Memory Bank: Star Trek Voyager - The Arcade Game (2002)

Imagine my delight and surprise, in 2018 when I was at a local bowling alley in Charlotte with my family, and strayed into a mini-arcade to find a deluxe cabinet version of this fifteen year old franchise game.  

Since the game was still playable, I knew I needed to snap some photos and feature them all here on the blog.

Star Trek: Voyager: The Arcade Game was released in 2002 (after the end of the actual TV series), by Monaco Entertainment and Team Play Inc. It's a first person shooter (FPS)-styled game, though re-modeled appropriately for Star Trek concepts.  The guns (presumably phasers) don't have to be reloaded but rather re-modulated instead (think: fighting the Borg.)

The enemies in the game hail straight from the series, but are not just the Collective, however, but also Species 8472, and the Hirogen.  There also some...imaginative new aliens.

Additionally, some game modules involve space combat with the Borg and feature the customized shuttle, the Delta Flyer. 

In short, if you are a fan of Voyager, this is a great game, in no small part because it recreates the settings (like Voyager's bridge) and characters (Borg, especially, down to their First Contact sphere) of the series.

Memory Bank: Gauntlet

During my freshman year at the University of Richmond in the fall of 1988, there wasn’t a whole lot to do, socially-speaking.  I was a skinny kid in big glasses who didn’t go out for sports and liked Star Trek.  

I had no interest in fraternities or the school’s religious clubs (though, truth-be-told, I did have an ever-so-brief flirtation with a Baptist Bible Study group, which helps to account for my extensive knowledge of Scripture…)

Anyway, I met my beautiful wife, Kathryn, at the beginning of my sophomore year and my life changed for the (infinitely) better.

But before that ever happened,  I spent an inordinate (and probably unhealthy) amount of time in the Pier, the campus Student Building, playing a classic arcade game from Atari, called Gauntlet (1985).

As you may remember, Gauntlet was unique in that it was a four player arcade game.  Intrepid gamers could play as the Warrior, the Valkyrie, the Wizard and the Elf, at least originally.  The idea was to battle enemies such as ghosts and demons while traversing dungeon-like labyrinths and environs.  

I looked Gauntlet up on Wikipedia out of curiosity and it is apparently part of a genre called “hack and slash,” a phrase that pretty well describes the game’s content as remember it.

Among other things, Gauntlet is also apparently famous because it had a kind of computerized narrator who would voice warnings (“Your life is running out”) and reminders (such as “shots do not hurt other players…yet.”)   I can’t say as I remember much specifically about game play, only that we would play the bloody thing for hours, and lose a hell of a lot of quarters in the process.   It’s a good memory from a year that, in some respects, I’d rather forget. 

In terms of characters, I always played as the Valkyrie -- the female warrior in the foursome -- in honor of my enduring love of the same-named character from Battle Beyond the Stars (1980).  

I can’t remember why we did so, but on one memorable night in 1988, my pals and I drove downtown instead of to the student building to play Gauntlet at a bustling city arcade in Richmond, one very close to the now-defunct Byrd Theater, if memory serves.  

I should have been studying for an upcoming computer science exam, but instead, I think we were out at the arcade from midnight to 2:00 am, and I blew twenty-five dollars on the infernal machine.

Ah, to be eighteen and dumb as shit again…

Anyway t I’m thinking I really need a restored Gauntlet arcade console in my rec room.

That…and an air hockey table, but that’s the subject of a different post.  I'll just close this one by saying I recently visited the University of Richmond campus for the first time in probably a decade, and was deeply disappointed, though not surprised, to see that Gauntlet was long gone.

Memory Bank: Zombies (1983)

One of the greatest (and coolest) video games I ever played on my old Atari 800 in the 1980's was Mike Edwards' Zombies (BRAM Inc; 1983), later re-released by EA in 1984-1985 as Realm of Impossibility. 

This game was available on both cassette (!) and floppy disk, but my memory is that I played the game on disk.  It was so long ago now, I'm not entirely certain about that detail, however.

Regardless, my father was vice principal at Mountain Lakes High School in New Jersey, and was close friends with a 1980's Atari guru, one who was outfitting the school with a number of computers as the PC era began in earnest.  One day, out of the blue, my Dad arrived home from school (on his motorcycle...) with a bundle of video games on disk and cassette.  I had never heard of any of these games, but it felt like Christmas morning.

They had titles like Blue Max, Trains, Murder on the Zinderneuf, Bruce Lee, Astro Chase, B.C.'s Quest for Tires, Caverns of Mars, and last -- and best -- Zombies!

