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And everything happening this week for Future Fest!

Welcome, Popversians, to another edition of The Coldest Open, the column where I, your humble horror host, examine the history of scary cinema through the first moments of its standout entries. Here in the hallowed halls of Popverse, we're celebrating a little event called Future Fest, where we explore the future of pop culture and, at the same time, pop culture regarding the future. As a horror fan yourself, you probably know that this means we're going to talk about perhaps the most beloved piece of future-set horror, Paul Anderson's Event Horizon.

The way Coldest Open works is this: I'm going to be breaking down five different hallmarks of every great cold open in horror, then judging whether the movie in question pulls them off. If so, that hallmark will get ranked with a "Cold" verdict; if not, it'll get ranked with a "warm." At the end, we'll tally up those verdicts and determine a temperature, ranging all the way from Lukewarm to Absolute Zero.

Sound good? Alright, then let's get you into that stasis chamber and kick into gear (you're not claustrophobic like Sam Neill, are you?).

Event Horizon's Cold-Blooded Killer

One thing Event Horizon really has going for it is that it's one of those special horror films where the location is as much a villain as the evil entities that lurk within it. Like The Shining before it, this film makes us aware of its sinister setting from the moment we first encounter it, closing in on the almost-familiar shape of a spaceship much as we approach the intimidating Overlook Hotel.

If you've been following The Coldest Open lately, you know that we've had our hands full of Alien films (the first and second, specifically), and these two sci-fi horror franchises introduce their spaceship settings in two very different ways. When we first meet the Nostromo, it feels alive - the ship moves on screen and the cast is soon to wake up inside it. The Event Horizon, on the other hand, is a graveyard still when we encounter it, and inside there's only loose evidence of a human crew, floating in the zero gravity.

Much as I love Ridley Scott's contribution to genre filmmaking, I think I gotta hand it to the latter spaceship in terms of terror.

Verdict: Cold

Event Horizon's First Person to Get Iced

The first victim we meet in Event Horizon is a skinless, screaming body. And while that on it own is a terrifying image, I think it's here where the problems with Event Horizon's opener begin. Putting aside the fact that we will eventually come to understand this body's place in the story (we just talk about openers here, remember), this is such an unrelatable sight that it's more likely to induce curiosity than actual dread. Maybe if we had another point of reference to connect us to this not-quite-corpse's humanity, we'd feel a bit more for him. But in the opening moments of the movie, we don't get that.

Verdict: Warm

Event Horizon's Polar Plot Intro

One thing that's not unclear about this opener, and that I greatly appreciate about it, is how it introduces the film's premise. That is, by tried-and-true opening crawl, the same way so many galactic intros have welcomed us into their worlds (not to bring this up again, but a certain xenomorphic franchise launchpad does the same thing). Is this the most artistic way to get the audience into the story? Well, no. But it is darn well effective, and I'd so much rather have this than some awkward expositional dialogue to tell us what's going on in this unfamiliar future.

Verdict: Cold

Event Horizon's Frozen Snapshots

Once we have the info regarding what the movie's spacebound crew are doing, though, I wish the movie's imagery had spent a little bit more time introducing us to them. Yes, we see Sam Neill surrounded by photos of his wife, which tells us a little bit about his character, but that moment is sterile and, honestly, a little bit forced. What comes next is a tour through the ship with some absolutely incredible genre actors (Laurence Fishburne and Sean Pertwee amongst them), but the camera moves us so fast through them that it's impossible to know who they're going to be to us.

One thing I have to say about this movie's opening imagery - the sequence in which we see the ship's interior flipped over is a great, if pretty literal, way that the director tells us the world is about to be shifted upside down. That said, it's not quite enough to drop the temperature in this category for me.

Verdict: Warm

Event Horizon's Bone-Chilling Music

And finally, let's talk about the music used in the opening of Event Horizon, or rather, the admittedly effective lack thereof. Utilizing the chilling fact that sound doesn't work in space the same way it does here on safe ol' planet Earth, Event Horizon takes us on a tour through the hell of its titular ship with pretty much two sound effects. The second is a scream, and the first is a ticking watch. Maybe they aren't the absolute most original ways to get "doom" across to an audience via sound, but hey, they work.

Verdict: Cold

Event Horizon's Cold Open Temperature: Midwinter

It's happened before on The Coldest Open that I've ended up surprising myself by what I didn't like about the beginning of a film I consider to be absolutely genius - see the entry on An American Werewolf in London for reference. Just like John Landis's landmark movie changed the werewolf subgenre of horror, Event Horizon pretty much set the bar for scary storytelling set in space. It is a weird, revolutionary movie made by some talented folks, and I'd disagree with anyone who would give it less than a 90%.

It's just that I'd also argue - the 10% is missing from the beginning.

In the immortal words of Danny Elfman, "Life's no fun without a good scare." Join Popverse's weekly explorations of the best opening moments of horror cinema in The Coldest Open, and then check out:

• The best horror movies of all time, according to horror aficionado Greg Silber
• The most underrated horror movies from the past couple years
• All the new and upcoming horror movies for 2025 and beyond

And much gore. Er, more. Much more.