Robert Beksinski said:
I rewatched Event Horizon for the first time since around the time of its original release. I remember when I saw it as a kid (I perhaps would have been about 9 or 10 at the time) how it really frightened me and successfully gave me nightmares. I was a odd ball of a kid though. Horror films are what got me into films in the first place. As a kid (despite receiving nightmares later that evening) I would still continue to watch horror films all of the time. Event Horizon has stuck with me since then, because of its horror and because of its extremely original (so I thought at the time) story. Having rewatched it, I still say the script is very original in the aspect of mixing religious horror (opening the gates of hell) into a sci fi world aboard a space ship. However I could not deny the similarities with Sam Neil and his wife's character to that of Solaris and also how the ship feeds off of your thoughts like in Tarkovsky's Solaris. But that is where the similarities end as Solaris is not a horror film although I could see where it could be argued as one. Event Horizon also contains very predictable moments and cliched characters and cheesy dialogue. Still very much a Paul W.S. Anderson flick. Haha. But I still rate this one fairly high at a 7/10 because of the horror aspect being done so well, and the mixing of the genres (Sci Fi and Horror) was done almost to perfection. So final verdict after all of these years, a good horror film but not good enough to be on my top horror list.
I like this film and even more for the fact that it does something interesting with the idea of Solaris. There is nothing wrong with using old ideas as long as you do it right. This film does that, IMO.
Yes you are right, I have no problem with the film borrowing ideas from Solaris to make it into something interesting. It's actually the story that makes this film so good. The other aspects are not so, as I said before, predictable moments, cliched characters and horribly unrealistic dialogue. Well maybe it all was not that bad or the story just made up for it. But take for instance (something I know you do not like) is characters talking to themselves as in reality not too many people do this, the scene towards the end when the one character Cooper I think his name is was blasted away from the ship in a explosion and he talks to himself in a frantic manner about what he is going to do in order to get back to the ship. And most of the characters were one dimensional without any depth to them even Sam Neil's character was not fully explored. I read somewhere that there is 33 minutes cut from the film but is now lost. That is a shame because I think the film would have been much better, I even hear there most of the extreme gory scenes such as what happened to the previous crew are some of the ones that got cut.
Yes, I have been hoping to get to see the original cut. There was a huge buzz before the Blu Ray came out. Everyone hoping it would the the OC but nothing came off it. Here's hoping they will restore it someday. I don't buy it that the scenes are lost.