Alien/Aliens is a given for most people. I have been watching Event Horizon during the spooky season for years. What are some of your favorite books and movies with a horror/psychological thriller lean?
Alien/Aliens is a given for most people. I have been watching Event Horizon during the spooky season for years. What are some of your favorite books and movies with a horror/psychological thriller lean?
Event horizon is one of the few movies I actually find a bit frightening.
I’ve always liked the fan theory that Event Horizon took place in the Warhammer 40k universe, and that the ship went into the warp without the necessary gellar fields.
I hadn’t heard of that up until a few weeks ago and now it’s hard for me not to view it as canon.
It’s because Larry Fish does everything right, makes the best possible moves in his situation, and still has problems. There’s a strong case to be made that Capt Miller is the one of the smartest protagonists in a horror movie and that’s why the movie is so haunting.
“We’re leaving.”
“And then we’re gonna nuke this ship”
“Fuck this ship.”
Also chilling: he doesn’t die.
Tortured forever in the warp.
Typical ghost/demon etc supernatural films and even a lot of sci-fi horror are snoozefests in comparison to Event Horizon because this film really puts it all together on a scale that makes it horrific. It plays with the supernatural angle and actually even explains it in such a way that puts it closer to reality, and then compounds that horror with the crushing isolation, unfamiliarity and unknowability of space.
I really wish there were more movies that got horror THIS RIGHT.
If you enjoyed the unsettling mix of supernatural and science fiction elements in Event Horizon, you might want to check out House on Haunted Hill (1999). While it’s not set in space, it combines psychological horror with a bit of tech flair, employing a modern (for its time) setting full of gadgets that can manipulate reality. It’s a fun ride if you’re looking for a horror film that tries to blend different elements together.
Netflix’s “The Haunting of Hill House” had some genuine unsettling, creepy moments. The tall ghost who followed the addict child around was creepy as hell.
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I wish it would have went the unknowable, unfathomable Lovecraft route, instead of Hellraiser in space. Hell is the alternate dimension? Not a completely alien alternate dimension?
That said, it was fun.
I get your point and totally agree that direction isn’t followed NEARLY often enough, but I personally find it to be open to interpretation whether what they encounter is truly “hell” in a biblical sense or just an alternate dimension that can be construed in such a way that anyone who’s ever heard of the concept would define it as hell, and I prefer the latter at least in my own head.
If you look at it through the lens of it not really being Hell Original ™ it becomes almost Lovecraftian, given that everyone who comes into contact with the dimension loses their minds and that the ship itself gains a kind of sentience having just passed through it, but the comparison to Hellraiser is definitely valid given all we see of it is just wanton violence amongst the ship’s original crew, so for all we know it could be straight up Satan driving the boat.
I like to share this link whenever I come across a discussion about Event Horizon-
https://web.archive.org/web/20210130023507/https://theunheardnerd.com/what-could-have-been-26-event-horizon/
It’s fun to imagine what could have been
That movie is scary enough. I dont need to see the violence orgy from the original crew.
Gore has it’s place in horror films. Personally, I feel like it’s best used sparingly and to maximum effect, but there’s something to be said for the “gore fest” film types (e.g. Dead Alive), I suppose. Still, after a certain point, things stop being about horror and veer closer to torture erotica. Nothing against torture erotica either (again, not my thing, but to each their own), but it’s not horror. The violence orgy scene was literal torture porn, and I think it serves the film best as brief flashes, just enough to make it clear what’s going on, but not enough to function as an actual torture porn clip.
Agree. My partner list this film as one of their top scary picks, mostly due to this scene.
I feel it is perfect the way it is. It leaves a lot to the imagination while still leading the viewer in a direction of true horror.
Gives me shivers just thinking about it.
That kind of thing is more effective when it’s implied. When you just get oblique flashes.
That’s crazy that they went through all the trouble to film all that and just cut it out. Sounds like they were expecting it with how crazy the footage was though.
Thanks!
More gore isn’t scary.
More gore is more fun!
I hear ya, I used to buy Fangoria magazine!
It reminds me a little of the Reavers in Firefly. We have this notion that when we are far removed from our familiar surroundings and isolated in bleak emptiness, that we will somehow stare into the void and lose our minds, turning savage and cruel as we go insane.
But if it’s any consolidation, outer space is far too dangerous for it to ever get to that point. Even highly qualified professionals who are trying their best can find it difficult to survive in space. There’s no way a violently insane person would last 30 seconds there.
Existential insanity.
“The empty black is so vast, and we mean absolutely nothing in the grand scheme, which doesn’t exist. It’s all just random variables.”
We’re all nerds, we get it. But Whedon should have elaborated on it just little more.