I'm not saying I don't like science like how a Republican doesn't like science; I acknowledge that it's out there. I'm just not the person to deal with it. Other people are better at science than me, and that's fine. Those people probably haven't played as much Tecmo Super Bowl as I have. Let's call it even and move on.
Despite my oppositional stance toward it, I spent a lot of time thinking about a movie with science in it this week. So, in the name of science - kind of - let's take a look at that movie and talk about how much of a non-sciencer I am.
HOW THIS WORKS
Step 1) I pick a movie.
Step 2) I tell you about the movie.
Step 3) I tell you what we're looking for in a double feature movie.
Step 4) Another movie!
Step 5) Victory!
Event Horizon
1997, Dir. by Paul W.S. Anderson
I'm not gonna say Event Horizon is an incredibly smart sci-fi movie. But it's got enough science in it to confuse me. Perhaps I should be embarrassed when I admit that, and maybe I am a little. I'm not to proud to admit it.
There are definitely people out there who understand Event Horizon much more than I do. One such person is a great writer named Elbee, who recently wrote this wonderful article celebrating the film's 20th anniversary over at the fine site Cinepunx. I've read this article, which spells out some of the film's science and some of its theory with great detail, a couple of times now. It makes me want to be a smarter person. It makes sense, which is something I gotta fight through like four edits to get to, and it even shows an understanding of the influences and themes at the heart of this deceptively tricky piece of pulp sci-fi horror. It's the kind of insight you readers deserve, yet it's not the type of insight you will get from me when we talk about Event Horizon. I have no tongue for it.
Event Horizon is the tale of a space ship named, you guessed it, the Event Horizon. It was sent to explore the edge of our solar system in 2040 - a place I thought had already been explored when the film was released in 1997, because science and I don't talk much - and disappeared. Then, in 2047, a rescue named "Lewis & Clark" (I understood that reference! It's not science!), is sent to rescue it when its distress signal appears. Accompanying the crew on their journey is the man who designed the Event Horizon, Dr. William Weir (Sam Neill, who apparently was heading to space to avoid dinosaurs), and he's there to explain exactly how much science the movie wants us to think about. My buddy Elbee makes a great point in her article that bears repeating here - you would assume that a bunch of astronauts understood something about science. But what Event Horizon presupposes is - What if they didn't?
I'm fine with that presumption, because I struggle to understand it. I like to think I'm smart, but the more technical terms Neill and friends throw at the screen the more I get a blank stare on my face. You know when your friends are all talking about that TV show you don't watch - in my case, we'll say The Bachelor, and you're not trying to be rude and just leave the party so you just sit there and nod and do one of those "huh" or "ohhh" noises every 27 seconds? That's me when dude starts talking about the physics of space travel...if that even is what he's talking about.
(Off topic, but the 27 second interval is the key to this method of polite disinterest. If you make it 20 seconds, someone else who's not paying attention is gonna be counting and they're gonna notice that it's an even number and they're gonna call you out on it. If you wait for 30 seconds you're gonna seem out of it for too long, and people will know. Trust me - 27 is the perfect number. Try it out sometime. You'll thank me.)
The things we learn when the Lewis & Clark gets to the Event Horizon are:
But, here's the good part. We learn pretty near the middle of the film that this other dimension the Event Horizon (the ship) went to - might just be Hell. And that's good for me. It can't be proven or quantified. I like that in my horror, and I like that in my sci-fi. That's where Event Horizon (the movie) - which has just as many creepy and gory images as it does arguments about physics and other sciences I don't get - works so well for me.
Take out the Catholic part - in the immortal words of Bob Dylan, "It ain't me, babe" - and Detective Appleton just described my understanding of other dimensions and the evils in the world to a T. Which is pretty amazing, since we've never met. I guess Detective Lawrence Appleton and I are (you guessed it) PERFECT STRANGERS.
There are definitely people out there who understand Event Horizon much more than I do. One such person is a great writer named Elbee, who recently wrote this wonderful article celebrating the film's 20th anniversary over at the fine site Cinepunx. I've read this article, which spells out some of the film's science and some of its theory with great detail, a couple of times now. It makes me want to be a smarter person. It makes sense, which is something I gotta fight through like four edits to get to, and it even shows an understanding of the influences and themes at the heart of this deceptively tricky piece of pulp sci-fi horror. It's the kind of insight you readers deserve, yet it's not the type of insight you will get from me when we talk about Event Horizon. I have no tongue for it.
