Hell is Only a Word. The Reality (and any Sequel) is Much, Much Worse: Event Horizon as a One-way Ride

 This paper was delivered at the recent Popular Culture Research Network (POPCRN) online conference on adaptations and remakes.

On August 5, 2019, Variety broke the news that Amazon Prime was developing a series adaptation of Paul W.S. Anderson’s 1997 space horror film Event Horizon with Godzilla vs. Kong Director Adam Wingard as showrunner. My immediate reaction was perhaps predictable:

Alternately called “grizzly and deranged,” a “batshit masterpiece,” “bloody and absolutely off-the-wall,” “disturbing” and “very silly third-tier post Lovecraft nonsense,” there is no denying that the film tanked at the box office (grossing about half of the estimated $60 million it cost to make) and polarized critics and audiences alike.  But love it or hate it, Event Horizon has a earned a cult following in the 26 years since its release, generated urban legends concerning the possibility of restoring “lost footage” (half an hour cut from the film after negative test screenings and pressures from Paramount Studies), famously including some extreme body horror depicting sadomasochistic orgies in a hellish dimension. It also had a direct influence on later works ranging from videogames like Dead Space, films such as The Cloverfield Paradox and Pandorum, and television series such as Stranger Things.

A brief plot summary: In the mid-21^st century, the experimental spacecraft Event Horizon disappears near Neptune on its maiden voyage. When it unexpectedly re-emerges in the same location seven years later, the ship’s creator, Dr. William Weir (portrayed by Sam Neill), and the crew of the salvage and rescue ship Lewis and Clark search for survivors. What they find is horror and death. The ship’s gravity drive engine (a wormhole-creating artificial black hole) had taken the first crew not to the nearest star system as planned, but to a hellish dimension where they were driven mad and killed each other. The ship – now infected with some unknown malevolent intelligence – has returned to claim another crew, starting with its creator, tormenting the already mentally unstable Weir with images of his dead wife. It also visits other crew members with horrific visions, feeding upon their most private personal guilt and fears, leading to the deaths of some. When Weir turns to the dark side and works to prevent the remaining crew from returning to earth, Captain Miller (played by Laurence Fishburne) sacrifices himself by separating the engine section from the crew section before the gravity drive is engaged again, sending him and a horribly mutilated Weir presumably back to the hell dimension.

The persistence of Event Horizon in pop culture can be seen in the 2022 film Thor: Love and Thunder, when Natalie Portman’s Jane Foster openly references Event Horizon as she attempts to explain wormholes, using the same “fold the page, fold the space” demonstration used in Event Horizon and later Interstellar.

Director Paul W.S. Anderson reportedly considered making a sequel early on, or at the very least trying to make a “director’s cut” with the deleted footage restored. Again, 25% of the footage had been hastily cut right before release, much of it hellish scenes deemed too gruesome by audiences and studio heads, but also tightening up the pace of the film, removing some of the background information on Weir, for example. Anderson afterwards agreed that he had cut too much, but the damage had been done. Due to improper storage of the “lost footage,” much of it cannot be restored, although bits and pieces have been included as special features in various DVD releases. 

Anderson has changed his mind in recent years, in a 2020 interviewnoting that he has nothing to do with the reported Amazon Prime series nor did he want to. In his words, "I'm immensely proud of the movie we made. And especially because when the movie was released, I felt it didn't get a fair shake… And then slowly over time, it's really built a very avid following and I'm immensely proud of that. And, for that reason, I didn't want to go back to the same world and ruin it for anybody…. In many ways ... it's funny, the things that maybe handicapped us when we first released the movie, the fact that it doesn't tie up all the loose ends, there are ambiguities in the story, but it's something you can discuss and talk about. Those were weaknesses at the time, but I think they have been strengths over time and I didn't want to go back and answer all the questions presented by the movie…." Among these questions are where did Miller and Weir go at the end? Was the ship actually in hell? Did the malevolent intelligence follow the surviving crew back to earth? Are the survivors insane?

Mine is not a universal opinion. Some fans immediately jumped on the Amazon announcement, suggesting mysteries that could be solved. For example, Kayleena Pierce-Bohen of Screen Rant was enthusiastic about the possibility of the series addressing the following six issues:
·        What happens in the Hell dimension (an excuse to show more of the cut “horror orgy” footage).
·        The complete “horror orgy” tape broadcast by the first crew could be found by another crew which leads them to investigate
·        Character backstories (especially Weir’s)
·        Did the malevolent force return to Earth [and what did it do?]
·        Did the Event Horizon try to hijack other crews on other ships? What are their stories?
·        What is the back story of the world of Event Horizon, including its technology? Is it really a Warhammer Prequel?

The first two speak directly to the presumed ability of a streaming service to be as gory as it wants. While only about 20 seconds of the horrific orgy scenes survived the final editing, much, much more was filmed. Anderson painstakingly filmed the visions with an eye towards the art of Hieronymus Bosch, and tried to give the hellish scenes what he called in an interview included on the Collector's Edition DVD a “painterly quality.” Anderson was not going for gore for the sake of gore. Would a new showrunner take such care in their depictions of the hell dimension if given full rein? Film fans would certainly notice the difference. 

