Movies
Event Horizon
“The third act is where EVENT HORIZON goes completely off the rails, much in the same way SUNSHINE did. It had this great, moody premise going for it and, instead of doing something interesting, writer Philip Eisner decided to be lazy and turn the whole affair into a by-the-numbers slasher. The gore is plentiful but it feels tacked on and used for lack of a better idea.”
Blu-ray Review
I first watched EVENT HORIZON back in 1998, right after its VHS debut. Sick with the flu, I rented a handful of films and sat myself down on the couch for a day of coughing, hacking, and, hopefully, entertainment. EVENT HORIZON was the first cassette I popped into my trusty VCR that morning and, as a 12-year-old, I felt traumatized when it was over. My experience with horror, at that point, was limited to a handful of Vincent Price films and a few episodes of MonsterVision, so I had never really seen anything with gore before. It was a shock to my system that caused me to hide under my blanket for the rest of the day, only to recant my harrowing experience to everyone at school the following week. 10 years and 2 home video formats later, I’ve just experienced EVENT HORIZON for the second time, on Blu-ray no less, and the only thing I have to say is, “This thing has a cult following? Really?”
In the year 2047, the EVENT HORIZON, one of the most technologically advanced spaceships ever built, has mysteriously reappeared after going missing for the last 7 years. The Lewis and Clark, helmed by Captain Miller (Lawrence Fishbourne), has been deployed to recover the vessel and discover where it went and what exactly happened. Along for the ride is his elite crew and the ship’s often pretentious designer, Dr. William Weir (Sam Neill). Once aboard the spacecraft, the crew members begin to have strange hallucinations and eventually come to the realization that when the EVENT HORIZON disappeared, it definitely didn’t go anywhere in our solar system.
Surprisingly, hack director Paul W.S. Anderson delivers a fairly solid first hour, with a creepy atmosphere in tow, even if it does seem a bit familiar and unoriginal. Anderson shows his love for Ridley Scott’s sci-fi horror classic ALIEN by modeling the EVENT HORIZON after the Nostromo. Being the “haunted house” of the film, the ship becomes the most interesting character, by way of well-done set designs and its ability to exploit the fears of the Lewis and Clark’s crew. The leads are adequate when they aren’t chewing the scenery to pieces; however, the secondary cast is obviously nothing but cannon fodder from the get-go, so it’s hard to invest anything in them.
The third act is where EVENT HORIZON goes completely off the rails, much in the same way SUNSHINE did. It had this great, moody premise going for it and, instead of doing something interesting, writer Philip Eisner (who also wrote the legendary FIRESTARTER 2 and THE MUTANT CHRONICLES) decided to be lazy and turn the whole affair into a by-the-numbers slasher. The gore is plentiful but it feels tacked on and used for lack of a better idea.
Paramount’s Blu-ray boasts a 1080p transfer that is adequate at best. Colors are richer and details are crisper but there is a lot of grain throughout, especially during the dark, hazy scenes in the EVENT HORIZON. On top of that, there are also a few instances where artefacts become distracting. I can’t say this isn’t the best the film has ever looked but there could have been a lot more done to make it up to par with the rest of Paramount’s high-definition catalogue. The Dolby TrueHD 5.1 track follows in the transfer’s footsteps, being the best out there but not exactly great. There are, at least, two sequences where a significant decrease in the dialogue’s volume occurs, causing the character’s discussion to be somewhat inaudible. The ship’s sound effects seem distant from everything in the forefront of the scene, never really giving you the sense that you’re on the ship and in the middle of the action (which is what a lossless audio track is suppose to do). What’s most frustrating about this disc is that Paramount, who is usually great about mastering their bonus materials in 1080p, only provides a trailer in HD. Granted, they did port over all the extras from the 2-disc release (Paramount rarely gives any of their films a 2-disc release), but there are no HD exclusives, nor does the overall treatment of the disc ever feel like anything but a quick cash-in.
Special Features
Commentary – Although Anderson and Bolt do mention a few things they don’t like about the film, the pair pat themselves on the back far more than they should have. Anderson gives a lot of insight into the production of EVENT HORIZON, going as far as to point out some of the changes made to the film after the first test screening, while Bolt comes off as childish, cracking jokes and reacting to the jump scares on-screen. For fans, it’s a perfectly acceptable track, even if its content overlaps quite a bit with the other supplementals on the disc.
The Making of Event Horizon (01:43:01) – Split into five parts (Into the Jaws of Darkness, The Body of the Beast, Liberate Tutume Ex Infernis, The Scale to Hell, and The Womb of Fear) and longer than the actual film, this making-of is basically an expanded version of the commentary that gets really in-depth about casting, the use of special effects and the cuts made to the film. Some of the cut scenes sound soul-crushingly gory, which makes me curious and slightly glad they didn’t make it into the final film at the same time. There is a lack of behind-the-scenes footage and most of the documentary is talking heads explaining things without giving any sort of visual representation of the topic at hand.
The Point of No Return: The Filming of Event Horizon (08:13) – All the behind-the-scenes footage was crammed in here, with Anderson narrating. It acts as a crash course in filmmaking, with the infamous director talking about the creative process behind several scenes.
Secrets (10:03) – Three deleted/extended scenes, with optional commentary by Anderson. The footage is of a lower quality of resolution, but it gives us a clue as to what EVENT HORIZON was like before the first round of cuts were made.
