Event Horizon's Sequel Finally Reveals The Monster Behind The Ship

Warning: Major spoilers for Event Horizon: Inferno Issue #2 Below!Nearly 30 years after the movie, comic sequel Event Horizon: Inferno has revealed the demon behind the evil spaceship. Inferno is the second comic follow-up to the cult 1997 movie, following the prequel Dark Descent. Not only did Event Horizon’s prequel confirm its links to the Warhammer universe, it also revealed the full, gory extent of the infamous crew log video that had to be trimmed down for the film.

Dark Descent was still a flawed effort, and its inclusion of monsters chasing around the ship’s crew felt out of step with the Paul W.S. Anderson movie. Inferno takes that a step further, as an evil billionaire leads a crew of gun-toting mercenaries to track down the wreckage of the titular spaceship.

Event Horizon: Inferno confirmed the only survivor of the film too, with Lt. Starck (Joely Richardson) mysteriously being alive aboard the ship after 200 years. Issue #2 wastes little time, as Starck explains what the Hell (heh) is going on, and why she and the mercs must leave immediately. Unfortunately for them, a horde of Lovecraftian monsters comes through a portal and rips most of the team apart.

What’s significant about this issue is Starck’s realization that Skylar – the traumatized wife of the aforementioned evil billionaire – is “feeding” the ship, and waking it up. Both the movie and Dark Descent revealed that the Event Horizon herself has become a living being, and in the final pages, it even speaks through the body of dead crewmember Justin.

Event Horizon: Inferno Reveals The Demon Behind The Ship

Event Horizon: Inferno issue 2 monster horde.

The ship doesn’t say a whole lot, but reveals it’s glad to be reawakened after so long, and it plans to take the crew “somewhere wonderful.” Then it unleashes a demonic horde, leading to Starck and Skylar teaming up to find an escape route. Giving the spaceship itself a voice and personality is a risky move for Event Horizon: Inferno, and mostly works because it’s totally unexpected.

Adam Wingard (The Guest) is also developing an Event Horizon TV series.

Hopefully, future issues will do more with this reveal, since the comic moves past it pretty quick. If anything, Inferno’s second issue should have given the floor to the Event Horizon/Justin monster and let it do some monologuing before ending with the monster horde attack. The demon attack feels shoehorned too, as if the publisher demanded some gratuitous gore to wrap up the story for this month.

Still, turning the ship into a creature with a personality certainly sets Inferno apart from its predecessors. This sequel had been setting itself up as a riff on Aliens, but considering most of the mercenaries have already bitten the dust, it’s not clear where the final two issues will go. That’s a good thing, considering Dark Descent’s endpoint (and the bleak fate of its crew) was already set in stone.

Inferno Risks Removing Too Much Of Event Horizon’s Mystery

Event Horizon is a movie that borrowed heavily from Alien, Hellraiser, The Shining and many more. Part of what made it work is that it left many questions unanswered. It never revealed what the “Chaos” dimension looked like, for instance, and leaned into a Lovecraft-style of storytelling. That’s not the approach Dark Descent or Inferno are taking, as the comics seem determined to answer every lingering question.

It reveals a demon called Paimon was behind the massacre of the original crew, and even inspired the ship’s designer, Weir (Sam Neill), to travel to the Hell dimension in the first place. It showed what happened to the crew in great detail, while the film largely only hinted at their gruesome ends, and now Inferno is giving the Event Horizon a personality.

It feels like much of the ambiguity of the movie is being eaten away by the comics. Now, Event Horizon: Inferno might surprise fans by taking things in a different direction or adding something fresh to the lore, but it would be nice if it stopped answering questions perhaps best left a mystery.