Possession by the denizens of hell, Event Horizon teaches us, has its victims reciting Latin, snacking on human flesh, and indulging in harsh bouts of scarification. The story also carries more than a trace of British horror writer Clive Barker, with its diabolical themes and Hellraiser-esque S&M kinkiness. Pickier viewers might wonder why a space ship would have quite so many spikes, coffin-shaped corridors and other sharp edges that would count as a health and safety hazard, but they’d surely concede that the Event Horizon’s interior looks quite unlike any other sci-fi film of its era. Yet much of the film’s macabre atmosphere and engagingly spiky imagery still shines through and, even in the face of critical and financial calamity, Event Horizon eventually found a cult following.Įvent Horizon’s production design, meanwhile, is pure Gothic – built in the mid-21st century, the ship of the film’s title is distinctly medieval revival in style, all flying buttresses, vaulted ceilings and ornate pillars. The result is a movie that bears the scars of its hurried making, not least in its final reel, which was re-shot and reworked more than once in Event Horizon’s chaotic post-production. Much – though by no means all – of the gore was excised, but gone too were a string of tension- and story-building scenes. Within a week, he and editor Martin Hunter had hacked Event Horizon right down to the bone – the duration of the final cut ran to a lean 95 minutes. Suddenly anxious about a film they’d previously championed, Paramount demanded that the film be cut down by about half an hour, and Anderson, running out of time and left dazed by the toxic reaction at the screening, acquiesced. The screening was, Anderson admitted, “Disastrous. Cannibalism, evisceration, dismemberment… if Paramount was expecting a spooky, darkly fun rollercoaster ride for the summer multiplex crowd, Event Horizon clearly wasn’t it. It wasn’t the lack of polish that left audiences reeling, however, but rather the sheer level of the gore and violence. That edit ran to around 130 minutes, and it was still rough around the edges – digital wire removal hadn’t yet taken place on some of the zero-gravity sequences, several effects shots were missing, and the sound still had to be mixed. Then came the moment of reckoning: an initial screening where both Paramount executives and test audiences would see the assembly cut of Event Horizon for the first time. Anderson found himself working seven day weeks to get the film in the can and, just to add to the stress, he still had more shooting to complete during the first two weeks of editing. The initial cut of Event Horizon was therefore assembled over the course of four stressful weeks – an absurdly compressed schedule, especially for a film with so many complicated visual effects. The studio wanted Event Horizon ready for August 1997, giving Anderson just six weeks to edit the movie. But the deal came with a catch: with Titanic delayed, Paramount had a gap in its summer schedule. Paramount was willing to foot a generous budget, too – something in the region of $60 million. Anderson was given plenty of creative latitude to forge his own idea of what Event Horizon should look like, and the director quickly jetisoned the alien infestation of Philip Eisner’s original script and began imagining something far more gothic and diabolical.
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