31 Movies of May, Day 5: Event Horizon

May 5th viewing: Event Horizon, selected by my apartment, which recently passed through a portal to another dimension and is alive now

Year of Release: 1997

Directed by: Paul W.S. Anderson

Written by: Philip Eisner

Starring: Laurence Fishburne, Sam Neill, Joely Richardson, Kathleen Quinlan, Richard T. Jones, Jason Isaacs, Sean Pertwee, Jack Noseworthy

Accompanying Beverage of Choice: Semi-Dry (Cider, 6% ABV) - Right Bee Cider, Chicago, Illinois
(Support Independent Breweries **and Cideries!** - buy local when getting buzzed during quarantine)

I miss going to movie theaters. I assume you miss going to movie theaters too, if only as an avatar for the general idea of “going anywhere where other people exist.” We have all been turned into Ariel from The Little Mermaid, yearning to toss away our Covidian fish tails and spend our days on the sandy surface world beyond our homes.

Earlier today a popular topic in the Twitter mines was the last movie people saw in theaters before the pandemic. A popular answer was The Last Skywalker, though “popular” probably isn’t the right term so much as “regretful.” Mine was Birds of Prey, a movie that I liked fair enough, but not enough that I’d be comfortable making it the last piece of cinema I ever see in a public setting.

Something I would be comfortable giving that distinction is Event Horizon. I love Event Horizon. Dark gory sci-fi is a little niche that I love internally but don’t extoll the virtues of enough externally, and Event Horizon is one of the genre’s darkest and goriest. It feels odd to heap such praise on a film by a director best known for lesser ComicCon vomit, but the lovingly gloomy production design and Sam Neill at his most diabolically campy go a long way.

However, it’s not just any screening of Event Horizon that I imagine at my Desert Island theater, it’s specifically the screening at last year’s Music Box of Horrors. Music Box of Horrors is an annual 24-hour horror movie marathon run by the Music Box Theatre, one of Chicago’s true cultural treasures. I had been meaning to go to Music Box of Horrors since I moved to Chicago nearly a decade ago, but something always seemed to get in the way that prevented me from making the commitment, either a friend’s wedding or trial at work or just general young adult overplanning. I finally made it last year, and it was everything I could have hoped for and more.

The lineup consisted of thirteen films ranging across the horror spectrum, kicked off with a screening of the 1928 silent classic The Man Who Laughs with live musical accompaniment, concluding with 1992’s TV-legend-inspiring Buffy the Vampire Slayer. In between the entries ranged from an Italian zombie farce to an 80’s killer alligator flick to a homemade Japanese Evil Dead knockoff. The peak though, at least for me, was Event Horizon.

Event Horizon started rolling right around midnight, when the marathon had already been going for twelve hours. I don’t have terribly extensive experience with 24-hour movie marathons, but this feels like the best time frame of the event. Everybody is settled in (i.e., drunk) but not too sleep deprived that they are nearing exhaustion (I had only consumed a single 5-Hour Energy shot at this point, on my way to four). The time slot made sense for a movie like Event Horizon, which was probably the most mainstream selection of the lineup. The many members of the audience who had already seen it could anticipate all of the high points, and the rest of the audience could run along with the fun.

And run along we did. Chuckles greeted the early introduction of actor Sean Pertwee on camera, who the audience had just seen in a screening of Dog Soldiers immediately before Event Horizon began. Jump scares resulted in unanimous jumps. Gore shots resulted in unanimous gasps. When the movie reaches its famous blood orgy scene, and Laurence Fishburne reacts by delivering the line “We’re leaving” with pitch-perfect comic timing, the crowd rolled with laughter at an intensity I haven’t seen in ages.

Last week, the Music Box Theatre announced that the 2020 Music Box of Horrors would be held on October 24th, and that its lineup would include the Joan Crawford-starring Straight-Jacket and the Spanish exploitation flick Demon Witch Child. I bought my ticket instantly, even though I really don’t know if it’s going to be possible for anybody to host this type of mass gathering this year, let alone the 700-person capacity Music Box. But with most everything I looked forward to for the rest of the year - baseball games, music festivals, or every single theatrical release between now and late summer - being cancelled or perpetually delayed, it really feels nice to have a joyfully gluttonous movie theater marathon to look forward to.

If nothing else, I think a few months of hope are worth the $25 I paid for my ticket. The worst case scenario here is I made a small donation to the Music Box, which they more than deserve. Besides, as Event Horizon shows us, there are much worse fates that can await us, and a cancelled movie festival surely pales in comparison to having Sam Neill pry my eyes out in the vacuum of space.