A Haunted House in Space

I remember the day very clearly. The precise date could probably be triangulated from old TV listings and Sky schedules if one were so inclined.

I had spent the weekend at a friend's house. Before leaving, I set my trusty Sanyo VHS recorder at home (still works) to capture the UK terrestrial premiere of a brand-new Sci-Fi title on Sky Premiere. Other than a brief snippet on (if memory serves) BBC1 prime-time show, How Do They Do That? reporting one of, if not the earliest digital faceswaps between actor and stunt-double, despite the film's trailer being slick and intriguing, I don't recall exactly why I was so excited to finally check it out - ironically, I was never much of a Horror aficionado - but I do remember what happened next.

When I got home, the first thing I did was rewind the tape and press play.

It was daytime. Early afternoon, perhaps late morning. The sort of hour when Horror has no business working at all. And yet from the moment the film began, I felt the same creeping unease, the same low-frequency dread, that I associate almost exclusively with Ghostwatch. A sensation that something is wrong, long before you would naturally expect to feel that way.

To this day, I can say quite honestly that Event Horizon is one of the very few Horror films that genuinely gets under my skin. Not because of what it shows - although it shows, ugh, plenty - but because of what it suggests, and more importantly, what it refuses to tidy up with a lovely barbed wire bow at the end.

This piece is partly a review, partly an excuse to revisit the film, and also an opportunity to talk about the recent prequel comic series Event Horizon: Dark Descent. But as with all things of this nature, the original incorporation of ideas matters most - so let us start there, shall we?

Event Horizon remains a rarity - an original studio Horror film not directly adapted from a book, comic, or existing franchise. Its almost disarmingly simple pitch as a ghost story in space immediately distinguishes it from the slasher-in-space lineage that ALIEN so definitively perfected.

Released in 1997, it was not particularly well-received at the time. In hindsight, that feels less like a failure of the film and more a symptom of the era. Back in the day, when backs didn't hurt in the day quite so much, we were culturally spoiled for choice. High-concept cinema, boundary-pushing genre work, and blockbuster ambition were colliding constantly, so subtlety was easy to miss.

And yet, viewed now, Event Horizon is among the most beautifully crafted films of its type.

The casting is fantastic. There isn't a single wasted performance or redundant character. Laurence Fishburne's restrained authority, Sam Neill's quiet, unsettling conviction, Jason Isaacs' itchy anxiety - every role feels fleshed out every bit as much as the crew of the Nostromo.

The miniature effects are sublime. The ship itself, all Notre-Dame cathedral curves and brutalist machinery, feels tactile and oppressive in a way that CGI still aches to effectively simulate. And narratively, the film walks a very fine line between visceral entertainment and philosophical Horror.

Crucially, it does not explain everything.

The crew's visions, which we'll get onto shortly - intensely personal, deeply shaming, and profoundly disturbing - may be supernatural. They may be psychological projections externalized by trauma. They may be something else entirely. The film never commits, and that ambiguity is arguably the point.

This is verisimilitude, the "truth of the lie." A term much used since Richard Donner popularized it during Superman: The Motion Picture, but still apt here. Even the film's own mangled Latin (mine is legendarily dreadful, so I tread lightly) contributes to that sense of something understandable but fundamentally alien closeby, pulling the strings.

The premise is elegantly cruel. The Event Horizon, an experimental spacecraft designed to fold space by forcing two points to coexist, thereby eliminating journey times, vanished on its maiden voyage. Seven years later, it reappears on the edge of Neptune's orbit. A tired, rag-tag rescue vessel is dispatched. When they find the ship, there's no crew. There is, however, blood and human viscera everywhere (and, curiously, no godforsaken stench by the time they remove their sealed helmets). And soon after, the rescue crew begin to experience intense visions tied to guilt, regret, grief, and fear.

It becomes apparent that the ship itself has returned... altered. Imbued with something conscious, perhaps. Or, merely functioning as a conduit to a realm where human morality collapses under its own weight.

