Review of Event Horizon

"Event Horizon" was apparently pitched as "The Shining" in space, and maybe that would've been a good movie, but that is not the one I watched.

The film begins and it's other obvious influence of "Alien" (and "Aliens" for that matter) also shows, only these people don't feel like real, working class people like the ones in "Alien", they feel like movie characters, and this continues throughout the film. They pause during dramatic moments, they are sometimes seemingly unfazed by the chaos around them. The choppy editing, pointless Dutch camera angles and crash zooms, and the constant, cliché score take a lot of the tension out of the film, and each jumpscare is incredibly predictable and ineffective. Unlike its supposed influences, it does not create a sense of tension and dread through silence, but rather only uses silence for a few seconds before each jumpscare. Not to mention the incredibly cheesy special effects that attempted to use CGI, and failed horribly, looking far worse than "Alien", "The Thing", "The Shining", and it's many other much older influences.

Paul W.S. Anderson wanted so badly for this to be like the movies he loved, but forgot entirely what made them so great.