Credit: Hellraiser
If you’ve seen Hellraiser, any of them, and seen Event Horizon, the hope is that your brain has made some sort of connection between the two movies that might make sense, but it’s easy to assume that some people would want to argue about it. Between the gate in Event Horizon and the puzzle box in Hellraiser, it feels very likely that the two share a very big connection to a realm where pain and horror are considered to be beautiful and even desirable. It could simply be that the crew that was stranded on the Event Horizon hadn’t yet been fully consumed. Why weren’t there Cenobites around, right? Well, apart from copyright issues and who owns the characters, it could be explained that since the ship had been infested by a living organism and therefore read as something that was alive, the Cenobites might not have been needed. Think of it, an entire ship that counts as an entity that’s meant to lure, trap, and convey souls to the other side. What need would there be for Cenobites at that point?
Credit: Event Horizon
Maybe the ship was one large Cenobite or infested with a Cenobite spirit that knew how to torment the living.
Think of that, an entire ship that could torture and confuse multiple people all at once, and could harvest souls in a group rather than one at a time. It might not be as elegant as using the Cenobites, but it would certainly serve a purpose if the powers within the realm were in need of fresh bodies and souls to twist and turn in their desired images. The gateway could possibly ferry an entire ship filled with people had it been allowed to remain in orbit for long enough and had a larger group come aboard. But like the puzzle box, it did need to be manipulated into working, as the general idea of the gate was that it was contained within its housing and only allowed to work once a person had given the proper commands. Since the ship had brought back a controlling presence with it, there was no longer a need for manipulation of any other type, as it only had to lie in wait for the unsuspecting individuals who would come aboard and serve as its next victims. Unlike the puzzle box though, it could do this on its own.
The gate could have been a way of streamlining the process, perhaps a design given to Dr. Weir by someone from the other side.
The box is a slightly antiquated way of communing with the powers that it’s meant to unleash, but again, there is a time for quantity instead of quality, as the box is a device that feels more like a specialized tool that is meant to take only those who can figure it out or those who are foolish enough to be marked by it. The gate is less discerning and simply needs to be turned on to do its work. The fact that the dimension it traveled to became a default destination is even better since it became mapped out and more accessible. But there’s no mistake about it, the fact that both were used to access the dimension that houses such absolute evil is a happy accident in the case of Event Horizon that gains as much purpose as the box was initially given. Thinking that Dr. Weir might have been given this idea in a dream somehow is kind of interesting since a man of his intelligence likely wouldn’t have believed that it was inspired by anything other than his intellect and engineering skill. The devil’s in the details after all.
Credit: Hellraiser
One has to recall that Hellraiser: Bloodlines created a ship that was meant to destroy the Cenobites.
Those of us that actually sat down to watch this movie might still be shaking our heads and wondering why, but the point is that the gate in Event Horizon was an accident that wasn’t meant to access the dimension that Pinhead and his Cenobites hail from. The ship in Bloodlines made use of the puzzle box in a couple of different ways, and one of those was to trap the Cenobites and destroy them for good, which isn’t exactly possible since their physical manifestations can be destroyed apparently, but they’re bound to keep coming back, at least that’s what one can assume.
The puzzle box and the Event Horizon could be tools that serve the same purpose in different ways.
As tools that have been used to access what could possibly be the same place, it’s fair to think that there is a connection between these two movies, but thanks to copyright and the fact that they’re still very different movies, plenty of people might want to keep the argument short and simple. But seriously, looking at the plots and the devices used, it’s not tough to make a connection.
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