I have a soft spot for this movie, and I'm not entirely sure why. Perhaps it's because I enjoyed playing "Doom" so much, and "Event Horizon" is roughly what you get if you turn "Doom" into a movie (which, as a side note, is being done). Take one method of travelling across vast distances in a short amount of time by "sidestepping" dimensions, mix in a pint of DEMONS from HELL, add three heaping tablespoons of crazy guns and bombs, and you have the idea.

"Event Horizon," however, is a bit less about killing as many demons as possible and a bit more about figuring out what's going on to begin with. The trouble with this is that if you've played Doom (or if you speak Latin), figuring out what's going on is no big deal. A large part of the plot hinges on a Latin phrase "liberate tutame ex infernis" -- that is translated improperly as "save me from hell." The correct translation is, "Save *yourself* from hell" -- an important distinction, for reasons I will explain later.

The movie centers around a spaceship equipped with an experimental "gravity drive" (what the drive has to do with gravity I'm totally unclear about). This ship was sent out on a testing mission a while back and promptly disappeared. But now it has reappeared, and data recovered from it indicates that not-nice things have happened. So out intrepid team of spacefaring cliches is sent out to investigate the ship and find out what happened to it. Along with them comes the scientist who built the ship, who, from the very beginning of the movie, is having dreams involving DEMONS from HELL. Naturally, it is safe to conclude from this that bringing him along is not going to be healthy for our heroes. Ah well.

The team includes a token female, a token black guy who is All That (tm) and is always attempting to get with the token female, the incredible Disposable Man (you can always tell who that is, because he is completely lacking in skills or assets, and so his sudden and premature demise will not be a loss to the heroes), and a bunch of other characters who don't last long enough to care much about. The captain's name is Miller, and he experienced a Great Tragedy several years back, when he failed to save the life of one of the men under his command. Naturally, this gives him a compulsion to put himself in great danger in order to protect everyone else on *this* mission.

They investigate the ship, and, slowly, the DEMONS from HELL begin to pick them off. The gravity drive, we discover, actually opens a gate to hell whenever it's activated. Oh, and the DEMONS from HELL can activate the drive from their side, too, which kind of means our heroes are hosed. The incredible Disposable Man is disposed of when he goes through the gate to hell (always a bad plan). Actually, he survives that, and then almost dies again later on (the always popular "I'm in space without a space suit, so I think I'll explode" cliche - no regard, of course, is paid to the fact that that DOESN'T HAPPEN), but survives that, too, every time increasing the anguish of Captain Miller, who lost a man once and can't bear to have that happen again.

Eventually, the team's Token Latin Expert realizes his mistake in translation. No sooner does he inform Captain Miller of this than do the DEMONS from HELL kill EVERYBODY. Well, everybody except for Captain Miller, the token female, and Mr. All That. The scientist has more dreams about DEMONS from HELL (apparently his wife, who killed herself, was one of them) and eventually becomes Satan. So Captain Miller throws him out into space.

Not that a little thing like that could possibly stop Lucifer. No, he materializes back on the ship and fights with Miller for a while (the Prince of Lies apparently needs to resort to using weapons to kill people nowadays), going on a shooting rampage and successfully hitting NOTHING (the Dark One obviously needs to take some shooting lessons).

Eventually, Miller decides to blow up the ship. Naturally, the Ancient Enemy doesn't want him to, because the DEMONS from HELL need the gravity drive in order to get into our dimension. So they fight, and Beelzebub is completely incapable of killing Miller, or in any way stopping him from destroying the ship. Miller and Old Scratch are sucked through the gate to hell, and the rest of the ship drifts off, with the token female and All That still on it.

In all, a fairly enjoyable flick, though there are enough forehead-slapping moments that you're not going to be sure whether you're watching it because it's enthralling you or because it's amusing you.

Rating: 3 turkeys.

Scene to watch for: The first ending.

Best line: "The shortest distance between two points...is zero."

Things that make you go "Huh?": Why the Prince of Evil isn't powerful enough to kill one guy in the five minutes he's fighting in hand-to-hand combat with him.

Response From RinkWorks:

Loser. I was planning on seeing this and reviewing it. Now I can't, because I hate you. -- Dave.

You're both losers! You're idiots compared to me!! Mwahahahah!!!! Uh. Ahem. -- Sam.