This movie made me angry

To address one point: Ever heard the term "need to know basis"? If they're told what their specific mission is before they leave, they can tell their friends, family, etc. Information could very easily be leaked, and for whatever reason, it was deemed to important to take the chance that the information could go public.

"You're going to need a bigger boat." - Chief Brody

i just watched it and can only agree with you. as you i could go into detail and list everything that felt wrong with the plot and characters, and people would counter my arguments to defend the movie. but in the end it wouldn't make a difference, because i'd still find it unrealistic, illogical and arbitrary to the point of stupidity for the most part.

what i don't understand is why there aren't more movies where writers and directors value realism and authenticity more and not let the characters act in dumb ways, just so the "plot" can unravel and they can throw in a few more effects and jump-scares.
i'm not just regarding this movie, but in fact the majority of action/sci-fi/horror flicks. just because the actions of your characters are believable and sound (in the universe they play in!) doesn't mean you can't build a good script/movie around it - quite in the contrary! i'd even go as far as to say, if you can't create a story with believable and relatable characters and actions, maybe it is not so great after all...

also you're spot on mentioning prometheus, i had the same thought.

1) Maybe watch the Alien movies again. In the first one, they don't run across the SOS signal by accident, that was planned, as revealed later by Bishop. And in the second Alien movie they do exactly the same: Briefing they crew at the last possible moment, when the ship reached it's destination. Prometheus does the same thing.

2) The obvious reason why they get briefed that late is because it's a secret mission, doh. Did you miss all the stuff about the lies told to the public? They can't risk to tell them beforehand because then a) they can tell other people and b) would probably not participate.

3) The reason they were so upset was also explained: They were forced to do this mission even though they were about to take vacation. That would piss you off as well if you had a job like that. They also didn't like Wier. And most likely they didn't like being involved into a government conspiracies.

4) Why not assign someone else to that mission then? Many possible reasons.
a) You'd eventually run into the same problems with other crew members.
b) Sometimes you simply want the best out there. Maybe this crew is the A-Team of spacetravel.
c) It's 2047 or something like that. I am pretty sure by that time spacetravel still isn't that common that a job like space-rescue is an everyday job like taxi driver. They probably didn't have many crews to choose from.


Considering 3 and 4 also explains why some of the crew act childishly from time to time. If you are doing a rare but important job that only some dozens of persons are able to do, you can get away with that. You complained that the characters didn't feel real as opposed to your space truckers? To me they felt real explicitly because of the antics of some of them. Especially with a captain like Miller (Fishburn). You just know that, even though they are bitching like teenagers, at the end of the day, these people get *beep* done.
Ask yourself: If they all acted calm, rational and professional at all times, what would you have thought then? I tell you, you would still have complained about them not feeling like real characters, you would complain that they all act like robots.

Despite, all of your complaints target things that happen in the first 20 or so miniutes. If that's all you didn't like, the movie should still be decent for you?

Unlike Prometheus briefing.
1/ In E.H. This is a military & rescue mission - Furthermore it is said that it is a Top secret mission.

Yeah, it's a cheap trope but bear in mind this is a horror movie at heart. I counted like 5 bad decisions inside a minute by these rescue professionals that could have let them figure things out or get off before people started dying, but if they had carefully solved the problem there'd be far less gore.

It's fine that people who managed to like this movie are defending it, but in my opinion (and i'm guessing i'm not alone here) this movie really was not good enough or well-written enough for me to be interested in trying to fill in/rationalize the myriad cracks/holes in the the film's plot and overall logic. In short: EH bored me.

The scientific inaccuracies were countless and blatantly idiotic, something that generally shakes my interest in any sci-fi concept. Also, it samples it's plot elements in large doses from top-notch movies like Alien and Solaris, putting it IMO in the *beep* end of the sci-fi genre.

And the horror elements, while intriguing and potentially unsettling in the original cut, were ultimately over-played yet underdeveloped and fairly contrived and convoluted. Things just happened, and the why and how were either absent or insufficient for me to care.
The characters and acting both lack depth or substance.

The only things that are worth recognizing are the visuals: the impressive(yet often implausible/inane)set design, the horror imagery/gore effects, decent looking models, the brightly colored tunnels and passages, and one awesome shot of a space station.

I went in wanting to like it, hoping the critical consensus was wrong. Sadly, those are the reasons why i didn't.

You don't think the characters in Alien are like real people?! Alien trumps the *beep* out of this movie. In my opinion, Event Horizon is a poorly constructed psychological version of Alien.

The editing wasn't fantastic and at some points the effects were laughable. This movie is okay, but in comparison to Alien, it doesn't come close.

Thanks for the post.

I never saw this movie mainly because it has hollywood stars in it. Don't get me wrong I love a good hollywood movie, but Sci-Fi and Horror movies should have no-name actors in them (more believable imo). On occasion I can stomach a hollywood star in those genre's, and that is most sci-fi/horror movies made before 1984. The newer cgi/digital hollywood sci-fi/horror movies are tbs movies of the weak. I have a hard time watching La Bamba(Supernova) in space.

I agree with you on the script needing work. It makes for a bad film when you have more questions than were ever intended. There really isn't that many great sci-fi films that make you want to see it immediately after you just watched it. Or even want you to see it again, ever. I tend to lean toward independent sci-fi films for realism.

I also agree with you on Prometheus. Such a shame, that movie had so much potential. 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Andromeda Strain and Alien are a few of the last great sci-fi films ever made.