"... We're leaving. Right after we parktake in this delightful BBC1 drama."

One of the most infamous moments comes late in the film, when the ill-fated Captain Kilpack's log is finally decrypted - a barrage of flash-cut imagery so violent and primal it barely resolves into meaning at all. Studio-mandated cuts ensured much of this footage was lost, and fans have speculated for years about just how extreme it was.

Interestingly, Event Horizon sits almost at the opposite end of the spectrum to Ghostwatch. Where Ghostwatch uses suggestion, implication, and restraint, Event Horizon flirts with excess. Both are united by this chthonic tone.

Again, I am not, by nature, a Horror fan. I prefer to think of myself as a fan of quality (other pretentious statements are available upon request). The best Horror works on me the same way the best Westerns do. Their watchability is a byproduct of talent, a watermark left by a clutch of creative fronts that have somehow mystically aligned on a production level, gravitating if you will, in order to facilitate its completion. On those terms, both Ghostwatch and Event Horizon have always fascinated me.

I have a theory that cult films tend to get one or two aspects absolutely perfect - and those single perfect elements elevate everything else. The rest of the film may merely be competent, but on whatever front it suceeds, that particular triumph resonates so strongly, it drags the whole work into higher status.

At first glance, Event Horizon and Ghostwatch appear to occupy opposite ends of the Horror spectrum. One is operatic, baroque, and cosmic - the other domestic, procedural, and grounded. And yet, they share a number of thematic and aesthetic preoccupations.

Both are arguably about transgression as much as they are observation. And both are deeply concerned with what happens when 'seeing' becomes a liability - the most obvious visual parallel being missing eyes.

In Event Horizon, Dr. Weir's mutilation, removing his own eyes, is framed not merely as self-harm, but as ascension. Vision is no longer required when knowledge of The Other Place has been internalised. "Where we’re going, we won’t need eyes to see" is not a throwaway line so much as it is a sermon addressing a congregation now regrettably all on the same page.

Peter Weller, RoboCop (1987)

In Ghostwatch, the image is quieter but no less potent. Pipes' partial, damaged, or occluded eye suggests an incomplete perception. Something is being seen wrong, or too late. Either way, vision has failed to protect. See also: RoboCop's brutish ED-209 whose obsfucated view of the outside world (unlike our titular character, left,) is forever compromised by an angry grille, no matter how much damage it takes.

In both cases, the eye represents moral witnessing. To lose it is to step beyond the human form - the understanding that sensing leads to contemplation, and thusly restraint. Once that contract is broken, anything becomes permissible. Even the ship's Main Corridor carries an oval motif, as if taking the form of some giant wandering CCTV tracker.

Both productions weaponise observation. Ghostwatch is explicitly about watching, with television serving as both conduit and amplifier. The audience's gaze is part of the mechanism. Fear spreads because people look, and because they trust what they see on a screen.

Event Horizon (1997)

Event Horizon does something similar but in reverse. The crew's observations are turned inward. Their visions are not shared broadcasts, but private screenings. Shame, guilt, and memory are projected back at them. Here, the act of seeing isolates rather than unites. In both stories, Horror comes about not just by ignorance, but also by exposure.

Aesthetically, internal space serves as moral commentary. The Event Horizon is not designed like a vessel, but designed like a cathedral with arches, symmetry and voids. It virtually accuses those inside it of trespass, of violation into its sacred halls. The ship does not feel neutral but rather judgemental. See also: MU/TH/UR's confessional niche in ALIEN - replete with (as described by legendary designer, Ron Cobb) pulsing light evoking votive candles.

Similarly, Foxhill Drive is not simply a haunted house. It is revealed to be a container of unresolved history. Its banal domesticity becomes oppressive because it refuses to stay passive. The walls of No.41 observe, and its corners remember. Both scenarios imply that the environment itself is complicit.

Both Ghostwatch and Event Horizon are unusually restrained, and precise, in their use of music and sound design. Neither relies on a conventional Horror score that telegraphs emotion or cues the audience when to feel afraid. Instead, sound becomes something closer to ambience.

