The hellish liminality of Event Horizon

Cinema has featured liminal spaces for decades. In Stanley Kubrick's The Shining (1980), every room, corridor, garden path -and arguably, the Overlook Hotel itself- exuded liminality. The empty subway tunnels in 2025's Exit 8 are another perfect example of the creepy nature of liminal spaces, as is the most recent Backrooms (2026), itself inspired by an almost decade-old internet creepypasta. Cinematic liminal spaces are traditionally associated with horror movies, though this is not always the case. 1998's The Truman Show, for instance. As an aside, even though this film was never marketed as being part of this genre, it could be argued that Truman's situation is quite horrific.

In 1997, sci-fi horror Event Horizon hit the screens. Directed by Paul W. S. Anderson, Event Horizon's premise can be broadly defined as that of a haunted house in space. At its most basic plot level, that's exactly what it is. This is an oversimplification, however, for the movie touches upon deeper metaphysical themes and presents what could possibly be the most terrifying liminal threshold of all: the antechamber to Hell itself.

This short essay takes you on a liminal journey through the corridors of the Event Horizon and into the farthest reaches of perception and reality.

Liminality in the context of the Event Horizon craft

A popular mental health site defines liminal spaces as “...transitional or transformative spaces, and such places are often associated with a forlorn atmosphere, a disconnection from the concept of reality, and a fluid or sometimes neglected aesthetic. They are the waiting areas between one point in time and space and the next.” This is quite an apt definition, and one that perfectly fits the Event Horizon's environment.

The movie's plot is quite straightforward. The experimental spaceship Event Horizon disappeared during its maiden voyage. The vessel's mission was to test a gravity drive, a piece of technology that, when engaged, would theoretically facilitate faster-than-light travel by creating a dimensional gateway, essentially an artificial black hole through which the ship passes and goes elsewhere in space.

Seven years later, the Event Horizon reappeared in Neptune's orbit, and the rescue ship Lewis and Clark is dispatched to investigate and piece together what happened to the crew and where the vessel had been. In broad strokes, that is the storyline, but Event Horizon's themes descend into liminality, the metaphysical, and even questions of faith.

When the rescue crew enters the derelict spaceship, it seems devoid of human life. No trace of the crew, just empty rooms and spaces. The chamber containing the gravity drive is connected to the rest of the spaceship through a long corridor, which is mined in case something went awry. But it's all deserted. It's a lonely transit zone.

As the movie progresses, we find out that triggering the gravity drive propelled the Event Horizon into a dimension of pure evil. Whether this place is Hell itself, or elsewhere, the movie leaves open to interpretation. What matters, in the context of this article, is that, from a liminal point of view, the Event Horizon itself, the entirety of it, acts as a liminal space, much like the Overlook Hotel did in The Shining. The vessel has become a place of transition, an in-between. Designed and built to resemble a Gothic cathedral, the craft's maze-like corridors and geometry can be interpreted as a gigantic purgatorial space, a bridge between dimensional realities.

Often, experiencing liminality can be awkward, unsettling, or even scary, depending on the context, and hence its strong association with horror cinema. Things may feel off while climbing a deserted stairway, pacing up and down a lonely outdoor station platform at night, or walking down a long, silent hotel corridor, whose odd carpet floor patterns or architectural layout may induce fear or apprehension if we walk alone.

But liminality is not restricted to physical spaces. Passing through life stages is also liminal. A wedding, a divorce, a graduation, and so on. The moment of passage between two distinct realities. In Event Horizon, the characters find themselves not only in a physical liminal space, but also a psychological one, right on the boundary between their repressed feelings and deepest fears and a new dimension of utter, pure madness and evil, with the ship becoming the connective liminal tissue. The ship -or rather, the entity or force that the ship has brought back- can tap into these feelings and fears and use them as psychic weapons against their bearers.

Straddling the boundary between dimensions, Event Horizon raises questions bordering on the ontological and metaphysical. What is Hell? Where is it? What does it mean to be in Hell? Event Horizon presents Hell -or at least, a version of it- as an alternative dimension, a different reality, in between which stands a liminal, transitional space of inevitable damnation.

These questions have concerned scholars and scientists for thousands of years, and no definitive answer -if one even exists- has ever been offered.

Perhaps, it never will be.