They Get The SPACE… MADNESS!

Why did I make this comic? Event Horizon is neither recent, nor topical, nor good, nor not terrible. I’ll tell you why [I’ll teach your grandmother to suck eggs]. It came on TV a few days ago and I, having not seen it in over a decade, remembering it was awful, but not remember exactly WHY it was awful, watched it in its entirety. It was then that I learned the dark secret of the movie about a spaceship that takes you to hell. The movie itself does the same thing.

For the first 5 minutes or so, it seems like you’re going to get some decent, self-contained sci-fi, then almost immediately and with no provocation everything turns bat-tits and the ship, which is also the Devil [spoilers] shows everyone creepy visions until they kill themselves or each other. Luckily the movie seem to give you a blue print for how to escape its life-suck field by constantly showing you people that have mellon balled their eyes out. It’s an easter egg that says, “Want to escape with your will to live in tact? Well pluck our your eyes and run a crossbow bolt through your ear canal like a toilet snake.”

Funny T-Shirts, Geeky shirts, Doctor who parody shirts, Team Edward James Olmos shirt, Groverfield Shirt, Sci-Five Star Trek Parody T-Shirt in The HijiNKS ENSUE Store

The HIJINKS ENSUE STORE Is where you can buy stuff that I made! It supports me and my family and keeps this littler operation going.

The only thing I was able to enjoy about Event Horizon was figuring out who the “before they were kind of famous” supporting cast were. The ship’s crew consisted of the mom/wife from Nip/Tuck, Lucious Malfoy, the kid from Mtv’s Dead At 21, the FBI dude from Terminator: TSCC (who seemed to be doing a fairly spot on Denzel impression the entire time) and a lady who I kind of remember from Prison Break.

If you haven’t seen Event Horizon in a while, or ever, PLEASE do not make any attempt to change that. You will seriously be carving off chunks of your own face before it’s over. Instead, maybe go check out Pandorum. It’s got the same creepy spaceship vibe + maybe there’s a monster, maybe just a killer type of situation and, in my opinion, it’s executed really well for a fairly low budget space-horror flick.

COMMENTERS: Is space-horror a genre now? Other than the ALIEN franchise what other films fit? I suppose 2001 does. The Predator and AVP franchises probably qualify more as action than horror. Something to think about.

Speaking of Event Horizon, my friend Corn Mo made a damn fine rock and roll song about that terrible sack of space-shit. Here’s a VIDEO for it.

Speaking for Corn Mo, if you like A Gamge Of Thrones and songs, he has gone to the trouble of combining them for you. Two great tastes that taste bleek and ominous together! Video HERE. Buy the song HERE.

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60 Comments

  1. I'd actually been debating whether or not to watch this movie again earlier today. Looks like you made the decision for me…eh, I was due for a trip to the optometrist this year anyway.

  2. I haven't watched it for maybe a decade but I remember it as a pretty good movie actually. At least I'm sure it was much better than Pandorum. Maybe I should watch it again some time.

    • Your memory plays you false. Pandorum had its issues, but as a movie it was far superior. (As SF, well, we don't judge haunted-house flicks by the quality of the house's architecture, do we?)

      I can see why Space-Horror has become a genre, though. With your standard-issue slasher flick, you have to figure out why the heroes don't just go somewhere else and call the Ghostbusters or somebody. If you're aboard a spaceship, however, there's nowhere to go, and nobody who can help you in time.

  3. I took the wife to see Solaris a few years ago (before we married, IIRC) – the version with Clooney. I thought it could be ideal – eye candy for her and proper SF for me.

    Oooooh how wrong could I be. It was far and away the worst film I had ever seen in the cinema; and the horribleness of the last 30 minutes was made worst by the expectation of the inevitable – and completely justified – verbal slapdown my partner was going to give me for wasting two hours of her life.

    If you haven't seen it, please, for the love of all things holy, don't.

  4. I very much like Event Horizon. You don't. One of us in this equation has been taken over by some sort of space-monster-intelligence. I don't think it's me.

  5. Space horror is one of if my favorite genres. Filled with gems like Pitch Black and Mission to Mars, and terrible terrible movies like Red Planet and Supernova. Also a good shitty movie from it is Ghosts of Mars, which features the great acting talents of Ice Cube and Jason Statham, and cg from high schooler. Oh and how dare I forget Doom.

    • Red Planet was WAY better than Mission To Mars, if only because it didn't take itself seriously. Neither one is good, but Val Kilmer knew it, so he was just having fun being Val Kilmer fighting a robot space monkey. But the guys making Mission To Mars thought they were making something meaningful, so it came out boring and annoying.

      That said, I wouldn't call either of them space horror, more space adventure/mystery.