In Ghostwatch, Philip Appleby's theme is heard only once. That decision alone is extraordinary. Music, rightly, isn't used to build tension, isn't reprised, isn't allowed to settle into familiarity.

The rest of the time, Ghostwatch relies on Winston Ryder's foley-based soundscape - the sound of television itself - from studio ambience, microphones, feedback, muffled domestic noise, to voices talking over one another. The horror doesn't arrive with music, it arrives in gaps, distortions, and moments where sound behaves incorrectly. Silence, too, becomes equally suspicious.

Event Horizon operates on a much grander cinematic canvas, but the philosophy is strikingly similar. Michael Kamen's orchestral score, fused with Orbital's electronic textures, creates something neither traditionally symphonic nor purely ambient. It's not there to comfort or guide. It's coldly ecclesiastical - you might say, just like the ship itself. A Satanic factory floor.

Importantly, the music in Event Horizon often feels less like accompaniment and more like emanation - similar to Brad Fiedel's iconic cybernetic pulse/heartbeat mechanics found in, The Terminator. It doesn't sit beneath the image as much as seep out of it. At times, it can difficult to tell where traditional score ends and the new wave begins - a deliberate blurring that mirrors the film's refusal to clearly separate psychology, technology, and the Supernatural.

Appleby’s theme encapsulates the entire trajectory of Ghostwatch in no more than 47 seconds. It starts jovial and throwaway, then softens into seriousness, then explodes with a clash of harsh reality. The Kamen/Orbital fusion oscillates between moments in Event Horizon where human presence is no longer dominant - where the ship, or whatever has passed through it, is asserting itself.

Neither score seems to seek to be iconic in the traditional sense, but they achieve this status simply through sheer ingenuity. Their power lies in withholding. Which brings us back, again, to observation. Just as both pieces punish sight - damaged eyes, unseen presences, and the like - they also destabilise hearing. You cannot trust what you're seeing, and you cannot trust what you're hearing, either. Signals bleed. Noise masquerades as meaning just as meaning collapses into noise. And when music finally does appear, it's not there to bloody reassure. It tells you, very quietly, that whatever is changing the rules is still watching.

Another shared theme is that of institutional confidence collapsing in real-time. In Ghostwatch, the established, war-weathered BBC apparatus, comprising presenters, producers, and experts, is meticulously constructed, then slowly undermined. Authority becomes performative, and reassurance becomes, if anything, suspect.

In Event Horizon, command structures degrade just as thoroughly. Captain Miller's discipline is tested not by mutiny, but by grief and moral exhaustion. Expertise fails not because it is wrong, but rather insufficient. Both works suggest that systems designed to protect us can become brittle when confronted with the irrational.

Crucially, neither of the narratives offers a comforting cosmology. Ghostwatch never fully explains Pipes beyond Mother Seddons. Event Horizon never fully defines Hell beyond traversal of a quantum singularity. The viewer is left with implication rather than doctrine - of a system yet to be understood.

Laurence Fishburne as Miller

Another easily missed detail about Captain Miller that feels increasingly deliberate the more I notice it, is that throughout Event Horizon, he wears a thin black cord around his neck, bearing what initially appears to be nothing more than a strip of cloth marked with vertical bands of colour - black, yellow, and red. It's unobtrusive to the point of almost being anonymous. Only during the final confrontation with Weir do we see the truth of it - the cloth is attached to a small octagonal silver medallion, engraved with, what appears to be, an eagle perched above a horizontal anchor.

The resemblance to the USCM-style Eagle-Anchor-Globe motif feels intentional, even if never formally highlighted. It situates Miller quietly but firmly within a tradition of service, vigilance, and custodianship - a symbol of holding fast.

