If Lars von Trier’s Dancer in the Dark didn’t make it clear enough, take it from Paul W.S. Anderson: You really don’t need eyes to see. At least, you don’t need them after you take the scenic route through an interdimensional version of hell, courtesy of the titular spacecraft in the grimdark, sci-fi schlock-fest, Event Horizon. 

In 2040, the Event Horizon, a massive ship designed for high-volume space travel and colonization, vanished during its first cruise. Seven years later, it re-emerges. Capt. Miller (Laurence Fishburne, The Matrix), Dr. Weir (Sam Neill, Possession) and a handful of other unfortunate crew members fly out to investigate it aboard the Lewis and Clark, a vessel about one-hundredth of the Event Horizon’s size.

The Lewis and Clark crew discover the Event Horizon abandoned, save for a few eviscerated corpses. A few audio logs and one horrific recording later, Capt. Miller resolves to abandon ship. That’s easier said than done, however, as the seemingly possessed craft reactivates its warp drive, trapping the crew of the Lewis and Clark aboard. The survivors race to execute a desperate backup plan as the demonic presence that seized the ship slowly digs its way into their psyches.

Hellraiser: Bloodline wishes it were Event Horizon. Not that the bar for sacrilegious sci-fi horror is super-high, but for his film, Anderson (the Resident Evil franchise) brings tight cohesion, a genuinely intriguing setting and a quality of acting that leaves the rest of the genre in shambles. Fishburne and Neill transition from contentious comrades to cosmic nemeses believably enough, and the sparse comic relief from Richard T. Jones (2014’s Godzilla) doesn’t feel terribly forced despite being cheesy as — appropriately — hell.

While some may call Alien’s Nostromo the quintessential haunted house in space, Event Horizon’s lead spacecraft may actually exceed it. No, it doesn’t feature cramped quarters and an acid-bleeding Xenomorph, but it is actually haunted by the impression of an ineffable, chaotic dimension. Unlike the versions of space hell seen in Warhammer 40,000 or Doom, however, Event Horizon is less concerned with socketing in demons to make itself a half-baked creature feature. Instead, its terror is predicated largely on just the idea of hell.

Leaning on the concept as a source of horror instead of an overly manifested version of it (like the aforementioned Hellraiser sequel) likewise helps push the film’s theme. Event Horizon centers on a civilization that has pushed too far. It wasn’t good enough for us to get to another planet in a few days; we had to go faster than light itself, and in doing so, we didn’t just travel beyond humanity’s physical limitations, but the psychological ones as well.

Dr. Weir’s transformation into essentially a cenobite at the climax undermines this idea a bit, but otherwise, the crew of the Lewis and Clark aren’t fighting ghosts or demons. They’re fighting their own minds as punishment for not just fucking around and finding out once, but twice. This isn’t necessarily anything new in sci-fi, but using hell as an allegory for what little we know about space is still clever. (And maybe just a little heavy-handed.)

If anything, Event Horizon is worth the price of admission to catch the 30-or-so seconds of the sadomasochistic slaughter orgy captured on the recording the Lewis and Clark crew recover. This includes a follow-up line from Fishburne that is timed so well, it’s sort of baffling Anderson didn’t use it as the film’s tagline: “We’re leaving.” You should stay for the movie’s entirety, of course, even if it means disobeying a directly order from Laurence Fishburne. He’ll probably understand. —Daniel Bokemper

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Watari, the Ninja Boy is based on a classic Japanese manga, which I could tell just by looking at the kid’s haircut. Played by Kaneko Yoshinobu (who was a different child ninja in the similar, superior Ninja Scope), Watari lives with his sickly grandfather, plays the flute, jumps around, swings on ropes, flies through the air, walks up trees and, in a musical number, even grows to Jolly Green Giant height to touch a rainbow of Skittles.

But mostly, with the aid of his trusty metal ax, whose blade is bigger than his head, Watari spends his days and nights warring against adult ninja and monster ninja who want to kill him. He also decapitates a black cat, but TBH, that pussy had it coming.

Watari undergoes a litany of traumas in these colorful adventures, including surviving an earthquake, sinking in quicksand, finding dead dudes floating in the river, seeing a naked lady and meeting a grown man with lots of eye shadow.

Needless to say, this is one weird kiddie matinee — one that begins with a blue-skinned ninja losing his tongue for breaking the law. It’s also confusing, what with all the Japanese names thrown around of this clan and that clan, and not knowing who belong to which. Even with the benefit of crisp English subtitles, I was all like, whaaaaaaaaa … —Rod Lott

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The Predator franchise has always worked for me. Sure, there are a few clunkers in there — Alien vs. Predator and Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem, I’m looking at you — but from the original Predator to the Robert Rodriguez-produced Predators to the gloriously Indigenous-heavy Prey, every film in this roster has been a true popcorn movie.

Add the latest installment, Predator: Badlands, to the ever-growing list of more-than-watchable sequels, because this film not only delves deep into the Predator mythos, but, in the end, it takes the Predator and turns him into a real stand-up guy lonesome scion of alien revenge.

No, really.

The Predators — or, as they’re called now, the Yautja — are in this clan that a little guy named Dax is about to be initiated into. Challenged by his brutish father who, sadly, decapitates his older brother for being weak — Yikes! Are you sure that wasn’t my dad? — Dax crash-lands on the alien world of Ganna, where he’s going to become a man or, you know, die trying.

On the hostile planet — apparently, it’s a real hellscape — he immediately finds vine-like strangling creatures, exploding caterpillars and large plants that shoot out poisonous spikes and immediately paralyze the body. And that’s in the first 15 minutes.