In Zombies, the goal was to recover the "enchanted crowns of the middle kingdom" from an evil wizard named Wistrik.  The cleric had apparently stolen the crowns and stored them in a variety of hellish dungeons where they were protected by rampaging zombies, giant spiders and poisonous snakes.  The realms had ominous, mythological-based names such as "Cankaya Keep," "The Abyss," "The Stygian Crypts," "Tartarus" and "The Realm of Impossibility."

Designer Edwards was inspired in part by his love of TSR's Dungeons and Dragons, as he wrote in the marketing booklet for Zombies. But he also wanted to get away from simple shoot-em-up games of the era.  Thus he devised Zombies with a few diabolical and genius twists.  

Among these were the fact that as a player you were not awarded multiple lives.  When you died...you died, and had to begin the game again.  

Secondly, there was no "elimination" of the supernatural enemies and vermin.  Instead, you had to drop crucifixes around yourself (while you ran...) as supernatural barriers to the surrounding threats.  Additionally, the player could acquire scrolls with spells such as "Freeze," "Protect" and "Confuse."  Believe me, these came in handy...

And thirdly, the game was two-player compatible, but the two players did not compete against one another.  Rather, they had to work together, in unison, to avoid the zombies and retrieve the crowns.  This made the game perfect for when my friends came over after school, or on Saturday afternoons, for surviving Zombies was an exercise in team work.

Zombies also featured, according to the promotional material: "3-D graphics, on-line instructions,"..."74 different screens, high-score save to disk, full sound and color, zombies, poisonous snakes, giant spiders, evil orbs, scrolls, talismans, magic spells, lost crowns and spectacular underground scenery."

On that last front, Zombies showcased unbelievable, M.C. Escher-inspired screens that, despite the young age of the form, were authentically mind-blowing in terms of viewer perspective.  I've written here before how I'd like to see a consistent set of aesthetic criteria applied to video games because I do consider them an art form. When I think about it, Zombies is likely the game that began me thinking along those terms, even as a teenager. The game was beautiful to behold, and completely immersing.  For instance, I remember (I hope correctly...) that when the zombies touched you during the game, your life energy would bleed away quickly, but also that the game screen would pop and crackle, like you had been struck by electricity.  If you ask me, I can still "feel" that shock, though of course, no such physical shock was actually delivered.  

I can't even begin to estimate how many hours I spent during my teenage years navigating Tartarus, the Stygian Crypts, or the Realm of Impossibility.  But it was a lot, I'm certain.  I have wonderful memories of playing this game with my best friends in high school.

The graphics may look primitive today, but the game play was absolutely incredible.

Makes me miss my Atari 800...

Memory Bank: Spyhunter (1983)

In the early-to-mid 1980s -- when I was in middle school and high school -- my best friends and I would sometimes walk down Benson Street in Glen Ridge to a diner on Broad Street in Bloomfield.  

Now, if you don't know this area of New Jersey (namely Essex County), that diner is not far from Holsten's in Bloomfield, the ice cream shop that appeared occasionally in The Sopranos (1999 - 2007).

We're going back more than thirty-six years now, so some of my memories are fuzzy, and I hope I have it right.  I'm open to the fact that I may not. 

But I believe the diner opened in 1981 and was called the Nevada Dinner.  

We were kids, however, so we weren't going there to sit down and eat.

Instead, we were going to play the arcade game in the diner; Spy Hunter, by Bally-Midway. It was an arcade unit, but not the kind that was designed for sit-down play.  

You had to stand, but at that age, we didn't care.

We would play the game for a good long while, assuming we had enough quarters.

Spy Hunter was designed by George Gomez, and originally intended to be a James Bond video game. When the 007 license couldn't be acquired, however, the game was modified, and became Spy Hunter.

But heck, you could still pretend to be James Bond while you played, even if the soundtrack song was not Monty Norman's, but Henry Mancini's theme from Peter Gunn (1958-1961).

The field of play in the game, as you may remember, is a bird-s eye view. 

You are looking down at a snaking road, and a car speeding down (or rather, up...) that road.  

Your car is the G-6155 Interceptor, and it has been modified with such 007-ish "extras" such as an oil slick, a missile launcher, and a smoke screen. These instruments prove useful as you engage with many bad guy cars.

While driving, you can also visit your mobile headquarters, a weapon's van, or convert your car to aqua/boat function, by pulling into a boat house. If memory serves, there are also, sometimes, icy conditions to navigate.