The octagonal shape is especially telling. Octagons have long been associated with thresholds and transitions - neither square nor circle, neither earthly nor infinite. They mark spaces where one state becomes another - including baptisteries. It is, in effect, a boundary made solid. A fitting geometry for a man whose ultimate role is to stand in a doorway and refuse passage to an advancing evil. I did wonder if the coloured fabric could even be a medal's ribbon - perhaps reminding him of the tragic sacrifice he was party to whilst serving aboard the Goliath.

Most telling of all is what Miller does with it. During the final battle, as the ship convulses and the metaphysical collapses into the physical, he rubs the medallion between his fingers. I'm not certain whether as a prayer, a plea, or just grounding, but it's a conscious choice and one that I haven't seen discussed elsewhere.

The Event Horizon vessel exploits guilt and unresolved trauma. By now, Miller has already faced his. The pendant may not protect him from The Dark but it does remind him why he is willing to stand against it. Where Weir opens the door, Miller anchors it shut. 

"An optical effect..?!"

There is another, subtler parallel between Event Horizon and Ghostwatch that has become increasingly hard for me to ignore with repeat viewings. It centres not on imagery, or cosmology, or even structure, but on temperament.

Parkinson and Dr. Weir share the same fatal quality - obstinate, institutional pig-headedness. Both men are dismissive. Both are rude. Both have a reflex allergy to being told something they do not want to hear. And crucially, both mistake authority for insulation.

Parky talks over concerns, mocks discomfort, reframes unease as entertainment friction. His role, dare I say, his job as advertised, requires control. To stop, to listen, or to acknowledge genuine threat would be to rupture the frame that he, in the context of the story, is being paid to maintain. So he doesn't. He keeps the broadcast alive long after it should have been shut down. Even after Studio One's power, itself, is lost.

Sam Neill as Weir

Weir, a sort-of twisted Dr. Pascoe, behaves in the same way, only cloaked in scientific language. He corrects rather than listens. He recontextualises fear as misunderstanding. When confronted with unease, he responds not with curiosity but with dismissal. His rudeness is procedural - the sound of a man who believes explanation is synonymous with mastery. In both cases, dissent is treated as interference.

What makes this parallel especially unsettling is that neither character is written as initially malicious (good band title). They are professionals doing what their institutions have trained them to do. Parky believes that live television neutralises or contains danger, shielding it with impenetrable barriers. Weir believes that scientific progress legitimises risk. Both are catastrophically wrong, but not irrational.

And in both of these stories, the swelling evil (another good band title) does not need to convince them of anything. It simply requires them to keep going. Pipes requires belief through airtime - an audience. Similarly, the Event Horizon requires worship through activation - a crew. Parky and Weir are not victims, nor antagonists, in a conventional sense - they are unwitting facilitators. Their refusal to hear unwelcome information becomes the mechanism by which the system collapses.

Seen this way, their shared obstinance is not a character flaw but a documented phenomenon - institutional confidence persisting past the point of safety - the refusal to yield, framed as professionalism. The belief that one's role grants exemption from consequence. Thereby, Ghostwatch and Event Horizon are documenting the same failure - one broadcast from a suburban semi, the other from the orbit of a neighbouring gas giant. Different settings, same mistake.

Returning briefly to the missing eye, it becomes clear to me why this image recurs. Eyes are how we verify reality. They are how we reassure ourselves that what we’re experiencing is shared. To damage or remove them is to accept a private truth - one that no longer requires consensus.

In Event Horizon the loss of the eye marks the moment where a character stops being passive and starts being active. So committed to the path ahead, that they no longer need to see, as they have already crossed the line. In Ghostwatch, the loss of Bubby's eyes subtely denotes an unwillingness to see past a certain point - the narrative equivalent of Kimmy throwing her hands over the toy's face to shield it from reality.

Event Horizon (1997)

There’s another, much quieter detail in Event Horizon that I’ve always found revealing. On the bridge of the Lewis & Clark, Joely Richardson’s character has a handful of classical artwork postcards pinned neatly to her console - among them Flaming June by Sir Frederic Leighton - radiating elegant composition, restrained sensuality, and aesthetic civilisation rendered as balance rather than excess.

