“This place is a tomb.”
This has been one of those weeks that makes you think “Hmm, would life actually be less stressful on board the Event Horizon?” But one of the things we can do to help get us through is indulge in the joys of cinema…you know, like Event Horizon (1997)! Space horror is an itch that doesn’t often get scratched, and even when it does, it’s not like this ghost ship / cosmic nightmare of a movie. I’ve always loved the haunted house aspects of Event Horizon: the creepy ghost sightings, the cold and eerie lifeless rooms, the casual yet ominous wall of gore. But watching it in prep for this episode, it was the cosmic horror that unmoored me, the idea that there are realities so far removed from our own that we literally cannot conceive of them and that the dissonance would drive us mad…I don’t know, it really clicked in my brain place this time around. Sure, it’s basic Lovecraft stuff I guess, and my personal revelations about the nature of The Other Place in Event Horizon might generate a mere shrug in others. But you know when you just kinda get something? Like no matter if it’s something as ultimately silly as a Paul (WS) Anderson film, it burrows in your marrow and unnerves you? That was me this week. What used to earn a mere shrug from me (“Oh wow, they encountered the unknown and went mad. And?”) really affected me.
Maybe it was just balancing out all the mundane, earthly horrors perpetrated over the last…well, forever. Maybe it was caused by my deep seated fears of black holes and mantis shrimp! Maybe it was Maybelline. Whatever the cause…well, I’m not sure I’m suddenly going to start indulging in all things Lovecraft (all things minus the abhorrent racism! geez). But it did give me a whole new appreciation for Event Horizon, so at least that’s something.
