Laurence Fishburne as Captain Miller

Sam Neill as Dr. William Weir

Kathleen Quinlan as Peters

Joely Richardson as Lt. Starck

Richard T. Jones as Cooper

Jack Noseworthy as Justin

Jason Isaacs as D.J.

Sean Pertwee as Smith

Holley Chant as Claire Weir

Noah Huntley as Edward Corrick

Peter Marinker as Captain John Kilpack
Barclay Wright as Denny Peters
Robert Jezek as Rescue Technician
Emily Booth as Girl on Monitor
Teresa May as Vanessa

After directing the successful Mortal Kombat in 1995, Anderson was offered the job. The release date had already been set and Anderson agreed, despite that the deadline meant that the post-production period was severely reduced.

On the commentary, Anderson cites this as the main cause for the many troubles faced during production and especially when Anderson was to make decisions on the final cut.

In the commentary Anderson mentions the wish he had to direct an R rated picture after the PG-13 rated Mortal Kombat and also mentions that he turned down the opportunity to direct X-Men in order to make Event Horizon.

Anderson said that his initial cut of the film, before the visual effects had been completed, ran to about 130 minutes in length. The film was even more graphic in this incarnation, and both test audiences and the studio were unnerved by the gore.

Paramount ordered Anderson to cut the film by thirty minutes and delete some of the violence, a decision that he regrets.

Some of the lost scenes were offered as special features on the 2006 DVD but were taken from poor quality video tape, the only format in which the scenes now exist; the studio had little interest in keeping unused footage and the film has since been lost.

The original cut including the missing footage was reportedly found on VHS as announced in an interview by Paul W.S. Anderson when he was at ComicCon 2012.

The film received generally negative reviews. Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a rating of 24% based on reviews from 37 critics. Owen Gleiberman at Entertainment Weekly gave the film a grade of B-.

Empire magazine gave the film a score of 3/5 stars. It was a box office flop, recouping only $47 million of its estimated $60 million production budget.

Resources: Wikipedia.org, imdb.com

Event Horizon - 1997

In the year 2047, a signal from the starship Event Horizon is picked up on Earth. The ship had disappeared without trace beyond the planet Neptune in 2040; her loss was considered the worst space disaster on record with her entire 18-person crew missing and presumed dead.

The ship has since reappeared in a decaying orbit around Neptune at the outer rim of the solar system and more than three billion kilometers from the nearest outpost on the Saturn moon of Titan. The rescue ship Lewis and Clark is dispatched to investigate. The ship's crew is commanded by Capt. Miller (Laurence Fishburne) and carries the Event Horizon's designer, Dr. William Weir (Sam Neill).

When the Lewis and Clark arrives, the crew are informed by Dr. Weir that the Event Horizon had actually been built by the government to test a secret, experimental faster-than-light gravity drive. The drive would create an artificial black hole to bridge two points in space to significantly reduce journey time. The ship had been on its initial test flight, intended to reach Proxima Centauri; it subsequently vanished without a trace.

Weir plays to the crew the only signal received since the ship's reappearance, spoken by ship's captain, Cpt. Kilpack, which is a series of garbled and confusing screams and shouts, embedded in which is the Latin phrase "liberate me" ("save me").

Upon approaching the drifting vessel, no definitive trace of human life is found; inconclusive sensor readings lead the Lewis and Clark's crew to enter the Event Horizon to search for survivors. Inside, the crew split up and Medical Tech Peters (Kathleen Quinlan) discovers a frozen human corpse floating on the bridge, with both eyes gouged out.

Engineer Justin (Jack Noseworthy) enters the ship's core and sees a black, liquid-like mirror within its drive; it sucks him inside as he touches it and emits a large shock wave, damaging the Lewis and Clark. Rescue Tech Cooper (Richard T. Jones) manages to pull Justin out of the core by his tether, but he is catatonic.

With the Lewis and Clark heavily damaged, the remaining crew transfer to the Event Horizon, which only contains 20 hours of usable oxygen. A short time later, Justin emerges from his catatonia and attempts suicide by ejecting himself from an airlock without a space suit, saying he is tormented by horrific images he saw inside the ship's core. Although Justin snaps out of his trance just in time to be rescued by Miller, but he is seriously injured.

Soon afterwards the rescuers begin to experience hallucinations of their personal fears and regrets. Miller sees the manifestation of a subordinate he was forced to abandon in a fire; Peters sees images of her son Denny (Barclay Wright), with his legs covered in bloody lesions; and widower Dr. Weir sees his wife Claire (Holley Chant), missing her eyes and urging him to join her.

The crew discovers that although the ship's drive successfully opened a gateway in space-time, it actually led outside the known universe and into another dimension, described as "pure chaos, pure evil". The Event Horizon's reconstructed video log shows the original crew activating the gravity drive and, minutes later, engaging in a frenzy of torture, self-mutilation, cannibalism and sodomy.

The ship's captain, who has torn out his own eyes, leaves the previously-heard Latin message which has since been found to actually say "liberate tutame ex inferis" ("save yourself from Hell"). It appears that the Event Horizon has returned with a supernatural presence which is using its occupants' personal torments against them, with the aim of compelling them to return to the "chaos" dimension.

The Lewis and Clark now repaired, Miller decides to destroy the Event Horizon despite the strong objections of Weir. While preparing to evacuate, Peters is led to her death by plummeting down a shaft as a result of being tricked by a manifestation of her son. Weir, having abandoned the crew and arriving at the core, discovers her body. He sees a vision of his wife's suicide, and is compelled by her reanimated form to tear out his eyes.

Weir then uses bombs fitted to the Event Horizon to destroy the Lewis and Clark, which kills its pilot Smith (Sean Pertwee) and causes Cooper, on the ship's hull, to be thrown into space. Weir goes on to kill D.J. (Jason Isaacs) by vivisection, leaving him suspended from the ceiling of the medical facility.

Seemingly possessed by the evil presence on board, Weir threatens the two survivors, Miller and X.O. Starck (Joely Richardson), with a nail gun, saying the ship is "alive" and will not allow anyone to leave. He activates the ship's gravity drive, beginning a ten-minute countdown, after which the Event Horizon will return to the chaos/Hell dimension.

Cooper, having used his space suit's oxygen to propel him back to the ship, causes Weir to shoot the bridge window and be blown into space towards his apparent death. Miller attempts to detonate the explosives installed on the Event Horizon to split the ship in two; after arming all of the explosives and recovering the detonator for them, he is trapped by a burning manifestation of his former comrade and forced to escape to the ship's core.

Inside the core, Miller again sees the vision of his comrade, which then changes into a scarred Dr. Weir (eyes restored) who shows Miller scenes of the Lewis and Clark's remaining crew being tortured and mutilated. The two fight, but Miller is eventually able to reach the detonator, which he then triggers, sacrificing himself as the ship explodes. Weir screams, denied the surviving crew.

The ship explodes at the neck and splits in two. The gravity drive then activates, pulling the rear of the ship into a wormhole. Starck and Cooper, with a wounded and comatose Justin, survive in the remaining forward decks and place themselves into stasis for the return to Earth. Starck has a nightmare of a mutilated Dr. Weir rescuing her and is awakened in a distraught state by the real rescue team.

Cooper restrains Starck, as one of the rescuers calls for a sedative. The automated hatch leading to the stasis chamber seals shut behind the rescuers, implying the supernatural force is inherent to the ship and not dependent on the gravity drive.