Event Horizon has long held a special place in my heart, and in my nightmares. Few other films have frightened me quite the way that one did, when I first watched it as an impressionable teenager, and to this day I list it among my very favorite horror movies. Some of you may recall the glowing review I posted in 2019. You can imagine my interest when I got the news (about a month ago) that we’re finally getting a licensed tie-in, expanding the universe. It’s a five-issue comic series, titled Event Horizon: Dark Descent, to be released by IDW Publishing. Today we’ll take a look at what we already know about this project, and speculate on what might be in store. Be warned: there will be spoilers for the original movie. Plus a little bit of gruesomeness.
Event Horizon, for the uninitiated, is a 1997 sci-fi horror film directed by Paul W. S. Anderson. The leading cast include Sam Neill (familiar to viewers of Jurassic Park and The Hunt for Red October) and Laurence Fishburne (perhaps best known as Morpheus from The Matrix, also in Slingshot). Fishburne plays Captain Miller, in command of the rescue ship Lewis and Clark. His mission is to investigate the Event Horizon, an experimental faster-than-light vessel that vanished without a trace seven years ago, but has now reappeared in orbit around Neptune. Along for the ride is Dr. Weir (Sam Neill), its original designer. He has been having troubled dreams about his brainchild—as if, somehow, the ship is talking to him. It went somewhere during those seven years, and it has brought something back with it.
Despite bombing at the box office and getting raked over the coals by critics1, Event Horizon has attracted numerous fans over the years, and it’s now considered a classic of sci-fi horror. Rumors surfaced in 2021 that it would come back as an Amazon TV series. Nothing seems to have come of that, though the director claims he’s still working on it. We do, however, have Event Horizon: Dark Descent. The comic series was announced in May of this year, dropping into the world without preamble or forewarning, boasting two lavishly atmospheric covers, a crew of well-renowned comic artists, and some surprisingly specific details about the plot. Not all reveals are this generous. The release date isn’t far away, now—its first issue drops on August 20, a little over two months from now.
Event Horizon: Dark Descent is a prequel, concerning itself with the fate of the ship’s crew. We catch only glimpses of them in the film. They activated the Event Horizon‘s experimental gravity drive, and then… something happened. By the time our heroes arrive on the scene, all that’s left is a clawed-up corpse floating in the bridge, and some kind of chunky red goo splattered across the walls. Only later do we see some of the truth, in a fifteen-second video log. It is a grisly fifteen seconds.
The foolhardy among you can watch the scene on YouTube, but for those of you with more sense than to click that link, let’s just say it’s nicknamed “the blood orgy” for a reason. Allegedly the filmmakers2 hired pornographic actors and amputees to make it believable. The highlight is the Event Horizon‘s captain, Kilpack, covered in blood and viscera, holding his own torn-out eyes in his hands while he has somebody else’s eyes shoved into the empty sockets, and he’s chanting in Latin: “Libera te tutemet ex inferis.” Or, in English: “Save yourself from Hell.”
Wherever the original crew ended up, it wasn’t a nice place.
This is what IDW put out as a description for the prequel:
Embracing the hard-R rating of the shocking movie, EVENT HORIZON: DARK DESCENT #1 (of 5 issues) will lightspeed jump into comic shops this August. Taking place before the events of the film and completely accessible to new readers, this is the unbelievable story of the final fate of the original Event Horizon crew. What really happened to Captain Kilpack and the first crew as their ship journeyed across a nightmarish realm of torments beyond imagining? Abandon all hope as demonic forces – led by Paimon, the eyeless King of Hell – unleash agony and pure evil upon the crew in a gripping story.
Presumably that’s Paimon up there, on the second cover, cradling the Event Horizon in his arms. No such character is named or alluded to onscreen. Indeed, this series must be a considerable expansion of the Event Horizon universe, seeing as we never get much information about what’s on the other side of the gravity drive. The film implies that the crew pushed the button, crossed over to the dimension of torment, then began their murder-fest right away; that wouldn’t make very good material for a five-part comic. Dark Descent will presumably give us a slower burn, building over time from “All systems look good, captain!” to “HAIL CHAOS! HAIL THE LORD OF PAIN! I WILL USE YOUR EYES AS CHEWING GUM AND YOUR INTESTINES AS JUMP-ROPE!”
