Event Horizon (film)

After Mortal Kombat (1995) had become a commercial success in the United States, English director Paul W. S. Anderson was inundated with screenplay offers, as well as the opportunity to direct the Mortal Kombat sequel Mortal Kombat: Annihilation (1997),[10] and the upcoming X-Men (2000).[5] Anderson turned the offers down in favor of making an R-rated horror film, hoping to shift away from making another PG-13 film.[5] Paramount Pictures then sent Philip Eisner's original script for Event Horizon, which they had been trying to develop with producers Lawrence Gordon and Lloyd Levin.[11] According to Eisner, he first pitched its concept to Gordon as a "haunted house story in space", which the producer thought had the potential to become a motion picture: "Luckily", said Eisner, "he liked the idea enough to trust me to do it."[10] Anderson's initial reaction to the script, which involved the cruise ship Event Horizon experiencing a series of hauntings by "tentacular" aliens having crossed the threshold of their planet or "dimension", was that it bore striking resemblance to Alien (1979), while producer and longtime collaborator Jeremy Bolt felt it was a "terrific concept" but was "very dense" in terms of length and the storyline was "a bit lost."[11] Anderson disliked directing a mimicry of Alien so he gave the script a major rewrite. Anderson had in mind a "classic haunted house movie", incorporating significant influences to moderately successful horror films such as Robert Wise's The Haunting (1963) and Kubrick's The Shining (1980) because they enforce suspense from the unknown, meaning the ghost or creature was hidden from the viewer, and their endings induced ambiguities of perception in the audience.[11] Anderson, too, said he was interested in the concept of Hell, as well as the idea of "the ship itself being possessed rather than going 'Oh, it's an alien consciousness that is doing this,'" and added these in the script.[11]

Screenwriter Philip Eisner acknowledged Warhammer 40,000 as a major inspiration for the plot.[12] In the fictional setting of Warhammer 40,000, starships travel the galaxy by passing through "the Warp", which is a parallel dimension where faster-than-light travel is possible, similar to "hyperspace" in the Star Wars setting, but also infested with daemons that are liable to infiltrate the ship and possess the crew. Many fans of Warhammer 40,000 consider Event Horizon to be an unofficial prequel to the former, when humankind discovers the Warp and learns of its dangers the hard way.[13]

As Anderson explains, directors usually have a standard 10-week editing period to produce the first cut of a film, as guaranteed by the Directors Guild of America. However, due to the short production schedule of the film, the rapidly approaching release date, and the fact that principal photography had not yet finished, Anderson agreed with the Paramount studio to an editing period of six weeks and promised to deliver the film by August 1997, as Paramount wanted to have a hit film before Titanic's planned September release date. When the main unit wrapped, Anderson was supposed to start editing the film, but he still had to shoot two weeks with the second unit, effectively shortening the time he could spend in post-production to just four weeks. In that short amount of time, only a rough cut of the film could be assembled. Anderson notes that at two hours and 10 minutes, it was overly long, with weak directing and acting that could have used another editing pass, unfinished special effects, and a poor sound mix.[6][7]

In test screenings, the cut was poorly received. There were complaints about the extreme amount of gore,[7] and Anderson and producer Jeremy Bolt claim members of the test audience fainted during the screening.[6] Paramount, which had stopped watching the dailies before any of the gore was shot and were seeing the completed film for the first time along with the audience, were similarly shocked by how gruesome it was and demanded a shorter runtime with less gore. Anderson believes that while his first cut was justifiably considered too long, Paramount forced him to make a cut that was instead too short, and that the film would benefit by the restoration of around 10 minutes of footage, including some of the deleted gore.[6]

After the initial DVD release became a surprise hit, the studio and Anderson became interested in assembling a director's cut, but they quickly discovered that the excised footage had not been carefully stored and much of it had gone missing. The plan to assemble a director's cut was abandoned and instead a special-edition two-DVD set was released, featuring one deleted scene, two extended scenes, and a few shots of deleted material in the included making-of featurette. The footage is of "video" quality.[6]

Known deleted scenes include a meeting scene between Weir and people in charge of the mission in which they discuss Event Horizon, some dialogue of which remained present in the theatrical trailer;[14][15] more backstory for Cooper and Justin, including a stronger explanation for Justin entering the black hole; a deleted backstory of the relationship between Starck and Miller; additional scenes explaining what the gateway to hell/black hole is;[16] Miller finding a tooth floating in Event Horizon;[7] a longer version of the scene in which Peters hallucinates that her son's mangled legs are covered in maggots;[6] a scene in which Weir hallucinates that Justin turns into his wife Claire;[17][18] a bloodier version of Weir's wife Claire's suicide; a longer version of the scene where Miller finds D.J.'s dead body with his guts on the table; and a longer version of the "Visions From Hell" scene during Miller's final fight with Weir with more shots of Event Horizon crew being tortured.

The "bloody orgy" video was also longer. As Anderson was sometimes too busy filming other scenes, second-unit director Vadim Jean filmed some parts of this scene.[7] Real-life amputees were used for special effects scenes in which Event Horizon crew members were mutilated, and pornographic film actors were hired to make the sex and rape scenes more realistic and graphic.[6]

The film's final ending was a combination of two unused alternate endings that were filmed. One did not have a jump scare at the end when the last two survivors are found by another rescue crew and Starck hallucinates that she sees Weir, although there was a similar version of the scene included in this ending where she hears screams of Event Horizon crew and screams in fear before Cooper wakes her up. This was the original ending of the film included in the shooting script.[19] The second ending had Miller fighting with the burned man from his visions at the core instead of with Weir, but this was changed due to the negative test screening.[18]

In an Event Horizon Q&A in 2011, Anderson was asked when extra footage will be made available. He responded "never", explaining that much of it is gone forever.[6] However, in a 2012 interview, he announced that producer Lloyd Levin had found a VHS tape with his original rough cut. Anderson said that after finishing Resident Evil: Retribution, he planned to watch it for the first time since assembling the film.[20] In a January 2017 interview, Anderson reiterated a director's cut will never be released as the footage doesn't exist anymore. Asked about the VHS tape, he said neither he, nor Levin, had watched it yet, as Levin moved to Spain; however, he was still excited about watching it at some point.[21]

Michael Kamen was hired to compose the score for the film. Director Paul W. S. Anderson, a fan of hybrid genre music, invited the electronic dance music duo Orbital to collaborate with Kamen and to provide synthesizing sounds for the film's unsettling atmosphere.[22]

A soundtrack album was released which edited various cues from the score into four tracks of approximately ten minutes.