Patty and I like to veg out with a movie on a weekend afternoon, and this looked promising: a starship gone missing for seven years suddenly turns up in orbit around Neptune, and a rescue ship is sent out to investigate. Cool idea. And then we find out the starship has been through a black hole and come back… and where were they? Yeah, that’s cool, too. Event Horizon, starring Laurence Fishburne and Sam Neill, directed by Paul Anderson–avoid it if you can.
Was this movie written by a couple of high school kids? It often happens to young writers: you get an idea, a really good idea, and then you just don’t know how to finish the story. It melts down into a pile of bubbling claptrap.
One thing I’ve noticed over the years is that an awful lot of people who want “to write,” as they say, but haven’t got the foggiest idea how to do it, make a beeline for science fiction. What is it about science fiction that so powerfully attracts people who don’t know what they’re doing? There are science fiction writers who do know what they’re doing, but Hollywood apparently prefers the other kind. So take heart! If you can’t write a coherent story, you still might catch on as a movie screenwriter.
If you want to see about two-thirds of a halfway decent movie that then decides to fall flat on its face for the remaining 30 minutes, welcome to Event Horizon.
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