Event Horizon Blu-Ray Review

Posted by Shawn S. Lealos on 01.06.2009

Before he became the most hated man to film geeks everywhere, Paul W.S. Anderson made at least one great movie. How does its Blu-Ray debut stand up?

Directed By: Paul W.S. Anderson
Written By: Philip Eisner
Cinematography By: Adrian Biddle
Music Composed By: Michael Kamen

Cast
Lawrence Fishburne ... Captain Miller
Sam Neill ... Dr. William Weir
Kathleen Quinlan ... Peters, Med Tech
Joely Richardson ... Lt. Starck
Richard T. Jones ... Cooper
Jack Noseworthy ... Justin
Jason Isaacs ... D.J.
Sean Pertwee ... Smith




The Film

Paul W.S. Anderson has pretty much established himself as the untalented Paul Anderson. This sentiment of public opinion comes based on the fact that before there was Uwe Boll, Anderson was the most hated man in the video game world. Thanks to Boll’s hard work at releasing poorly shot and unintentionally funny video game adaptations, Anderson has proven to be the least of gamer’s fears.

His first foray into the video game arena was a fun, action packed adaptation of Mortal Kombat. With that start, you would assume Anderson would be a solid choice for adapting games but he angered an entire legion of Resident Evil fans when he created that film. He continued his alienation of geeks when he made the unsatisfactory Alien vs. Predator and proved to be one of the most hated directors to kids everywhere. But it wasn’t always this gloomy.

In 1997, Anderson directed his second feature film, following the success of Mortal Kombat. Event Horizon was a hybrid horror science fiction film, similar in style to the original Alien. A space crew, led by Captain Miller (Fishburn) takes a scientist named Weir (Neill) aboard and sets out to find the wreckage of a ship lost years before called the Event Horizon. When they reach the ship, they find no survivors and a distress signal that their engineer D.J. (Isaacs) believed said “Save Us.” Once they board the ship, they find something is dangerously wrong with it and end up fighting for their lives.

Unlike his later work, Event Horizon remains nuanced horror film with some very good jump scares. It also never cheats the audience and delivers very disturbing scenes with a satisfying end. The acting is great, with star performances by Jason Isaacs, Sean Pertwee, Sam Neill and Lawrence Fishburn. Anderson pulled some great performances from these veteran actors.

He also directed it quite well. The movie looks beautiful. There are great camera movements, the sets are magnificent in scope and the scares are timed right. There is also good comic timing in the scenes where it is utilized. I am surprised he would garner the hatred that would be geared towards him after watching this movie. I would say he should attempt to avoid adaptations and remakes and go for original material but it turns out this is adapted from a short story, so maybe this is just an anomaly. He proves here he can be a good director but hasn’t ever returned to this level since.

The movie has some problems. There are a few too many jump scares. I don’t know if they thought by overloading the jumps we would be surprised when something really jumps out at you, but it was too much. There is also a scene where one of the crew began to get sucked into space and immediately began to lose blood and die. However, at another point a giant window burst out everything began to get sucked into space. The problem is that Captain Miller was being sucked into space and not only did he not start to decompose but he also regained the strength to fight his way to safety. It was a ridiculous moment in an otherwise great ending.

The Video

The video quality is great, in 1080p, 2.35:1. From the start it is obvious the colors look magnificent and the video is crisp. This entire movie looks clean and the entire interior of the Event Horizon ship itself looks incredible.

The Audio

I am not entirely happy with the audio transfer here. It is presented in Dolby TrueHD 5.1 but the sound is not level. The dialogue is low and the sound effects are booming and loud. The sound effects need to be closer to the dialogue. It’s not bad, just a bit distracting.

The Packaging

The casing is the typical Blu-Ray case with the exact same art from the Collector’s Edition DVD. The Blu-Ray seems to hang up and stall at points when navigating between menus, which is something I have never had a problem with before.

The Extras

Commentary by Director Paul W.S. Anderson and Producer Jeremy Bolt - They start off addressing one of my complaints by saying they used the opening text because they might not have paid enough attention to the script in the start. You learn something every day. One of the crew says everything is five by five. The only time I have heard that before was on Buffy the Vampire Slayer with Faith. Apparently, it is military term. If you already knew that, cool, but I didn’t and thought I would let others who didn’t know the origin of the term in on the big secret. There are points where the two men stop talking and watch the film, so that gives us lots of silence and short responses.

The Making of Event Horizon (1:43:01) - This is one hell of a long featurette but gives loads of information. The first thing I noticed is how young Anderson looked during this feature. He speaks at great length about his influences including Robert Wise’s Haunting, Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining and Ridley Scott’s Alien. These influences explain a lot of the shots Anderson chose in the movie and that might explain a lot about the quality of this film compared to his others, if he was simply aping better filmmakers here. Anderson comes off as very intelligent and passionate here.

The Point of No Return: The Filming of Event Horison with Director Commentary (08:12) - Anderson discusses the making of several of the scenes from the movie. It is footage of the shooting of the scenes with Anderson explaining how they shot them. It is really fun and informative watching them shooting the scenes. This is the kind of stuff I like to see in the extra features.

Secrets with selectable Director Commentary (10:03) - You can watch this either with or without commentary from Anderson. There are three scenes, either deleted or extended. In includes a scene that starts at the beginning where Weir is told about the Event Horizon reappearing before he joins the crew sent to salvage it.

The Unseen Event Horizon with Director Commentary - There are two features here, both with Anderson commentary. The Un-Filmed Rescue Sequence (02:57) is the first. It is conceptual art while Anderson explains the scene. The rescue sequence would take place before the crew sets out to find the Event Horizon, showing them rescuing people on an earlier mission. The second feature is Conceptual Art (03:52) depicting early design ideas for Event Horizon, also with Anderson commenting on their placement in the film.

Theatrical Trailer HD - This is the only special feature in high definition. The trailer mixes footage of the film with “Voice Over Guy”. It’s actually a pretty decent trailer and, unlike a lot of horror trailers, gives nothing away.

Video Trailer - This trailer includes dialogue from the movie but uses rapid fire editing and techno music to sell the movie. The theatrical trailer was good - this one sucks.

The Film: 7.5/10.0
The Video: 10.0/10.0
The Audio: 6.0/10.0
The Packaging: 7.0/10.0
The Extras: 10.0/10.0

The 411: Event Horizon has the significance of being one of the only good films in Paul W.S. Anderson’s filmography. Looking at this movie it is sad that he became the hated man he would because he shows lots of talent and skill here. The acting is top notch and it remains a very scary, almost nihilistic horror film. As with all of Paramount’s recent Blu-Ray releases, the special features are all the same as the already released special edition DVDs. If you like this movie, the Blu-Ray is a great purchase because it looks fabulous. It is not a perfect horror film but it is a really, really good one. If you don’t own this movie, the extras on this (and the standard DVD) make it well worth the purchase.

Final Score:  8.0   [ Very Good ]