How The Scariest Sci-Fi Movie Of The 90s Was Destroyed By James Cameron And Titanic
Before blockbusters were only allowed to be superhero movies or legacy sequels, the ‘90s offered a plethora of original big-budget genre adventures that audiences were willing to take a risk on. I’d give anything to go back to a decade when movies like Tremors, Anaconda, and Deep Blue Sea were given substantial budgets and a chance to shine at the box office.
One such movie that didn’t quite work out back then is Event Horizon (1997). Directed by the guy who made the good Mortal Kombat movie (fight me, I know fatalities), Event Horizon tells the story of an experimental spaceship that went mysteriously dark on its maiden voyage and the crew that’s sent to find out what happened.
The scientist behind the spaceship’s experimental new engine, Dr. Weir (Sam Neill), is hiding some secrets from the team’s captain, Miller (Laurence Fishburne), and his working-class crew. Once they get to the ship and discover everything that happened, Hell starts to break loose, quite literally.
Event Horizon Bombed At The Box Office, But Why?
A familiar enough ghostship tale (that’s much better than Ghost Ship), Event Horizon decided it wanted to up the ante by being one of the more ambitious sci-fi horror films theaters had seen in a while. And that’s when things started to look shaky.
With a reported budget of $60 million (that’s almost $120 million today), Event Horizon is an expensive production with tons of elaborate sets and effects. You need time to pull that all off. And wouldn’t you know, Paramount, who greenlit such a massive financial undertaking, ended up rushing the shooting and editing of the movie.
Event Horizon’s Failure Is James Cameron And Titanic’s Fault
Why was it rushed? Blame James Cameron and his big boat movie for not making its scheduled release, forcing Event Horizon to squeeze a lot of what it wanted to do in much less time. Supposedly, this even led to the film getting heavily edited down from director Paul W.S. Anderson’s original vision. A rushed production doesn’t always lead to a failed final movie, but it certainly doesn’t help things and it definitely didn’t help here.
It probably also didn’t help Event Horizon that it didn’t have the star power to sell itself to the widest audience possible. Even just four years removed from Jurassic Park, he was not an actor that audiences followed into riskier movies. And Laurence Fishburne, though well-established and respected by that point in his career, had yet to become even more known and beloved thanks to The Matrix. Cowboy Curtis wasn’t moving tickets, sorry. While the rest of the cast are solid and enjoyable actors, none of them were going to get folks to go see a movie where this happens:
That’s likely a major factor why Event Horizon failed at the box office. While sickos like me are always going to be down for Hellraiser in space, Event Horizon’s big concept is a tough sell to regular movie-goers. See, the Event Horizon is a ship that can fold space to travel incredible distances in an instant. The problem is that this requires opening a portal to a Hell dimension (oops!), and eventually, everyone ends up attacked or possessed by an unknown evil force.
The Odds And The Critics Were Stacked Against The Sci-Fi Horror Movie’s Success
There’s lots of haunted house horror fun to be mined from that situation, and Event Horizon does manage some legit spooky moments along with all the extreme effects. But audiences aren’t usually hyped for this kind of genre mashup. They were too busy that weekend in 1997 going to see Cop Land which, yeah, I don’t blame them. Cop Land rules.
Still, Event Horizon being an original sci-fi horror with a less-than-superstar cast that was trying to do something a little out there after getting crunched by the studio? The odds were definitely stacked against it, and Event Horizon tanked at the box office, opening at the number 4 spot just ahead of third-week showings of Spawn. SPAWN.
Maybe the ‘90s weren’t as great as I remembered. Event Horizon languished at theaters until being pulled after making $26 million domestically, less than half of its reported budget. Ouch. As far as the bean counters were concerned, this was a failure.
What about the audience that did show up? What did they think? They were not kind to Event Horizon at all. CinemaScore is a polling company that asks paying opening-night audiences to give the movie they just saw a letter grade (because I guess movies are the same as math homework), and the average grade their respondents gave was a D+, which is pretty abysmal for them. Just to give some comparison, the CinemaScore for Spawn was a C+!
Prominent film critics didn’t help the movie’s reputation. Roger Ebert gave Event Horizon only two out of four stars, noting it takes inspiration from the iconic Stanislaw Lem sci-fi tale Solaris, and doesn’t do much substantial with its horror movie riff on the idea. That might be a bit of a fair criticism, Roger, but that two-star rating definitely hurt the movie’s perceived value to a certain number of educated film fans. Meanwhile, he gave Spawn three and a half stars. Out of four!
Event Horizon Eventually Found An Audience
Thankfully, the story of Event Horizon didn’t end there. The movie did surprisingly well on home video, and Paramount even tried to get Anderson to restore the footage that had been jettisoned due to the rush of the production. Sadly, those elements were either destroyed or couldn’t be located. This mythic version of Event Horizon that we’ll unfortunately never see helped get fans even more interested and supportive of the movie.
Nowadays, Event Horizon has gotten much more love than its initial theatrical run. There’s a loaded Collector’s Edition Blu-ray, a 4K ultra high definition release, you can find plenty of videos online where fans dig deep into the movie and its production, and Christopher Nolan might even be a fan as the memorable “wormhole demonstration” scene carried out by Sam Neill gets a bit of a nod in Nolan’s own Interstellar.
As of this recording, an Event Horizon television show is still being developed to give the story more room to experiment with its warped ideas. Clearly, the film has carved out a corner that sci-fi horror fans still want to visit.
Suffice it to say, Event Horizon was a failure that proves the box office is not what makes or breaks a movie’s legacy. Though it took a while, Event Horizon crawled out of the mess of its theatrical run to become a legit cult favorite that new fans are still discovering today. The movies and stories that matter will find their way to the audience that wants them.
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