“Have you ever seen fire in zero gravity? It’s beautiful. It’s like liquid, it… slides all over everything. Comes up in waves…”
Black holes. The single most mysterious things in the universe. Basically, what we know of them now can be summed up like this: they exist, and they are very big, very heavy, and very dangerous. And that’s about it. Oh, and once you cross its event horizon, there’s no turning back. This is an invisible edge, surrounding a black hole. Outside of it, you’re safe, and alive, and still in this universe. Cross it, and… you’re gone. Forever. Once you’re over it, you’ll drop in. What happens then is anybody’s guess. Do you die? Probably. Do you travel instantly to another point in the universe? Maybe. How about to another universe altogether? Sure, why not. Or, finally, what if it brings you to a point somewhere beyond all time and space? Beyond all existence? What would you find there?
Total horror, is what. At least, if this movie is anything to go by. We meet Dr. Weir (Sam Neil) and Captain Miller (Laurence Fishburne) and his crew of six on board the rescue vessel Lewis and Clark. They’re on their way to the Event Horizon, a spaceship equipped with a so-called gravity drive, designed by Weir (and since I love movie science, allow me to quote the good doctor, as he explains the workings of this device: “It uses a rotating magnetic field to focus a narrow beam of gravitons – these, in turn, fold space-time consistent with Weyl tensor dynamics until the space-time curvature becomes infinitely large, and you produce a singularity.” And that’s in ‘layman’s terms,’ you understand.
Basically, what it all means is the ship went through hell and brought Cthulhu back). Seven years ago it vanished from existence, crew and all, and now it suddenly reappeared in orbit around Neptune. Once they arrive, they begin to investigate and soon discover that the crew of the Event Horizon is gone. Unsurprisingly, things did not go well once the drive was activated.
This being a science fiction horror, it gets pretty gory at times. Or, to quote another online source, “A video log discovered on the Event Horizon adds more weight to this conclusion, revealing a scene of the crew brutalizing each other after engaging the gravity drive, with their captain chanting in Latin as he holds his own eyeballs in his hands.” Nice! Also, check out Neil’s slice pizza face:
Lovely, no? This movie has an overall great look to it: from the meat grinder passageway of the space ship to the gravity drive itself, it all looks nice and spacey. Like Kevin, but with science. Directed by Paul W. S. Anderson, it initially bombed at the box office, but, as is often the case with movies like this, it then began to sell really well on DVD and has developed quite a cult following since, for whatever that means. But I care little about all that. I love this movie. What’s that, Dr. Weir? Where we’re going, we don’t need eyes to see? That’s alright, doc. I’ll just use my imagination, then…
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