Flaming June is a painting about repose, enclosure, and inwardness. A woman's body at rest, protected by form and proportion. It is not difficult to read Starck's choice as a quiet declaration of her own moral boundaries. The image sits in sharp contrast to the Dark Star-inspired rhythm magazines, novelty clutter, and general visual noise elsewhere on the ship - talismans of distraction opposed to contemplation.

And then, there's what doesn't happen. Richardson's character Starck, Sean Pertwee's Smithy (named after the legend, obviously), Jason Isaacs' DJ, and Richard T. Jones' Cooper never explicitly experience the hallucinations their colleagues do. Jack Noseworthy's 'Baby Bear' Justin gets to experience something first-hand following a brief but psychologically-shredding trip beyond the oily void. They react to events with fear, urgency, and responsibility, but the ship never appears to 'get inside' them the way it does the others - namely Miller, Weir, and Kathleen Quinlans' 'Mama Bear' Peters.

The film never comments on this, nor explains it, but the implication lingers. Perhaps the ship does not intrude where there is no unresolved hunger. No open wound. No internal chaos for it to amplify? Only three out of the eight crew actually experience something that manifests tied to their own psyche. How fascinating.

Perhaps the others are more centred, more reconciled with themselves? Perhaps morality, focus, or resilience makes them invisible to the ship's chaos. Whatever the explanation, the film trusts the audience to notice (or, not notice) and to draw their own conclusions. Not everyone, it seems, is vulnerable. Not everyone is chosen, and the film never tells us why. Lots to consider, three decades on.

Pandorum (2009)

Speaking of which, a return to the bleak world of Event Horizon has been on the cards for a good while now. The somewhat under-rated Pandorum is a stylistic side-sequel, even down to the opening title crawl. Frustratingly, it fills an inordinate amount of its underdeveloped run-time with lacklustre astrozombie piffle, when the basic premise of exploring space-borne insanity could have served perfectly well if afforded a more restrained focus.

That said, oh how fun it could have been for one of the gloom-and-doom title cards to have read "2040: Earth's resources predicted to become unsustainable within next century. Deep space research vessel 'Event Horizon' launched to explore boundaries of Solar System. She disappears without trace beyond the eighth planet, Neptune. It is the worst space disaster on record." 

Bloody love that world-building stuff, I do. 

Amazon was said to be developing a follow-up some years back, of which next to nothing has been revealed. I could never quite predict what direction such an endeavour would take. In my heart of hearts, I would only hope not that of Alien: Earth which, for me, truly ranks as one of the most profoundly disappointing, lacklustre and nonsensical adaptations of the modern era. 

IDW Publishing (2025)

When it was announced that a prequel comic series, Event Horizon: Dark Descent, would explore the fate of the original crew, I was genuinely excited. Enough to place a pre-order, something I rarely do now. I've collected virtually every issue (just one or two variants to go), and on a surface level, it's an impressive piece of work, and one that I am glad somehow made it through the dark and into existence, at all.

The art is excellent, reminiscent at times of Aliens: Labyrinth - one of my all-time favourite genre comics. The ship is rendered with care and menace. The atmosphere is thick. The characters are well-drawn, too, in many ways.

But something is... off.

The interpretation of what happened aboard the Event Horizon seems to differ significantly from the film's implications. The inaugural crew, like the rescue team, are burdened with private fears and flaws. Some of these are well-conceived, even inspired. The idea that certain individuals were dangerous before the jump is a master-stroke.

The problem is commitment. I cannot help but wonder there is little point in developing a prequel around a specific interpretive choice unless that choice is pursued to its absolute, merciless conclusion. Regrettably, the series doesn't do that. Instead, it drifts toward reassurance.

