MovieChat Forums > Event Horizon (1997) Discussion > The ship did go to (biblical) hell.

The ship did go to (biblical) hell.


It's discussed many times in the film between miller and DJ and later Miller and weir, weir pretty much confirms the ship went hell. Miller sacrificed himself to save the remaining crew, died in the process and did not end up in hell due to the sacrifice. Weir actually designed the ship to go hell, sub conscientiously. Look at the design of the ship. The film is very clear on all this and is great film at that.

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I disagree. Weir says that 'Hell' is 'just a word' or something like that. The quoted lating stating to 'save yourself from hell' was just one of the crew members interpreting it as hell because that's the best description for what he was seeing/experiencing.

Having said that, yes it is in that way a sort of hell. Is it the biblical hell? That all depends on how you interpret hell. Constant chaos? Unescapable? Seems to fit. In the movie however they are saying that it is just another dimension that was able to be accessed by creating a black hole (gravity drive).

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the DVD commentary states otherwise it literally says on the DVD commentary that it is indeed HELL

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the DVD commentary states otherwise it literally says on the DVD commentary that it is indeed HELL


Yeah, but in commentary on the deleted scenes he mentions that they the choice (which he prefers), to cut out lines where it's explicitly stated to be a biblical hell. Paul Anderson (director) says he found it stronger to leave it a bit more vague (which I agree with).

For that matter, if you read the shooting script, Weir actually says out right that it's NOT hell and he's NOT the devil but "something much much older." The script makes further references to it being the embodiment of "nothing" and "the dark behind the stars."

There's an even older draft which seems to indicate the dimension was full of some kind of alien creatures (vaguely Lovecraft-ish in appearance).

The bottom line is that the the filmmakers realized leaving room for interpretation was important. It could be a literal hell (like seen in religious texts) or it could be simply a place so awful that Hell is the only word humans can use to describe it. Leaving it open is creepier.

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Whether it’s the biblical hell or just a *beep* up dimension where “hell” is the closest way to define it, is up for debate. But the Capt. Miller did indeed go through the portal with the ship. All he blew up was the corridor that connected the bridge of the ship to the loading docks. Miller and Wier were both in the part of the ship that contained the core and went through the portal to hell together.

It’s a disturbing thought that the hero who sacrificed himself will be going through that kind of suffering. But that kind of impact is exactly what this movie was shooting for.

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That, I thought, was one of the things that made this movie great. We've seen heroes die for others. That is a sacrifice but to ponder that Miller did not just die for his crew but will go through eternal torture and suffering just so they wouldn't have to is a much greater sacrifice.

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I think it's a fucked up dimension with hell like qualities.

Maybe it inspired our stories of hell like places here on earth, like the biblical hell. Visionaries and prophets got a glimpse of it and spun those stories.

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its not biblical anything
its only closest thing that they could explain to people
a dimension full of chaos, which to most of people is instantly "hell"

but as Weir said, hell is only a word, reality is much much worse
so who knows where they went and gone through...

no aliens were shown, but heavy tortures yes

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I don't think it's biblical hell because you shouldn't be able to go there physically. However it raises an interesting prospect if it is biblical hell and you can go there, then can you also theoretically go to heaven?

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TheAstor no, the Biblical Hell is a physical place so they would go there physically.

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It's like Doom. Did their teleportation technology *really* transport them to "actual, biblical" Hell? Personally I just don't think so. For me, they're just alternate dimensions. The area between two points of travel. Dimensions of Chaos, that when experienced simply cause people to believe they are in the worst place they could ever be: the biblical interpretation of Hell.

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Odd, by now somebody would be moaning about spoilers in the thread title, but we appear to be free of idiots who go on message boards before watching the movie.


Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived. -Isaac Asimov

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There are definitely Christian Hell references but some of the cut material indicates that the dimension of Chaos predates the big bang. The inference seems to be that whatever the big bang was (Let there be light from Genesis is actually not to bad a description of the Big Bang) replaced the old Chaos Dimension and that to us that dimension is pretty much evil ala Hell. With the old crew it seems that it tried to destroy what makes them of our universe which includes both our humanity physically, mentally and spiritually. In the log what is shown is some succumbing to it's darkness whilst others are destroyed by those that do. It's definitely a Hellish place but it's not a place where the corrupt are sent but rather the corruption itself.

Interestingly the crew of the L&C who are all about saving people do not succumb to the corrupting influence. Only Weir the outsider does. The essentially heroic L&C people that die do not embrace the evil but are destroyed by it. Possibly because they have not travelled to the actual source of the corruption or perhaps because their intrinsic selflessness means they are better able to resist the corrupting effects of the corruption.

So whilst the other dimension may well be Hell it's pre biblical. It's literally a place outside of our universe. From a biblical perspective that could be said to be a place without God. which would align to Hell I guess. Where it differs is that it's unlikely to be place that any guiding being of our universe would be sending anyone.

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The way I figure it, it *was* the Christian Hell, except that this was the *real* Hell and not some human interpretation of it as written in the Bible. I'm an atheist, but assuming Hell is real there's still nobody that's ever actually seen it. Going by the movie's logic, what's in the Bible is a description of something real, but an interpretative description only - it's not a literal eye witness account. Simply put, somebody heard about Hell or had visions about it and wrote that down in the Bible, and the crew of the Event Horizon got to see it for real.

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Welcome to the dessert if the real 😁

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