main index




Topical Tropes

Other Categories

TV Tropes Org
Nightmare Fuel: Event Horizon
Where we're going, we won't need eyes to see.

Event Horizon is about a ship that goes To Hell and Back. By the time it's over, audiences feel the same.

  • Aside from the Eye Scream and Squick elements that keep cropping up over and over, there's the part where we finally see the deciphered message, and it's just blurry enough to make you wonder if you really saw the unspeakably horrible thing you thought you saw the various crewmembers of the titular ship doing to each other under the influence of the dimension they had passed through, or if it was just your imagination.... and the only way to find out is to watch that sequence again. It's not often one is willing to put the remote down and walk away rather than go back and confirm an image, but Event Horizon pulled it off.
  • Wanna know something worse? A significant amount of footage was deleted from those unspeakably horrible sequences in the final cut of the film. The original version was more explicit.
  • A comparatively little one: when they're first exploring the bridge, lightning from the storm below their orbit briefly lights up the walls near the windows...which are splattered with blood, tendons, and what look like they might be bones. It's only for a split moment, but it makes you stop and have to wonder what the hell happened?! Given what we later see of the crew's log...ick is a bit of an understatement.
  • The more lingering part of the film is that Dr. Weir is set up as a Woobie, with Captain Miller being the Jerk Ass. The poor man goes through so much pain that you feel bad that he becomes a Cenobite, and you nearly end up Rooting for the Empire - til Weir goes way past the Moral Event Horizon. Then it just becomes painful, because you realize it could happen to anyone.
  • The ending. It's a bit more subtle than the rest of the movie, but there's a dream sequence fade out followed by the real ending (which is a pull back shot of the ship) — the doors seem to be closing on their own. It's as if there's still evil in the part of the ship that's left.
    • "They're with us. They're with us. You're with us."
    • The evil in the ship wasn't leaking through the gateway, the ship itself is alive. Just because the part of the ship capable of returning the the hell dimension is gone, is no reason why the rest wouldn't still be possessed. The more relevant question is, what happened when the ship was cut in half?

EraserheadNightmareFuel/FilmEvil Dead

Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available from
Privacy Policy