Mortal Kombat (1995)

The conclusion of the final issue veers alarmingly close to the final moments of Mortal Kombat - another cult oddity from Paul W.S. Anderson - where a spectral visitation assures us that everything will, somehow, be all right. Speaking personally, this has no place in the world of Event Horizon. The film's terror lies in the suggestion that there is no heavenly counterbalance. There is life, and there is chaos, and survival is a matter of moral resistance, not cosmic reward. That is what makes it so unsettling. In that universe, we're absolutely on our own.

Introducing a singular villain figure, Paimon, visually striking though he is, also reduces the Horror to motivation - though no such motive is ever proferred. Where once the ship embodied an impersonal, baseline malevolence, it now has a face. And once evil has a face, it can be argued with. Dare I say, defeated. Which seems to be missing the point entirely.

Also, in addition to the introduction of this singular antagonist, is the inclusion of an amorphous, gory entity that accompanies him - a shifting mass of flesh that absorbs, incorporates, and repurposes bodies in a manner reminiscent of John Carpenter's (truly brilliant) The Thing. This entity is not explained with any clarity, nor is it meaningfully integrated into the metaphysics of Event Horizon. Instead, it functions as visual punctuation - garish, noisy, and ultimately distracting. Worse, it is clichéd.

IDW Publishing (2025)

The... unpleasantness of Event Horizon never stemmed from body horror or spectacle. When the film flirted with gore, it did so relatively elliptically - through implication. When it gets to crunch time, what this comic often offers instead is a familiar shorthand of meat, limbs, teeth, blood. It is loud where the film was quiet.

Put simply, I can't help but think the sudden appearance of Mr. Blobby on board would have been more frightening.

But, perhaps, the greatest lost opportunity, is the comic's treatment of the captain's log.

This series was explicitly positioned - if not marketed ("This issue: Learn the truth of the film's infamous blood orgy!") as the long-awaited exploration of the infamous lost footage. The holy grail of Event Horizon fandom. The scene that could never be reconstructed, because the original material was famously lost after being stored improperly in a Transylvanian salt mine.

There is something almost mythic about that loss. The idea that the most extreme material ever shot for a major studio Horror film simply no longer exists feels entirely appropriate here. The abyss swallowed its own evidence. This was an opportunity to reconstruct some genuine bona fide Found Footage.

I am not, by temperament, a gore enthusiast. Paraphrasing (or should I say, butchering?) James Cameron's observation that 'gore doesn't create fear, it creates disgust' remains broadly true. And yet, based on what has been described by cast and crew - including Emily Booth, who can briefly be seen in the film and later spoke vividly about the horrific makeup appliances she endured - it's clear that what was conceived went far beyond cheap shock.

It sounded ritualistic. Degrading. Transgressive in ways that weren't merely anatomical. Yet, next to none of that is present on the page. What the comic offers instead is oddly sanitised. There is no escalation, no choreography, no sense that morality itself has collapsed. It feels less like an eruption of atavism and more like an horrific accident.

Worse still, the sequence plays almost as a vision - a kind of retrospective hallucination of the ship's captain - rather than an event we witness unfold. It lacks weight. It lacks consequence. It arrives, gestures vaguely toward an avenue of Horror going too far, and then retreats. Side note, but I guarantee if the film was being made today, the playback of this prerecorded log would suddenly shift to real-time communication - complete with spooky 'their crew are suddenly looking at our crew' reactions.

Which raises a slightly uncomfortable question. Is there a form of censorship at work here?

Not necessarily external, but internal - a creative hesitancy, a reluctance even now to fully commit to the implications of the film's premise, perhaps? One wonders whether even an illustrator, operating outside the constraints of a 1990s studio system, feels unable to visualise what Event Horizon implied without crossing some unspoken line. If that is the case, then perhaps this material was never meant to be expanded upon at all.

There's another issue, one increasingly common in modern science fiction. Astronauts are not space truckers.

They are highly-trained, psychologically screened, emotionally-regulated individuals that are selected (and monitored) precisely because they don't fall apart under pressure. Yet, Dark Descent populates its narrative with characters already overwhelmed by regret, distraction, and personal demons before the mission has even begun. Its workforce dangerously close to Prometheus levels of liability, despite this being a mission of utmost scientifc and societal importance.