We have a few other hints. Shortly before the time of writing, the horror site Bloody Disgusting released an exclusive preview: three inked pages from Dark Descent, without coloring or text. You can see them for yourself here. The first shows a middle-aged man, probably Captain Kilkpack, walking on Earth during a rain shower. We also see the Event Horizon‘s reactor room under construction, which is a cool detail. A creepy eyeless figure in the last panel hints that something is already out of sorts. One would assume that nothing untoward happens before the Event Horizon engages its gravity drive and transits dimensions—until it crosses over, it’s just a ship. Perhaps this is a flashback?
The second page is clearly set some time after the ship’s passage to Hell. Paimon, the eyeless demon-lord, sits triumphantly on the bridge of the Event Horizon, surrounded by the tormented and mutilated figures of the crew. I’m not going to include a screenshot from this one; go click the link and see for yourself, if you’d like. It’s appropriately horrific.
For the third: The Event Horizon is drifting in space. There are stars around, so it can’t be anywhere too nightmarish, yet. A crewmember looks out the window. Someone comes up to greet her, so she turns away from the glass—except in the last panel, we see her reflection has taken on a life of its own, and it doesn’t have eyes anymore. Eerie. My theory is that at this point the Event Horizon has entered the other dimension, but things still seem normal enough. Only a few odd happenings here and there hint at what’s about to happen.
These are tantalizing glimpses, and I’m happily seizing every tidbit I can get. But I do have concerns. You see, Event Horizon derives its power from a certain mysticism. You have the design of the spacecraft itself, shaped rather unsubtly like a crucifix, adorned with Gothic arches and Roman numerals; there’s the activation sequence of the gravity drive, its concentric rings aligning as one to unleash an ethereal glow; and we see Dr. Weir’s final form as a mad cultist3, brought back from the dead with strange symbols carved into his flesh, prophesying a world of torment to come. Religious and occult imagery absolutely pervade this film. That’s not something you can easily expand on.
Of the hell dimension, we see and hear precious little. Just blink-and-you-miss-them flash cuts of people wrapped in barbed wire or eaten by maggots. Some ominous pronouncements from Dr. Weir: “Hell is only a word. The reality is much, much worse.” But the mystery is the point—it’s what makes cosmic horror scary. At its best, Event Horizon points towards a truth as transcendent as it is terrifying, without quite letting us look behind the veil. That’s why I have misgivings about a comic that promises to explain exact where the ship went. If done poorly, it would spoil the movie’s greatest appeal.
The presence of “Paimon, the eyeless King of Hell” is especially worrisome to me—it reminds me of Star Trek: First Contact, when the Borg Queen gave a face to the faceless Borg Collective. Did her character help create dramatic tension in that particular movie? Sure. She also marked the end of the Borg as a real threat. They were scary in The Next Generation precisely because they were an implacable, pitiless mass, unknown and unknowable, as opposed to Alice Krige wearing a cyborg catsuit. Hopefully Paimon doesn’t end up being the Borg Queen of Hell, but he certainly runs that risk. Personifying the formless evil of Event Horizon is a bold move.
Concerns aside, I’m actually pretty stoked for this one. I don’t envy the challenge the creators have taken on, coming back decades later to a unique cult classic and trying to recapture what made it click, but I’d say there’s a solid chance they can pull it off. Dark Descent isn’t dead on arrival, like, say, the first trailer for Gladiator II. What they’ve shown so far is cool as hell4. When the first issue goes live on August 20, I’ll happily throw piles of cash at IDW to snag myself a copy—and I’ll report back to you with what I find.
What do you think of the new announcement? Have you seen Event Horizon before—and if so, are you a fan, or do you agree with the critics? As always, my comments section is open. Go ahead and drop me a note!
Yes, I uploaded two posts within six hours of each other. Why? Because I’m having some fun and fooling around. Regular weekly updates will resume at some point in the future, but until then, enjoy the ride.
- It scored 35% on Rotten Tomatoes. Meanwhile, a stinker like Ad Astra is rated 83%. What a cruel world we live in… ↩︎
- They shot a lot more footage than appeared in the theatrical release. Since people were literally fainting in test screenings, the studio insisted they pare it down, and the deleted material was hidden away in a Romanian salt mine—where, sadly, it decayed beyond recovery. We will almost certainly never see the original cut of Event Horizon. ↩︎
- Which is hilarious, seeing as Sam Neill played the Antichrist in the third The Omen movie. ↩︎
- Pun (probably) not intended. ↩︎
Discover more from Let's Get Off This Rock Already!
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Leave a Reply