I remember all of us buddies standing in a small alcove, in front of that arcade screen, trying to see how far we could get in the adventure.  I guess the joke was really on us.  

Not only because the Peter Gunn song is addictive, and it won't leave your thoughts no matter how hard you try, but because the game had no ending. 

It just kept on scrolling, forever. 

Spy Hunter...the endless James Bond-ish adventure.

Soon enough, Spy Hunter was available in a home video game format. I had a game version for the Atari 800 home computer, I'm pretty certain.  

But it wasn't the same, somehow, as the arcade version.

Somehow it was more fun hearing that music, driving that car, and playing that game with friends, after the walk to the restaurant.  

It was more fun knowing that you had a pocket full of quarters, and once they were gone, you were done...whether you liked it or not.

Of course, it was also very, very expensive to play the addictive Spy Hunter in a arcade setting, so I guess some memories seem more attractive with age and distance.

Memory Bank: Star Fire

One of my earliest (and fondest) arcade memories involves a space-based combat game from the late seventies called Star Fire. 

As a youngster, I lived in New Jersey with my family, and in the summertime, we would often visit the Jersey Shore.. Because of this, there were many opportunities to visit a nearby boardwalk, and more importantly...an arcade.

And the game I wanted to play at that arcade was, simply, Star Fire.  

Today, the game is remembered and beloved by Generation X'ers because Star Fire is the first "cockpit"-style arcade game in history, and apparently, it was also the first game in which one could enter initials in a high-score table.  

But I loved sitting down in the fully-enclosed cockpit -- as though I was in my own fighter craft -- and getting ready for space combat.

The game play was awesome as I remember it...though it's been more than for years now.  

The enemy ships in Star Fire very closely resembled the TIE Fighters of Star Wars (1977) as you can see, and if I recall, there was also a Battlestar Galactica (1979 - 1980) Colonial Viper in the mix.

The game was a shoot 'em up, and an incredible one at that. I do remember occasionally feeling frustrated, as my ship was blown out of the stars.

I also remember running out of money and begging my Mom and Dad for just another handful of quarters.

Saturday Morning Flashback: Land of the Lost: "Blackout"

The final episode of Land of the Lost’s second season is called “Blackout,” and alas, it’s a bit of a retread.  

“Blackout” is essentially the same story as seen in “The Longest Day” and “One of Our Pylons is Missing.”  

In all three of these stories, something goes wrong with the smooth functioning of the Land of the Lost, and the Marshalls must step in and set things right, usually with some push-back from the (ignorant) Sleestak.  It’s a story about environmentalism, essentially, and shepherding the land wisely so that all may profit and prosper from it.

In “Blackout,” the Sleestak have made use of the secret second clock pylon to freeze time during the night.  They have done this foolish thing so that the the Altrusian moths, which fertilize Sleestak eggs, can proliferate in number, and thousands of Sleestak eggs will hatch.   Eternal night, they believe, will restore the Sleestak race to its former glory.

However, the Sleestak haven’t realized that without the warmth of the sun, the temperature will drop, and the moths will die out quickly.  In trying to improve their existence, the Sleestak have only endangered it.  Again, it's not difficult to read this as a metaphor for misuse of the environment.

Enik (Walker Edmiston) visits the Marshalls after questioning the Library of Skulls, and seeks Marshall’s help in convincing the Sleestaks of their error.  Because Rick Marshall has saved the Sleestak in the past, he can return to the Lost City on this occasion under the protection of a clause called “Altrusian Grace.”

As expected, the Marshalls set things right in the end, and all is well.

In all, “Blackout” is a safe, predictable and rather unsatisfying end to a strong season of this Sid and Marty Krofft series.  Stand-out episodes include “The Zarn,” “The Musician,” “Split Personality,” and the outstanding “The Pylon Express.”  

There have been some stinkers too (“Nice Day,” for instance), but overall the series offers many strong installments in its sophomore sortie. What I like most about the second season is that it stretches the boundaries of the land, with episodes about Altrusia’s strange, pulsing heart (“One of Our Pylons is Missing,”) and a periodic portal between worlds (“The Pylon Express”).  Even in the weaker episodes there is a sense of consistency and order to this universe.

The third season of Land of the Lost -- which I start blogging next week -- absolutely changes the game.  Rick Marshall (Spencer Milligan) disappears from the series, replaced by Uncle Jack (Ron Harper), and many shifts in terms of continuity occur.  