In reality, and in good science fiction (sorry if that sounds cattier than I intended), such individuals would never make it aboard a top-secret experimental vessel without extraordinary justification. Well, one or two, at most. And that's a stretch.

This trend likely stems from the enduring influence of ALIEN, where the 'working class in space' model proved perfect for that story. But it doesn't translate universally. It wouldn't/doesn't work for Star Trek, and it doesn't consistently work here. Ironically, attempts by degrees to humanize the crew predictably chips away at the story's own plausibility (or, verisimilitude).

Regard the team aboard the Lewis & Clark in the film. Granted, they may be rough and tumble types, but because of that, this makes them ideally suited to deep space rescue... WHICH IS THEIR JOB. The reason they are ordered "three billion clicks from the nearest outpost" is because their track records are considered competent enough to get the job done - survivors, through-and-through. Dark Descent, meanwhile, is a research expedition. The inaugural crew would be candy floss in comparison.

Sam Neill's enigmatic Dr. Weir is introduced early and disappears just as quickly, adding little to the lore. The cast is overcrowded, the pacing hurried. We never spend quite enough time with anyone to care to the fullest extent. This was a chance to deepen the mythos which, regrettably, it doesn't quite manage.

It would be wrong to end on a purely negative note.

Whatever my reservations about Event Horizon: Dark Descent as an act of expansion, it is plainly a work made with care. There is genuine effort on the page - in the texture of the art, the density of the environments, the attention paid to the physicality of the ship. It feels like Event Horizon in a way that many modern continuations simply do not. The world is not smoothed down. The corridors remain oppressive. The machinery still looks like it might hurt you if you lean too close.

There is also something quietly affecting about returning to this universe at all. For all its flaws, Dark Descent represents a willingness to engage seriously with a cult work that has long existed in the margins, and long-speculated. It is not cynical. It is not lazy. And that matters.

On a more personal note, it was simply nice to read a comic book again. To follow a story across issues. To handle something physical. To re-enter a world that has meant a great deal to me for a very long time and see it treated with a degree of seriousness rather than irony.

That, in itself, has value.

If nothing else, Dark Descent stands as evidence that Event Horizon still exerts a gravitational pull - that its ideas, textures, and unease continue to resonate. My criticisms come not from disdain, but from affection. From the belief that some worlds are so carefully constructed that touching them at all is an act of risk.

And perhaps that, too, is entirely in keeping with the spirit of Event Horizon.

Which brings me neatly back to Foxhill Drive.

Both Ghostwatch and Event Horizon derive their power from absence, and this is bolstered by their refusal to provide comforting explanations for absolutely everything we see.

I have long-long-long wondered what a Ghostwatch prequel in comic form would look like - and more importantly, whether it should exist at all. The danger, as Dark Descent demonstrates, is not so much that explanations collapse mystery, but that some stories are simply stronger... incomplete.

The series inadvertently demonstrates why Event Horizon, like Ghostwatch, derives its power from absence and restraint. Some doors, once opened, don't reward us with answers, only with the uncomfortable realisation that imagination alone was better suited for the job.

Perhaps, some footage should remain lost.

The most honest thing a narrative can do is stop short of reassurance and trust us to be alone with the idea that not everything means something, and not everything that happens can be survived with our understanding unbroken.

That, perhaps, is the true connection between Event Horizon and Ghostwatch. Neither promises safety. They merely show us the dark, and leave us to sit with it.

Until next time, Ghostwatchers... noli noctes insomnes habere.

 

PS: Blu-ray update: currently waiting for extras to be certified. Sorry for having to say sorry for the wait again, but this is simply out of my clammy hands. Am currently in bed with flu watching Event Horizon and 'enjoying' fever dreams. With thanks to ChatGPT for emergency grammar triage, and being my research buddy between wringing out pillows. I'm going back to sleep.