Event Horizon is the tale of a space ship named, you guessed it, the Event Horizon. It was sent to explore the edge of our solar system in 2040 - a place I thought had already been explored when the film was released in 1997, because science and I don't talk much - and disappeared. Then, in 2047, a rescue named "Lewis & Clark" (I understood that reference! It's not science!), is sent to rescue it when its distress signal appears. Accompanying the crew on their journey is the man who designed the Event Horizon, Dr. William Weir (Sam Neill, who apparently was heading to space to avoid dinosaurs), and he's there to explain exactly how much science the movie wants us to think about. My buddy Elbee makes a great point in her article that bears repeating here - you would assume that a bunch of astronauts understood something about science. But what Event Horizon presupposes is - What if they didn't?
(Off topic, but the 27 second interval is the key to this method of polite disinterest. If you make it 20 seconds, someone else who's not paying attention is gonna be counting and they're gonna notice that it's an even number and they're gonna call you out on it. If you wait for 30 seconds you're gonna seem out of it for too long, and people will know. Trust me - 27 is the perfect number. Try it out sometime. You'll thank me.)
- Everyone on board is dead.
- The ship is creepy as hell.
- The ship has been to another dimension.
I understand the first two items there pretty well and then all of a sudden WHOA ANOTHER DIMENSION? If this was Twitter I'd throw some cutesy gif about my mind being blown into this paragraph, but this is the real world and I have to use words for my feelings. Apparently, as I understand it, The ship named Event Horizon (inside the movie Event Horizon, naturally) was just chilling out by Neptune, looking around, having a good time, when POOF IT WAS GONE TO SOME PLACE ELSE. And not some place else like Kentucky, but some place else that's not even on the same plane of existence as Kentucky. And not a plane that you fly on either.
When I put it that way it's not too hard to understand, but the more Weir and the confused crew, led by the super fantastic Laurence Fishburne as their no nonsense captain, talk about black holes and how things work with physics...the more I start to doubt myself. And then I see little details in the film that make me question the science even more. At one point a character gets jettisoned out into space and I look at all the little white lights behind him and the only thing I can think is "There's no way there's that many stars grouped so close together out there! It looks like something I would have drawn when I was five and just had my first Mountain Dew and couldn't stop putting dots on the paper so it looked like I used all the space and actually drew something!" Clearly, at this point I'm letting Event Horizon get the best of me and my science-resistant brain.
Sure, it's basically Alien without an Alien (and with a far too spastic electronic musical score), but it does a good job of being that while freaking its characters out in unique ways. I can dig a movie like that, even if I don't feel like I'm smart enough to really understand what it thinks it is smart enough to tell me.
At this point I've said about all I can say about Event Horizon without sounding too stupid. (Well, maybe I'm already there.) So when I thought about explaining what I'm looking for in a double feature to go with it, i thought it would be best if I focus on the things I understand about Event Horizon, and how I can build off of them.
At this point I've said about all I can say about Event Horizon without sounding too stupid. (Well, maybe I'm already there.) So when I thought about explaining what I'm looking for in a double feature to go with it, i thought it would be best if I focus on the things I understand about Event Horizon, and how I can build off of them.
- The characters in the film and the things they are up against belong in two separate dimensions. While I don't quite understand the physics of that, I'm a big fan of movies that pit our reality and the expectations we have about it up against another place that's...to put it simply, quite different.
- Outside of the seemingly all-seeing Weir, the characters in Event Horizon are kinda normal people who, despite being trained for the predicament they're in, are always playing catch up against the unknown forces they face. They try really hard, and I like that about them. I kind of wish they were more open to the things around them though, but they do their best.
- When things get really icky for the characters in Event Horizon, they come across some creepy black goo. There's something about horror and sci-fi movies with creepy black goo that just makes me smile, so I'm looking for another creepy black goo movie. (I probably won't talk about this again, but I felt like mentioning it here because typing "creepy black goo"is so much fun.)
- When in doubt, the crew of the Lewis & Clark have one of my favorite theories for attacking the evil they can't understand: burn it down. You can science me all you want, but most of the time fire is a great answer. Let's look for people who take on another dimension that way too.
The film I'm about to recommend to you certainly doesn't live in the same world as Event Horizon. But it's a movie that embraces the things I understand about movies like Event Horizon, and it's a movie that challenges reality while not relying on that pesky ol' science that I don't want around. We're making concessions for my inadequacies as a learner with this double feature, I admit it.
Please stay with me. Because we're gonna have some fun doing it.
John Dies At The End
2012, Directed by Don Coscarelli
Don Coscarelli is my kind of director. When he wants to go to another dimension, he throws the science right out the window. The man made two of my very favorite horror movies - Phantasm and Bubba Ho-Tep - both of which challenge reality in playful ways. Yet his most recent film, John Dies at the End, might be the wildest thing he's ever made. Inside it, alongside two fantastic leads (Chase Williamson and Rob Mayes) and two iconic character actors (Paul Giamatti and Clancy Brown), is a character that understands the whole "other dimensions and evil" problem in a very similar manner to myself.