While Anderson is content to let sleeping black holes lie, the two stars of the film, Sam Neill and Laurence Fishburne, have both publicly stated in the past few years that they would be open to returning to the roles if asked, Fishburne specifically interested in the new series and Neill in a reboot or filming additional footage for insertion into the shortened film. In particular, Neill notes that the heavy editing cut out all the suspense (in his opinion), noting “if it was a longer film, and care and attention was paid to those moments of suspense, I think it would be a much stronger film. … It bugs me too, it really does.” Given these opinions, perhaps Amazon has the right idea in planning a spinoff series of some sort (although there haven’t been further details released since COVID, so we’re not even sure it is still in the works). But as the recent vociferous controversy over another Amazon spinoff series – The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power – has clearly shown, be careful what you wish for.

I hope to convince you that, as much as I adore both Sam Neill and black holes, Paul Anderson is right – like a trip down a real black hole, the film Event Horizon should be a one-way ride.

The film has also been noted for its overall design concept, which Anderson termed "techno-Medieval. When the lights are on, everything looks very technological and very spaceship-like. But when the lights go off and the haunting begins, you start looking at the shapes, and the architecture is actually very medieval.” For example, the spacecraft itself is a devolved version of Notre Dame Cathedral. The interior shots were done in the largest silent stage in Europe, the 007 Stage, allowing them to build a 50-ft long rotating corridor that is compared with a “meat grinder” by one of the characters. Critics have also noted that the practical special effects look much better than the digital effects that are common today. Would Amazon spend the same amount of money that it did creating the Rings of Power sets or take the cheaper digital shortcut? You don’t need a Palantir to answer this question. Would fans of the original film notice the difference? Hell is only a word, but the wrath of disappointed fans is much, much worse.

Backstories for Weir or other characters might fill in some of the blanks, but we run into the problem of violating head canon, or even canon, which again, raises the ugly specter of Rings of Power. You’re going to start denoting a trend here. The same is true of showing encounters of other ships with the Event Horizon during the seven years that it was MIA. Despite the fact that some fans have voiced a desire to have definitive answers, others, like Tom Foster of the blog TV Over Mind, agree with Anderson. In short Foster argues the fate of the Event Horizon “might need to be left alone since giving a name to the madness that the ship encountered and the entity that took hold of it really feels like it might suck a significant portion of life out of this story if it were allowed to happen. It might sound a bit sentimental, but it’s also a better idea to reboot the movie than to create a TV series around it since that sounds like a road to nowhere.” Foster also worries that rather than ramping up the gore, “Dulling it down for TV, which is likely what would happen, would be a huge mistake since it would lose a good deal of the potency that it has, and would become just another science fiction thriller.”

There is also a problem noted by Cathal Gunning of Screen Rant, namely that the obvious villains – the ship and Dr. Weir – both disappeared into the black hole at the end of the film. Introducing a new villain into the mythos is tricky at best. Katy Rath of Screen Rant creatively offered the return of Captain Miller as a new villain, forever changed by the Hell dimension, answering the question of Miller’s fate at the same time. Clearly Fishburne’s openness to returning has fueled such considerations. This brings up another challenge, the specter of the original cast, a strong group of actors, some better known now than they were at the time of the film. Three characters survived the ending, with Miller and Weir’s ultimate fates unknown. Would audiences appreciate more mature versions of these characters, or would they be de-aged for selected flashbacks?

The thought of the characters being recast is more horrifying than any hell dimension, at least in my mind. In particular, numerous fans and critics have singled out Sam Neill’s casting and over-the-top depiction of Dr. Weir’s descent into madness as one of the strongest selling points of the film. Anderson himself explained “I felt that Sam Neill, in people’s consciousness, he was the good guy from Jurassic Park… I loved the idea of taking that man who’s so solid and so dependable and reliable, who saves children from dinosaurs, and going, ‘You know what? You can’t trust him, because he’s just insane.’”  
The image of a mad, eyeless Weir crowing about the beauty of his possessed ship has become an enduring meme in and of itself. Could we expect the series to pay homage to this powerful scene in a way that doesn’t fall into parody? I’m not convinced.

In the end, the most horrifying sight of all could be a passionate, irate online fanbase pulling a Rings of Power-type tirade against the series. The odds are even greater because players of the wildly popular tabletop game Warhammer 40K have broadly adopted Event Horizon as an unofficial prequel to the game. Event Horizon screenwriter Philip Eisner once explained on Twitter (account unfortunately now deleted) that he “played the shit out of 40K, so it was definitely an influence, conscious or otherwise" for the storyline. Imagining infuriating two passionate fan bases in one fell swoop if you screw up the adaptation.

I call that the ultimate hellish dimension.