “space shot” because Earth is a goner. Those on the ship are all that’s left. Problem is, space is just like the sea. Spend too long out there, you go crazy. The principal cast is majority white and the bad guys are crazed cannibalistic “tribesmen” who have overtaken the ship during deep sleep. The end offers hope for a White future.
Naturally, the film bombed in theaters.
Event Horizon is only worth rewatching for the visuals and Pandorum is only worth watching for the plot. It’s notable for being the true end of an era. In the same year, two other space films would come out – the multiculti Avatar and the unimaginative sanitized obviously Jewish Star Trek reboot. Since then, Disney has monopolized the space racket, turning it into little more than a theme park ride. Given the alternatives, maybe going space-crazy isn’t such a bad option.
Yes, Pandorum is also worth a watch. As you say, Pandorum has an intriguing premise with good plot twists. Never saw the ending coming – a complete surprise.
Pandorum was a genuinely good movie suffering from the same problem as Event Horizon. The materialist mindset cannot hack the idea of the vastness of space driving men insane, which I suspect comes from not knowing the world. I vividly remember the craziest I ever felt was when contemplating up close the vastness of the Sahara desert.
Ascetics in the early centuries went into the desert to confront their demons. Perhaps you should have stayed and done battle.
Different strokes for different folks : I found contemplating up close the vastness of the Arabian desert soothing. But then I only stuck around for a few days as it was insufferably hot.
Infernally hot now I think of it . . .
Re “The materialist mindset cannot hack the idea of the vastness of space driving men insane” : Maybe “Ad Astra” had a stab at that theme with its conclusion that we’re all alone in the universe and need to accept it. (Brad Pitt could have lightened up a bit and his having daddy issues was a distraction.) And wasn’t Blaise Pascal’s “The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me” an odd thing for a Christian to say?
Too many numinous blacks, I won’t watch. I watched it when it came out, and immediately forgot it.
“Supernova” was another disgusting science fiction movie promoting miscegenation and numinous blacks.
Isn’t it pronounced “Pandemonium?”
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