31 Fates Worse Than Death! (#26: Event Horizon)

Just as sci-fi fans are already often claiming 2007's Sunshine as a personal fave, flaws be damned, many of us horror types have fallen back on 1997's Event Horizon as a guilty pleasure at the very least, if not something a bit more solid. Mind you, we're talking about what is arguably Paul W.S. Anderson's best directorial effort to date, so 'good for what it is' is about as apt a descriptor as I can think of.

At any rate, the eponymous ship has returned from its lengthy departure to parts unknown, and our rescue crew -- including Laurence Fishburne and Sam Neill, as the engineer who created the ship's black-hole-opening device -- soon discovers that remnants of its detour to a hellish alternate dimension remained on board.

To cut a long story short, and to enter spoiler territory, Neill the widower has nothing to lose and thus welcomes the madness that is picking off his fellow crew members. As such, he's eager to return the ship to whence it came, survivors and all. Capt. Fishburne isn't as keen on that idea, though, and goes through hell in order to retrieve one little detonator and successfully separate the body of the ship from the tail.

However, what's this mean for our poor captain? He's still stuck with the demonic doctor as they both travel to a place where spilled entrails and other ritualistic forms of maiming are par for the course. As someone doomed to an afterlife full of nothing but that and Neill's relentless anecdotes from the set of Dead Calm, I'd say that Fishburne's character is stuck with... a Fate Worse Than Death!