10/1-Event Horizon (1997)

Initially, I wanted the first movie of this marathon to have some sort of "number one" significance, like if I were watching Jet Li movies starting with The One or Sinbad movies with First Kid. (By the way, First Kid could have also started a terrible 90s movies about spoiled kids marathon, followed by Blank Check). But I couldn't think of anything and it was after midnight, October had begun, and I wanted to get started. So here we are with Event Horizon, which although I've seen before (I'd prefer the movies in this festival to be new to me), I don't remember much as it was 1997 in theaters when I saw it. What were my parents thinking taking me to this?

According to the text at the beginning of the film, in 2040, a deepspace research vessel called the Event Horizon "disappeared without trace... it is the worst space disaster on record." Jump to 2047 and we immediately see that the 1997 cgi was terrible. Thankfully, most of the movie uses practical effects, but the times where it's cgi really takes you out of the moment.

Anyway, Laurence Fishbourne is the captain of a search and rescue ship which has just launched on a top secret mission with the addition of Sam Neill playing a scientist because apparently, that's all he ever gets to play. Things to note here, Cap'n Fishbourne says 5 by 5, which only makes me think of Faith from Buffy and he looks very uncomfortable in his captain's chair.

He looks like Professor X in his hoverchair from the 90s cartoon show.

Back on the movie, Sam Neill tells the crew that the Event Horizon did not explode, as the government had previously said, but rather it disappeared on its mission which was testing its faster than light drive, which Sam himself invented. And after a seven year absence, the ship has reappeared.

The crew successfully docks to the Event Horizon and begins the exploration of the inside. One of the first things the crew finds are a bunch of explosives, but don't worry, Dr. Sam tells us that's a safety precaution for if something goes wrong, the crew can separate the front from the engine bays and become a lifeboat. I'm sure we won't see that come up again *wink* (spoiler alert, it does). When away team then splits up (great idea!) to cover more ground, the engineer gets sucked into the warp drive which has seemingly turned itself on. He is unresponsive after being pulled from the warp and that's when things start to get weird. 

One more side-note, it's always entertaining to see what technologies sci-fi movies choose to hold onto when they set films in the future. In this movie, we've already established stasis chambers, faster than light travel, and mag-boots, to name a few, as plausible future tech, but when the away team member finds the Event Horizon's log, she pulls a CD out of the drive. I couldn't help but laugh.

When it comes to scares, there are a few jumps, but overall the frightening-factor was pretty low. There is a decent bit of gore and some it's certainly eerie, enough to make a seven-year-old not the best person to watch this movie, but pretty tame by today's standards.

Rating on the Spook-o-meter: 3 out of 10 boos