=

Cult-Movie Review: Event Horizon (1997)

On a purely surface level, the science-fiction/horror film Event Horizon (1997) is a sturdy amalgamation of familiar imagery from the cinema’s storied past and traditions.  

The film’s central visual of a haunted spaceship extruding blood by the gallon seems to emerge from a similar image (of an evil hotel elevator…) in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (1980), for instance.

Meanwhile, the notion of an inscrutable -- and unseen -- alien entity manifesting living “guests” from the memories of bewildered human beings deliberately evokes memories of Tarkovsky’s masterpiece, Solaris (1972).

And certainly -- with doorways to Hell opening and closing willy-nilly, and one character’s transformation (or degradation…) into the Devil’s inquisitor -- there seem to be powerful echoes of Clive Barker’s Hellraiser (1987) evident here as well.

Ultimately, however, the familiarity of these images does subtract one iota from the film’s thematic coherence or its success as a compelling work of art.  

On the contrary, these visuals are carefully marshaled by director Paul Anderson to convey the film’s overriding theme: Catholic guilt.

Specifically, at least three main characters in Event Horizon suffer from feelings of intense guilt about their past behavior.  

I call it Catholic guilt because that’s an easy and familiar short-hand for many of us. Explicitly speaking, Catholic guilt arises from one’s knowledge of personal wrong-doing.  It is felt by all people, however, who are intelligent and insightful enough to realize that they have committed moral trespasses.  

The key aspect that makes this guilt “Catholic,” perhaps, is the knowledge that Jesus died for man’s sins, and yet in sinning again, we betray that merciful act.  In sinning, we waste the greatest gift it is possible to receive.

Accordingly, those who suffer with the weight of guilt must decide how to harness and re-purpose their feelings. Knowledge of guilt can lead to great acts…or merely deeper shame.

That is the key leitmotif of Event Horizon.  

There are two men -- mirror images -- in the film, who choose to succumb to darkness, but do so for utterly different reasons, and with very different objectives.  

One succumbs as a direct, nihilistic renunciation of faith and goodness, and the other does so as an affirmative act; one of both a self-punishment and self-sacrifice.

Given this theme, Event Horizon is brilliantly constructed -- from sets and dialogue, to camera compositions and special effects -- as a direct expression of Catholicism, and specifically the harsh Catholicism of the Middle Ages.

“God help us.”

In 2047 AD, a small search and rescue ship, Lewis and Clark -- under command of Captain Miller (Laurence Fishburne) -- is dispatched to Neptune to respond to a distress call from a vessel that has been missing for seven years: Event Horizon.

Aboard the Lewis and Clark is one passenger, Dr. William Weir (Sam Neill). 

He is the scientist who designed Event Horizon, and he reports to the crew that it was a prototype with a “gravity drive,” an engine that could fold space-time by opening a doorway between dimensions.

After a rocky ride to Event Horizon, the crew of Lewis and Clark explores the derelict ship. 

Lt. Starck (Joely Richardson) is perplexed by the fact that her scanners keep picking up trace life-forms on the ship, but at no specific location.  It’s as though the whole ship is a life-form.

The ship’s doctor, Peters (Kathleen Quinlan), meanwhile, discovers carnage on the long-missing vessel’s bridge. All the crew died, and in grievously bloody circumstances.

Worse, Engineer Justin (Jack Noseworthy) explores the engineering section of the ship, and is pulled into a dark black vortex at the gravity drive site. He returns from his visit to the “other place’ in a state of shock and catatonia.  

Although Weir insists the gravity drive could not have activated itself, Captain Miller begins to grow suspicious of the ship…especially after he sees a strange specter, himself: a burning man from his past.

While technician Cooper (Richard T. Jones) attempts to repair the Lewis and Clark, which was damaged when the gravity drive was apparently activated, the remainder of the ship’s crew starts seeing additional hallucinations.  

Weir keeps seeing his wife, who committed suicide in a bath tub. 

And Peters repeatedly sees phantasms of her crippled young son, whom she left at home on Earth.  

The burning man witnessed by Miller is also someone from a personal and shameful past: an officer whom the captain was forced to leave behind in a catastrophe.

Soon another horror occurs. 

The captain’s log is re-activated, and Miller’s crew sees the Event Horizon crew going mad…totally insane.  The crew’s bizarre and violent behavior leads Dr. Weir to conclude that when it activated the gravity drive, Event Horizon entered a dimension of pure chaos and pure evil…Hell itself.