      I do love a good space horror movie, though. Pitch Black was excellent, and Supernova was terrible. Haven't seen Ghosts Of Mars. Doom was awful, though. I really liked Sunshine, even if it felt a little schizophrenic. I wish Event Horizon had been better, because I really like the idea of a haunted spaceship.

  6. Sunshine does the claustrophobic, creepy, things-going-wrong-on-an-isolated-ship thing justice, though the ending is a bit OTT for the rest of the film. Should probably turn off your science brain for the main idea though, which makes the project from The Core seem achievable in comparison.

  7. I remember seeing it in the theater, & staring at the screen at the end, going "What in the holy FUCK?!" to myself. It made no sense back then, & still doesn't to this day. Far as I'm concerned, I'd rather spoon-feed the Cloverfield monster the entire House of Representatives, than watch that movie again.

  8. I was trying to decide if Sunshine was a space horror film or a space suspense film. Then I realized that was probably splitting hairs as neither genre is really that large.

    Jason X was set in a spaceship. Does that make it a space horror film?

  9. Event Horizon has turned into a running joke in this household.

    Ever since we watched it, I can´t see Sam Neill somewhere, without going all "Oh My God he´s going to kill them all!", no matter what the movie or the part is.

  10. You are all forgetting the best space horror ever: Jason X

    I know it scared me. I went to bed that night terrified that anyone would actually MAKE that movie, and knowing…just knowing they were still out there, and if they did it once, they could do it again at any time!
    ~shivers~

    • I just noticed someone DID mention that movie before me. how'd I miss that?
      I shall now hang my head in shame.

      so…uummm…replace Jason X in my above post, with that one Leprechaun movie that took place in the future/space.

  11. The Easter Egg alternate ending of this movie should be the ship making the Tardis sound as it fades in and out while being piloted by Smith (Sean Pertwee)…..just saying.

  12. Space-Horror's been a thing since Lovecraft started doing it in the Twenties. It's just /indie/. *hipster pose*

    … On a less douchey note, yeah, movies like Alien (fantastic as is certainly is) have been shown to be at least heavily H P Lovecraft-inspired, and several genre critics point to him as being the first to create "Science Horror" as a genre. Although Event Horizon just sounds like SyFy Channel Movie Event Horror.

  13. Event Horizon is simply a horror story set in a sci-fi setting. They have the flickering lights, the "storm" outside, the creepy long hallways, the whispers in the dark, etc. It was the production company making the trailers make it seem like a sci-fi adventure was the problem. It set expectations wrong. I never actually saw any of the trailers, so I actually enjoy the movie to this day! Then again, I also like Judge Dredd…

  14. i fekking love event horizon. possibly because i first saw it while i was writing a paper on black holes. possibly because of no reason at all. giggity. i also like alien resurrection, but mostly because it gives me a giant lesbian-boner.

  15. My favorite part of this entire thing is the ginormous ad for Cover Girl mascara currently on the right side of the screen.

    And now my eyes are twitching.

  16. I actually love Event Horizon. I saw it when I was a kid and it scared the ever-lovin' bejesus out of me. We watched it during a sleep-over at 3AM during an epic storm. Yeah, it doesn't really stand the test of time, but it gets that covetted place in the nostalgia part of my brain where no argument can make me hate it.

    Oh, and a bit of trivia: it's commonly accepted that Event Horizon takes place in the ancient history of the Warhammer 40K series.

  17. I actually saw Event Horizon in theaters with a friend and it scared the shit out of him and I. Say what you want about the construct of the movie but the imagery is very disturbing and the movie was suspenseful.
    Also wasn't one of the last Hellraiser movies in space?

  18. I saw Event Horizon in the theater with some friends but on the way there my stomach started feeling a little strange. After about 10 minutes I got and went to the bathroom where I expelled most of what I had recently eaten. Suddenly I was feverish and kind of crazy feeling. I was sweating everywhere but I had not driven and we'd all paid for the movie so I decided not to make my friends leave. I spent the rest of the movie drifting in and out of consciousness. I remember bits and pieces, the scooped out eyes, some bloody guy hanging from something. Halfway through the movie I managed to stumble to the lobby and call work to tell them I wouldn't be in that night. Then I returned to the theater for more drifting and confusion. In a weird way it was the most interactive movie experience I've ever had.

    I never managed to see the movie again. I've been tempted a few times but I just feel like noting about it could compare to the strange insanity through which I viewed it the first time.

  19. I liked Event Horizon….but then again, I love Weekend at Bernies 2….there is something wrong with me I think. Also, has someone been into the Ren & Stimpy recently?

    • Ren & Stimpy FTW! Also, I think the first South Park ep w/ the Christmas Critters borrowed a bit from Event Horizon, as Wikipedia would have you believe

  20. I love how shocked everybody is that the ship turned evil. It’s like, “Did you not see the corridor of spinning blades? Or the spikey room? Or the medical bay that looks like it was ‘too evil’ for Doom 2?”