The Unseen Event Horizon (6:49) – A series of sketches and various pieces of concept art, a lot of it never making its way into any version of the film.
Due to a complex series of anthropological mishaps, the Wayans Brothers are a huge deal in Brazil. Around these parts, White Chicks is considered a national treasure by a lot of people, so it stands to reason that Brazilian audiences would continue to accompany the Wayans’ comedic output long after North America had stopped taking them seriously as comedic titans.
This is the only reason why I originally watched Michael Tiddes and Marlon Wayans’ 2013 horror spoof A Haunted House – appropriately known as “Paranormal Inactivity” in South America – despite having abandoned this kind of movie shortly after the excellent Scary Movie 3. However, to my complete and utter amazement, I found myself mostly enjoying this unhinged parody of Found Footage films almost as much as the iconic spoofs that spear-headed the genre during the 2000s. And with Paramount having recently announced a reboot of the Scary Movie franchise, I think this is the perfect time to revisit the divisive humor of A Haunted House and maybe figure out why this kind of film hasn’t been popular in a long time.
Before we had memes and internet personalities to make fun of movie tropes for free on the internet, parody movies had been entertaining audiences with meta-humor since the very dawn of cinema. And since the genre attracted large audiences without the need for a serious budget, it made sense for studios to encourage parodies of their own productions – which is precisely what happened with Miramax when they commissioned a parody of the Scream franchise, the original Scary Movie.
The unprecedented success of the spoof (especially overseas) led to a series of sequels, spin-offs and rip-offs that came along throughout the 2000s. While some of these were still quite funny (I have a soft spot for 2008’s Superhero Movie), they ended up flooding the market much like the Guitar Hero games that plagued video game stores during that same timeframe.
You could really confuse someone by editing this scene into Paranormal Activity.
Of course, that didn’t stop Tiddes and Marlon Wayans from wanting to make another spoof meant to lampoon a sub-genre that had been mostly overlooked by the Scary Movie series – namely the second wave of Found Footage films inspired by Paranormal Activity. Wayans actually had an easier time than usual funding the picture due to the project’s Found Footage presentation, with the format allowing for a lower budget without compromising box office appeal.
In the finished film, we’re presented with supposedly real footage recovered from the home of Malcom Johnson (Wayans). The recordings themselves depict a series of unexplainable events that begin to plague his home when Kisha Davis (Essence Atkins) decides to move in, with the couple slowly realizing that the difficulties of a shared life are no match for demonic shenanigans.
In practice, this means that viewers are subjected to a series of familiar scares subverted by wacky hijinks, with the flick featuring everything from a humorous recreation of the iconic fan-camera from Paranormal Activity 3 to bizarre dance numbers replacing Katy’s late-night trances from Oren Peli’s original movie.
Your enjoyment of these antics will obviously depend on how accepting you are of Wayans’ patented brand of crass comedy. From advanced potty humor to some exaggerated racial commentary – including a clever moment where Malcom actually attempts to move out of the titular haunted house because he’s not white enough to deal with the haunting – it’s not all that surprising that the flick wound up with a 10% rating on Rotten Tomatoes despite making a killing at the box office.
However, while this isn’t my preferred kind of humor, I think the inherent limitations of Found Footage ended up curtailing the usual excesses present in this kind of parody, with the filmmakers being forced to focus on character-based comedy and a smaller scale story. This is why I mostly appreciate the love-hate rapport between Kisha and Malcom even if it wouldn’t translate to a healthy relationship in real life.
Of course, the jokes themselves can also be pretty entertaining on their own, with cartoony gags like the ghost getting high with the protagonists (complete with smoke-filled invisible lungs) and a series of silly The Exorcist homages towards the end of the movie. The major issue here is that these legitimately funny and genre-specific jokes are often accompanied by repetitive attempts at low-brow humor that you could find in any other cheap comedy.
Not a good idea.
Not only are some of these painfully drawn out “jokes” incredibly unfunny, but they can also be remarkably offensive in some cases. There are some pretty insensitive allusions to sexual assault here, as well as a collection of secondary characters defined by negative racial stereotypes (even though I chuckled heartily when the Latina maid was revealed to have been faking her poor English the entire time).
Cinephiles often claim that increasingly sloppy writing led to audiences giving up on spoof movies, but the fact is that many of the more beloved examples of the genre contain some of the same issues as later films like A Haunted House – it’s just that we as an audience have (mostly) grown up and are now demanding more from our comedy. However, this isn’t the case everywhere, as – much like the Elves from Lord of the Rings – spoof movies never really died, they simply diminished.
A Haunted House made so much money that they immediately started working on a second one that released the following year (to even worse reviews), and the same team would later collaborate once again on yet another spoof, 50 Shades of Black. This kind of film clearly still exists and still makes a lot of money (especially here in Brazil), they just don’t have the same cultural impact that they used to in a pre-social-media-humor world.
At the end of the day, A Haunted House is no comedic masterpiece, failing to live up to the laugh-out-loud thrills of films like Scary Movie 3, but it’s also not the trainwreck that most critics made it out to be back in 2013. Comedy is extremely subjective, and while the raunchy humor behind this flick definitely isn’t for everyone, I still think that this satirical romp is mostly harmless fun that might entertain Found Footage fans that don’t take themselves too seriously.
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