![]() ![]() We learned Cooper’s biggest fear is losing someone he cares about, which is why he’s so upset when his chum Justin nearly kills himself. So what hit the editing room floor? To start with, there were a few more scenes centered on the supporting characters and examining their fears. Anderson himself has recently reaffirmed this, seemingly dashing any hope of the lost footage re-emerging from a black hole, like the titular ship itself. The unused footage was packaged off to a Transylvanian salt mine for storage, so when he came looking for the footage it was in such poor shape it was no longer usable. ![]() Sadly, he probably won’t get the chance to release a director’s cut, since the film came out prior to the rise in special edition DVDs. While Anderson knew Event Horizon needed tightening, he felt the released version was too short and could have benefited from more character building scenes and reinserting some of the gore. Needless to say, Paramount were not happy with their young director, demanding a sweeping re-edit to dial back the nastiness and the runtime be cut to around 90 minutes. ![]() This rough cut was loaded with stomach churning scenes and imagery, which apparently caused some of the test audience to faint. While Paramount had looked in on the production early on, they mostly left Anderson to his own devices during the shoot in England, so they weren’t expecting the high level of viscera he unleashed. This resulted in an edit that ran just over two hours, but the lack of time to finesse it resulted in slack pacing, unfinished effects sequences, and a terrible sound edit. Due to the movie’s tight production schedule, Anderson was only left with four weeks to assemble the first cut, instead of the usual ten. Soon stories of the troubled post-production grew among the fanbase, including the near-legendary screening of a hastily edited rough cut that had executives running for the door. While it didn’t bother the accounting department of Paramount on release, the cult of Event Horizon steadily grew over the years, and it started doing tidy business on DVD. ![]() Despite being considered Anderson’s best work, it was a bomb back in 1997, making back less than half its budget and receiving mediocre reviews. It’s the rare big budget horror flick that actually gets under the skin and has a quality cast to boot, including Laurence Fishburne, Sam Neill, and Jason Isaacs. It’s not a perfect movie and has telltale signs of re-editing – more on this in a moment – but it remains a disturbing, visceral chiller loaded with a suffocating atmosphere of dread. If you surrender to his cinematic sensory overloads you’ll (usually) have a good time if you stop and question anything that happens, you probably won’t. It’s got arguably the best setpieces, the most creative production design and an assortment of pretty people firing machine guns, but it’s virtually plot-free and calling the characters one note would suggest they had a note to start with. Take Resident Evil: Retribution, for example, the fifth entry in the movie franchise. That said, there’s something kind of pure about how ruthlessly he strips his movies to the bone. His work is filled with exciting action and pretty visuals, but when the characters start talking it’s usually just to motivate the next setpiece. He’s a director heavily inspired by the genre output of John Carpenter, James Cameron, George Miller, Walter Hill and many others, but while those directors often infuse their work with recurring themes or subtext, Anderson is often just about B-movie thrills. Paul WS Anderson shouldn’t be considered one of the all-time great auteurs. ![]()
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