Eventually, he finds an android survivor (Elle Fanning) from a Weyland-Yutani (shades of Alien’s Xenomorphs?) scouting party. Along with a cute rolling-ball creature they call Bud, they try to find the mythical Kalisk that Dax wants to kill to impress his father.

While that’s going on, the android’s identical twin sister and a bunch of space marines find Dax’s ship. They take all the weapons and, of course, want to capture and eviscerate him. They all engage, entangle and enrage with a round of alien psychoanalysis about grief and loss, as well as old-fashioned shoulder cannons and wrist-controlled atom bombs.

With sparse alien dialogue and the mannerisms of a hardened warrior, New Zealand actor Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi is more than serviceable as Dax, alternating between immature warrior to seasoned champion for whom, as the mid-credits scene teases, more adventures will come.

But if anything needs more credit, it is Dan Trachtenberg, directing his third entry in the franchise. Between Prey and the animated Predator: Killer of Killers, he is on a creative streak I am actually down with, giving Dax and all the Yautja actual characteristics that make than more than, well, Predators.

In the end, Predator: Badlands is just a wildly entertaining entry in a nine-movie series that is only picking up camouflaged steam, and I am here for it. —Louis Fowler

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As if you weren’t already aware, our world is, in a word, fucked. Yet hope exists, albeit in the form of a scraggly, smelly and likely unhoused man (Sam Rockwell, Iron Man 2) with explosives strapped to his chest.

Barging into at an L.A. diner one night like a crazy person, he declares he’s from the future and seeking volunteers to help him destroy AI before AI destroys humanity. Seven recruits and 10 minutes later, their revolution begins — with the title singsong-shouted at viewers: Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die! (For these dire times, that resonates harder than “Live, love, laugh.”)

As the man and his charges embark on their mission, director Gore Verbinski flashes back to Weapons-style chapters depicting the events the lead the most recognizable recruits to the diner. Teachers Michael Peña (Ant-Man) and Zazie Beetz (Deadpool 2) flee from students who’ve been algorithm-anesthetized into TikTok zombies. Grieving mother Juno Temple (Venom: The Last Dance) clones her son after he’s killed in a school shooting. And a depressed party rent-a-princess (the ever-winning Haley Lu Richardson, Split) is allergic to cellphones and Wi-Fi.

Like the film overall, these shorter pieces delight at first before running out of steam. This structure makes me believe Good Luck would have worked best as a true anthology, with the Rockwell-led segments doing Cryptkeeper duty as a wraparound. Throughout, but especially in the aforementioned opening scene, Rockwell leverages the fast-talking, smart-ass thing that’s served as his stock in trade for three decades and counting. His manic energy sets the pace for every arm of Verbinski’s epic sci-fi comedy, but attempting to sustain that grows exhausting, much like Y2K — the movie, not the year (although come to think of it …).

Rockwell’s warning to his army that not everyone will make it to the end could hold true for audience members not attuned to its level of quirk. The script by Matthew Robinson (Love and Monsters) is not quite pitch-black satire, but let’s call it close to sunset; among its best ideas is that cloning your kid is hella expensive unless you get “the ads version,” in which your Xeroxed offspring shills a product once a day, “but in his own voice.”

Inevitably, as the chaos continues and the effects overwhelm in what feels like Act 4 or 5, Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die collapses under its own bloat. At 134 minutes, how could it not? (Since earning Disney loads and loads of Pirates booty — as in of the Caribbean — Verbinksi’s rarely met a two-hour running time he didn’t shatter, but I’ll go to my grave defending A Cure for Wellness.) There’s simply too much there here, including a CGI creature’s giant penis slinging while gushing a stream of glitter — a climactic image that reinforces the movie’s message: We’re too distracted to realize how royally we’re getting hosed. —Rod Lott

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Want to see a great sci-fi movie with Tom Felton that explores themes of human evolution? That’s what Rise of the Planet of the Apes is for, because Altered sure isn’t.

In its dystopia, citizens can opt for incredible DNA enhancements from the Genesis Institute “laboratry” (as is visible in one shot), like the ability to drink through a straw that unfurls from your nostrils or to check the temp of your dinner steak via a simple gaze of your glowing peepers. These upgrades and more can be yours! Unless you’re one of the unfortunate 10% of the population immune to bio-modifications, that is; derisively dubbed “specials,” you losers are segregated from society.

Being paraplegic, Felton’s Leon is one such special. He and his 12-year-old roomie, Chloe (Liza Bugulova, Disney’s The Last Warrior), luck upon a mechanical suit of Dr. Doomy armor that allows Leon to walk again, plus fight bad guys with kitchenware from a Pampered Chef party, and save a politically minded pop star (Aggy K. Adams, Netflix’s The Witcher) from kidnapping.

As if that weren’t enough, Chloe injects the superhero suit with essence from a smuggled flower that converts nuclear energy into pure energy so Leon also can shoot vines and, ultimately, deadly thorns. Now he’s like Spawn, if created by Guerney’s Seed & Nursery. As Leon quips in the film’s climax, “That’s flower power … that’s flower power,” in case you didn’t get it the first time, I guess.

The science-fiction genre is an ideal medium to explore hot-button issues of today under the guise of a tale of a near-future tomorrow. Yet Altered is all toothless, surface-level junk, as if adapted from a tween activist’s change.org petition. Shot in the glorious nation of Kazakhstan, it sounds dubbed in post, despite an English-speaking main cast. The visuals are so inert and uninvolving, I would not be shocked to learn they were generated with a single prompt of an AI tool.

Writer/director Timo Vuorensola would have been much better off utilizing even a smidge of the satire (however mild) from his Nazi UFO breakthrough, Iron Sky. At least then, lines like Felton’s praise to a wind-up mouse, “Good work, Mr. Stinky,” could be laughed with, rather than at. —Rod Lott

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