    In fact, I posit that the only reason why it still wasn’t in hell was because the demons kicked it out for being “too intense”.

  21. I remember my wife and I going to see Event Horizon in the theaters with great anticipation. We're both fans of good horor and I love SciFi so it seemed like a promising mix. And the "ghost ship" is a classic, well loved theme. But a theme Event Horizon fails at. The makers of this film didn't understand how horor works, you cant just have a bunch of random bad things happening to some people you don't really care about for no reason other than some malevolent force wants to. You have to make us care about the people, you have let it build, you have to uncover the atrocities slowly, you have to have a mystery (other than they threw a switch and went insane). The ship went to Hell? Show us clips of that in video logs. Going to Hell made them insane? Why? Were they possessed? By what? Something came back with the ship? What is it and what does it want?

    I understand what they were trying to do, it's true that the evil unknown you don't see can be scarier than the bad thing you can see if it's done well. Witness the original The Haunting vs the terrible 1999 remake. But if it's nameless and faceless it needs personality and a coherent purpose. The Alien had very little screen time but you know it's an alien, it's a badass (but hates fire so you have hope) and it wants to eat the crew. You don't know what the force in Event Horzon is, you don't know what it's limitations are (and so you never feel the crew has any real hope) and you don't know why it does what it does other than simply being evil. Once you're over the shock of the imagery there's simply nothing to really hitch your emotions on.

    I hate Event Horizon mostly for it's wasted potential. "A ghost ship returns from Hell" could have been awesome.

    Pandorum, on the other hand, was a pleasant surprise given our low expectations.

  22. i do NOT do horror movies, because i'm a big sissy wussface. i went to see event horizon thinking it was just a scifi movie and BAM! GOUGED OUT EYEBALLS AND CRAZY BLOODY SHIT EVERYWHERE! i was traumatized and had nightmares. then when the matrix came out, i was sitting in the theater and during the scene where trinity sucks the bug-thing out of neo's stomach i seriously looked at my bf and said "this is just like event horizon! fuck you for making me see yet another horror movie in the guise of scifi awesomeness!" but then of course the matrix was not scary, just scary awesome.

  23. I watched the Special Feautures, in which you can see two ingenue directors basically explain that they had no idea what they were doing, got steamrolled by the producers, and–in a kind of subtext–are very sorry. Sort of funny and sad at the same time. They had a much better movie in their head than the one that got made, and I believe them when they say that they were forced to wrap well before they were actually done. A common story, I think, but it's unusual to see it laid out so clearly.

  24. I get the impression that "Apollo 18" (the movie, not the album) is supposed to be "space horror" also. Not really my thing, so I don't plan to see it. Based on the reviews so far, they may have had a stated goal of making something as bad as "Event Horizon."

  25. Pitch Black was awesome but was advertised incorrectly to draw people to theaters. Rule #1 – don't give the story away in the damn trailer. And I wish they hadn't sullied its greatness by making The Chronicles of Riddick.

    I think I've seen both Event Horizon and Pandorum… was Event Horizon the one where for no reason at all, the kitchen cupboards got taken over by some book from one of the guy's childhoods? Whichever one that was, I saw it.

    • I would recommend against watching it. I like both horror and science fiction, but I found myself completely unable to suspend disbelief while watching Event Horizon. And the plot moved very slowly, for very little payoff.

  26. If you like terrible space-horror, you'll LOVE Dracula 3000. Not Dracula 2000 (which is a whole 'nother can of worms), but Dracula 3000. As you probably guessed from the name, Dracula's in space. With Coolio. And Casper Van Dien. I don't even think I need to say anything more, here. Oh wait! Sex-bot. There. *That's* all I'll say. Oh, and Udo Kier. Obviously.

  27. I watched Event Horizon this summer and just WTF'd the entire way through. I really enjoy bad B-movies, but this was just awful. However, I'm glad I saw it so I never have to again.

  28. I really liked Event Horizon. I agree it could have been better but I still like it.

    On the subject of Horror/SciFi I watched "Priest" last night. Imagine "The Searchers" crossed with "Equlibrium" with added vampires and made by a director who didn't understand the subtext of either film.

  29. Okay, Event Horizon had one good point going for it: Jack Noseworthy

    Yep, that was it. One cute guy that never takes his shirt off and gets blown out an airlock.

    And I agree that video from the log of the ship being in Hell would have enhanced the movie.

  30. I get that Event Horizon maybe wasn't the smartest sci-fi ever, but it scared the crap out of me when I watched it the first time back in '97. Then, when some friends said they hadn't seen it in like '04, we watched it again and it was still scary as crap! Just as the movie ended, one of my friends went to the bathroom, and another guy snuck up to the door and banged on it once REALLY loud. He jumped 3 feet and peed alllllllll over the place (it's funny cause it wasn't my place so I didn't have to clean it). 😉

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