I’ve come to the conclusion the main reason behind all of the hatred toward director Paul W. S. Anderson isn’t because he makes unabashedly silly B-movies out of properties (Alien vs. Predator and Death Race to name only two) fanboys (and fangirls) desperately want to be better than they actually are, but more because the guy manages to hint at talents beyond the finished product. Say what you will about the juvenile state of the scripts he helms, the finished product always looks pretty close to fantastic. He does a great job in pre-production, design and photography seemingly each and every time out (save maybe Mortal Kombat).
Yet all of his films (even guilty pleasures like Resident Evil) fall apart, either somewhat or entirely, at around the two-thirds mark, some of them even earlier. Each effort gets increasingly silly and/or ludicrous as it goes along. Each one stretches incredulity to the breaking point. Each one shows a filmmaker so obsessed with delivering the cool shot or the awesome visual set piece that he forgets to supply context for these moments, his whole filmography is a series of forehead slappers that drive you crazy with each and every one of the shortcomings.
The film that crystallizes this more than any other is Anderson’s 1997 sci-fi haunted house opus Event Horizon. Featuring an all-star cast of solid character actors (including Laurence Fishburne, Sam Neill, Joely Richardson, Kathleen Quinlan, Sean Pertwee and Jason Isaacs) and a great premise echoing Robert Wise’s The Haunting and Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, this movie drips in terrifying potential. For 60 minutes of its 95-minute running time it oozes in seductively menacing (and smartly intelligent) scares, each scene slowly building to the next with such creepily innervating grace it can’t help but get under your skin.
Starting with that sixty-first minute, and then building disappointed momentum like an avalanche rocketing down a mountainside from that point on, this film falls apart so thoroughly it drives me absolutely batty each time I watch it. The whole thing degenerates into a quick-cut compendium of Hellraiser outtakes suddenly transposed into outer space, the movie becoming so grotesquely idiotic no amount of blood, guts and viscera can hide the fact what was a wonderfully entertaining fright-fest is suddenly running on empty.
Yet, up until that point Event Horizon is so well made (direction, acting, cinematography, design, music, all of it is simply superb) it has become one of those pictures I keep returning to again and again in the desperate hope it will somehow not crumble to pieces. It is that one movie that makes me think that Anderson, if he really put his mind to it, could actually make a smashing genre entertainment, and also the one that makes me sadly realize that will probably never be the case.
It’s interesting that, with all that in mind, Paramount really has done a bang-up job presenting the film on Blu-ray. While the special features are carryovers from the previous standard definition special edition, the fact this supposed box office failure even got a special edition should speak volumes as to how this decade old title has managed to fascinate. If people didn’t keep going back to it, many of them like myself wishing it wasn’t going to suddenly self-destruct in the final act, the studio wouldn’t have bothered, and with so many other titles in their library just screaming for a hi-def release the fact this gets one first probably proves my point.
With that in mind, the Blu-ray transfer is marvelous, the great Adrian Biddle’s (Aliens) photography looking so sharp each shadow jumps out at you like a ghoul ready to pounce on Halloween night. The sound is also outstanding, all of the Event Horizon‘s booms, bangs, creaks and shrieks sending chills up and down my spine almost as if I were seeing it for the very first time.
As for the features, there are no Blu-ray exclusives. That said, the commentary track from Anderson and producer Jeremy Bolt is quite good, and while the two are far too fond of the movie’s climactic twists and turns the fact they are willing to openly lament the elements during that final stretch that do not work (i.e. a truly stupid escape from a depressurizing control room) is actually kind of noteworthy.
Also included is a great five part making of documentary (where the filmmakers shockingly admit the last third doesn’t work), a group of interesting featurettes (with commentary from Anderson), three better than average deleted scenes and conceptual art with commentary on an un-filmed rescue scene that was originally going to open the picture. Also included is the film’s theatrical trailer (in HD) and, strangely, it’s video trailer (not in HD), the former still as effective at piquing a person’s interest now as it ever was before the original theatrical release.
At this point, I admit I’ve pretty much given up on Anderson. Films like Death Race and Alien vs. Predator have kind of got me to the point I just don’t care anymore. But based on that first hour of Event Horizon I still can’t quite bring myself to do this with absolute 100-percent certainty. Love him or hate him, the guy does keep hinting at talents which could potentially transform him into a solid genre director. Maybe if I keep re-watching this disc enough I’ll fool myself into believing that transformation’s already occurred.
