Sunday, January 21, 2007

Movie Review: Event Horizon 3 Stars

An outstanding sci-fi adventure starring Laurence Fishburne, Sam Neill and Kathleen Quinlan, Event Horizon is a visually stunning, action-packed shockfest…until the end.

If a movie is designed to continually keep the audience guessing with constant misdirection and a challenge to question all characters and their motivations, the payoff has to be huge and not the ending of Event Horizon, a conclusion that was never quite sure what it wanted to be.

A salvage-and-rescue team captained by Miller (Fishburne) is deployed to answer the distress beacon of the Event Horizon, a deep space research vessel that inexplicably disappeared seven years earlier, the stuff of legends. Joined at the top of the mission by Dr. William Weir (Neill), the salvage crew soon realizes that the Event Horizon was not in fact a research craft, but an elaborate feat of engineering designed by Weir to bend space and time. Hence the disappearance.

Through its manmade black hole, the Event Horizon has brought something or someone back from another dimension. And now, it’s as if the ship itself is alive and hunting and haunting its crew. Unfortunately, the whole thing ends on a philosophical note that isn’t quite philosophical enough.

The production design and effects, however, are amazing as the Event Horizon proves to be among the most impressive ships in sci-fi flick history. And the cast puts in solid performances all around. It’s a pity neither is enough to rescue this decent premise from being sucked into a black hole of its own creation.

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