His name is Detective Lawrence Appleton (no one will ever convince me he's not named after Mark Linn-Baker's iconic character from Perfect Strangers), he's played by Glynn Turman (who starred in an underrated '70s gem, J.D.'s Revenge and deserves much love), and he easily gives my favorite performance in this insane, dimension-hopping, drug-induced vacation from reality. There's a moment in the middle of the film where he confronts the film's central character, David Wong (Williamson), about what's going on in this bizarre situation. His explanation of what he thinks is going on, quoted below, is pretty much the perfect representation of how a non-sciencer like myself thinks when faced with the kind of situations these two films offer up.
"You know, everybody's got a ghost story, a UFO or a Bigfoot story. Now what I think is that stuff is both real and not real at the same time. I ain't no Star Trek fan and I don't know about other dimensions and all that. But I am an old school Catholic and I do believe in Hell. I believe it ain't just rapists and murderers down there. I believe it's demons and worms and vile things; the grease trap of the universe. And the more I think of it, the more I think it's not some place 'down there' at all, that it's here, all around us. We just don't perceive it. Just like how the country music radio station is out there, in the air, even if you ain't tuned to it."
Like Event Horizon, John Dies at the End is a movie I've seen at least a handful of times - it's a young flick, but it is incredibly rewatchable - and could not explain to you without using the phrase "AND THEN THINGS GET NUTS!" But while Event Horizon tries really hard to explain the science behind its madness, this one embraces a sort of lunatic philosopher role. As the film starts the narrator poses a conundrum, a rambling logic puzzle about undead beings and axe repair that has nothing to do with the rest of the film's plot, and this kind of logic (or lack there of?) never stops coming at the viewer as the characters face some of the most bizarre encounters you'll find in a horror film.
It would be unfair if I didn't list some of those bizarre struggles, so here's a quick run down of just a few of the things we encounter while following these characters:
Another major departure from the first film in our double feature are the two lead characters, Dave and John. Everyone on the Event Horizon - aside from the doctor, who obviously knew more about the titular ship than them - is hesitant when faced with the reality-altering visions they see throughout their film. On the other hand, Dave and John are carefree and open-minded. This horror comedy's best joke might be the presentation of how level headed these two ordinary guys are in the face of shapeshifting monsters and gateways to other worlds. There's very little fear shown by either character, and their calm approach to such a bizarre series of events keeps the viewer smiling throughout the film.
It might seem like a disservice to pair Event Horizon with a film that throws out any of the logic and science that it works very hard to incorporate, especially as I explain just how far the second film's tone deviates from the focus on terror that the first was built around. I'd argue that those departures are what makes this such a fun double feature, because Event Horizon is so effective in its use of science to create terror (even if I don't understand it) that following it up with another film with the same goals would maybe be a bit too heavy for even a horror loving viewer like me.
By the time you see the alternate dimension that John and Dave travel to late in their film, you'll understand that John Dies at the End is not interested in painting the same picture of Hell that Event Horizon did. And that's quite fine. Both of these films are nightmare scenarios that challenge reality and make things pretty gross and gory at times, but some nightmares are just weird and wacky and not as terrifying as some other nightmares. I think we've got room for both kinds of nightmares in horror cinema.
Both of these films will make you think, will make you squirm, and will surprise you. One will scare you more than the other, and one will make you laugh more than the other, even if it relies on a few too many dick jokes. If you want to see some science go wrong, but don't want to spend too much time trying to understand that science, try out this double feature and enjoy the ride through a few unique nightmare dimensions.
- Meat monsters
- A flying insect moustache
- "Eyes Wide Shut World
Another major departure from the first film in our double feature are the two lead characters, Dave and John. Everyone on the Event Horizon - aside from the doctor, who obviously knew more about the titular ship than them - is hesitant when faced with the reality-altering visions they see throughout their film. On the other hand, Dave and John are carefree and open-minded. This horror comedy's best joke might be the presentation of how level headed these two ordinary guys are in the face of shapeshifting monsters and gateways to other worlds. There's very little fear shown by either character, and their calm approach to such a bizarre series of events keeps the viewer smiling throughout the film.
By the time you see the alternate dimension that John and Dave travel to late in their film, you'll understand that John Dies at the End is not interested in painting the same picture of Hell that Event Horizon did. And that's quite fine. Both of these films are nightmare scenarios that challenge reality and make things pretty gross and gory at times, but some nightmares are just weird and wacky and not as terrifying as some other nightmares. I think we've got room for both kinds of nightmares in horror cinema.
Both of these films will make you think, will make you squirm, and will surprise you. One will scare you more than the other, and one will make you laugh more than the other, even if it relies on a few too many dick jokes. If you want to see some science go wrong, but don't want to spend too much time trying to understand that science, try out this double feature and enjoy the ride through a few unique nightmare dimensions.
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