Now, the ship wants a new crew.

Miller hatches a strategy to destroy Event Horizon and return home, but first must contend with a demonic Weir, a man who has willingly given himself to the dark…

“It knows my fears. It knows my secrets.”

The men and women depicted throughout Event Horizon are all facing a very specific Monster from the Id: guilt.  

First and foremost, Dr. Weir is ravaged by his feelings of guilt. When we first meet the character, he is alone in his quarters on a space station, and he looks longingly at a shrine he has set up to his dead wife.  

He tenderly touches a photograph of her, and says aloud “I miss you.”

This opening sequence brilliantly telegraphs -- without overtly stating it -- the motivations for Weir’s intense guilt. 

We see him use the rest room, and shave his face.  But while he is shaving, his gaze wanders irrevocably over to the bath-tub, where water is dripping ever so slowly. 

Then he stares at the straight razor in his hands…just inches from his own neck.  

With no dialogue or weighty exposition, these visuals immediately convey the connection between objects.  We understand instantly that Weir’s wife took her own life, and that, in some way, Weir feels responsible for her final, monstrous act.

Later, we learn more. When Weir sees the ghost of his wife, she is still nude, and bearing the wounds of her death in the tub. Weir tells her “I know I wasn’t there when you needed me. I let my work come between us.”

The source of Weir’s intense guilt is that he never helped his wife. He never went to her when she was hurting, when she needed him.  And worse: he knew she needed him. 

But Weir wanted to continue working (presumably on Event Horizon).  In a very real sense, then, the ship is a child of their failed marriage, a product of his decision to remain away from her. It is his sin personified, and a haunted expression of his guilt.

Weir is tortured by his failure to save his wife, and he experiences visions of her in the “deep cold” of the gravity couch, even before returning to Event Horizon. She speaks words to him that she also no doubt said in real life: “I’m so alone.”  

This is the call for help Weir willfully ignored.

She also says words that indicate her suffering has not ended, even in death.  “Billy, I’m so cold…”

Late in the film, Weir is forced to relive his wife’s suicide in the bath-tub, and perhaps this is the final reckoning for him. 

Instead of continuing to resist the darkness, or finding a constructive way to contend with his guilt, Weir surrenders to it. He gives over to it.

Weir realizes that his sin can’t be forgiven, and that he is truly a terrible sinner. When Miller tells him they must go home, Weir responds that he is already home.  He believes he belongs in Hell…or at least aboard the physical manifestation of his sin, the Event Horizon.

In essence then, Weir doubles-down on his feelings of Catholic Guilt, and is not able to erect something constructive from his emotions or feelings. When his wife implores “Be with me…forever,” Weir consigns himself to damnation. He believes that’s what he deserves.

Captain Miller is the second character in the film suffering explicitly from terrible guilt.  

He keeps seeing phantasms of a man named Corrick, a crewman whom he left behind to die in a fire. 

Corrick’s death has haunted Miller in the same way that Weir’s wife’s suicide has haunted the good doctor. Miller has closed off all of his emotions and humanity, and become a sort of military martinet, one who shows no humanity towards his crew, and yet worries about them incessantly.  

He can’t lose another one. That’s his worst fear:  reliving the pain and the ensuing guilt.

Accordingly, the evil ship manifests the monster from Miller’s id. The burning man -- Corrick -- appears to Miller and begs him “Captain, don’t leave me…”

However, Miller finally does something that Weir never manages: he confesses his guilt. The captain tells one of his crew-members, Smith (Sean Pertwee) the entire story: 

“I did the only thing I could. I closed the lifeboat hatch…and I left him.” Miller reveals.

Importantly, it is after this confession of sin and recognition of guilt that Miller starts to take away Event Horizon’s power over him.  

The ship knows his “fears” and “secrets,” but now at least one member of his crew does so as well. With his options for survival narrowed, Miller makes a selfless decision (and one that honors Christ’s choice to “save” mankind):  He remains on Event Horizon to stop Weir so that Starck, Cooper and Justin can live.  

In essence, Miller gives his life for theirs, and thus exorcises his demon, his guilt. By staying behind, and making certain that his crew survives, Miller may go to a dimension of literal damnation, but there is little doubt that he has saved his soul.

Peters is the third major character who suffers from Catholic Guilt in Event Horizon. She was called back onto active duty for the search-and-rescue mission, and had to leave her young, badly-crippled son behind on Earth with her husband.

It is clear that Peters feels she abandoned her child, and early in the film we see her watching home-video footage of the sick boy. 

Once aboard Event Horizon, the ship manifests Peters’ son (though he is actually still alive, on Earth), and her feelings of guilt go into overdrive. She sees him, in particular, as sick and vulnerable.

Then, at the very moment Peters should be trying to escape the ship, she takes a wrong turn instead. She goes the wrong way…pursuing the phantasm of her boy instead of her own survival. It is as if she wants the boy to forgive her, to negate her feelings of guilt. Instead, he leads her to her death.  

Peters’ fate is a demonstration of the fact that guilt -- while sometimes useful -- can also lead one astray, or down blind alleys.

Even a fourth character – a supporting one -- Justin also makes some key references to guilt in Event Horizon.

When he awakens after his journey to “the Other Place” (Hell…), Justin notes that it showed him “the dark place inside” himself, and that seems a veritable definition of how guilt feels.  

“It shows you horrible things,” he adds, but importantly, all those horrible things are inside him, and that too defines guilt well: the internal memory of bad deeds committed.

In keeping with the overarching concept of guilt, Event Horizon is dominated by Catholic imagery and allusions.  For example, the exterior of the malevolent spaceship -- when seen from precisely the right angle -- resembles a high-tech crucifix.  

Worse, if inverted it could be interpreted as an upside-down crucifix, suggesting the Hellish nature of the thing. It is a place of sin and guilt made flesh.

At least one window at the fore of the ship, on the bridge, likewise resembles a crucifix. 

In an unforgettable composition from the film’s opening act, a dead human figure floats weightlessly before such a window, his arms outstretched in a Christ-on-the-cross pose.  He has been crucified for his sins, and left for dead.

Similarly, much of the interior of the haunted old ship deliberately reflects the Gothic architecture of European cathedrals, right down to the frequent appearance of arches.  

The main hallway connecting forward life boat and rear propulsion section is but a series of ridged, pointed arches, for example.

Even the ship’s airlocks are labeled rather unconventionally with Medieval Roman numerals. Although invented, of course, in Ancient Rome, these numbers were also  used extensively in the Middle Ages in a regnal fashion…to denote the reigns/identities of Popes, and national rulers. 

And when Weir re-appears one last time for the film’s final sting, just look at his attire.  He wears a space helmet that resembles something out of the Spanish Inquisition, the tribunal tasked with maintaining Catholic orthodoxy.  

In popular culture, the Inquisition has come to symbolize intolerance or a capricious, arbitrary justice. In Event Horizon, the guilty Weir becomes the chief inquisitor of the ship itself -- the chief torturer – and so the helmet seems appropriate.

Further intimating Catholicism, the first message received from Event Horizon upon her return to our universe from Hell is spoken in Latin, like the liturgy of the Mass.  

The words are: “liberate tutame ex infernis.”  

The translation is literally “Save me from Hell.”

As I’ve written before, I believe that a movie reaches its apex of artistry when form and content intermingle meaningfully.  In Event Horizon, the idea of Catholic guilt informs several characters, and the film’s singular, horrifying setting -- a haunted, Catholic spaceship, essentially -- visualizes their strife and turmoil, reflecting the nature of their conflict.

It is also significant that so many figures in the film lose their eyes -- or gouge them out -- from Weir and his wife to Justin and the original Event Horizon crew.

 The idea seems to be that if you can cut out your eyes (the window to the soul?) you can't see your guilt anymore. You can't recognize it.

Of course, that isn't true. Guilt isn't about something external that you can look away from. It's an internal quality of the mind that is always there, even with your eyes shut, even without eyes at all.

There are those who will gaze at this film and see only the visual quotations, the many resonances of popular culture or the horror genre. They are present, to be certain.

However, Event Horizon travels some distance beyond mere homage to cogently express its riveting (and frequently grotesque…) tale of guilt and regret, damnation, and salvation.  

The film serves as a brilliant "yang" to the "yin" of another 1997 genre film, Contact. The light, new age mysticism of that Jodie Foster movie contrasts very strongly with the heavy, almost dungeon-like Medieval exterior and interior architecture of Event Horizon. 

Both films concern "portals" that open to other dimensions, and reveal something of human spirituality.  Here, many of the discoveries are dark ones, but Miller's sacrifice, while grim,  is a positive takeaway. 

Hell is just a word, as Dr. Weir notes here, but Event Horizon visualizes the grim reality of that word in ways that are unforgettable, horrifying, and, finally, aesthetically coherent.