Retroseans: “The Hidden Dimension”

Such a story is associated, for example, with the critically hated film Something by John Carpenter from 1982. Later, a similar fate befell the hero of this text. The vision of the director of Mortal Kombat and the subsequent series of Resident Evil , Paul WS Anderson, was not warmly received either from the reviewers, and even less from the audience, who voted with wallets quite eloquently. $ 60 million in the budget, barely less than 27 million profit on the domestic American market – The Hidden Dimension could easily be described as one of the largest financial failures of the film industry in 1997. Yet it’s science fiction from hell it had something that over the next decades would make it a benchmark for the quality of space horror movies: an amazing atmosphere.

Jelly and meringues

I still remember quite clearly my first exposure to Anderson’s film. Parents noticed a growing interest in “what’s in space” in a novice, eleven-year-old science fiction student. Late Saturday night TVN screening, recorded on a VHS cassette, and finally: “we have something for you” – with these words I was greeted on one of the Sunday mornings. The problem we didn’t know yet boiled down to a simple fact: neither I nor my parents had any idea what they were going to be dealing with. A few hours later, to the accompaniment of the title-paragraph sweets, all hell raged on the TV screen, and I – as is my habit in stressful situations – sparked a row over nothing. Thus, of course, we did not finish the film. We abandoned the screening in the vicinity of the memorable scene of Peters decoding the “Horyzont Zdarzeń” logbook. With tears in my eyes and soft legs – probably as the director intended – I ended the screening, having to acknowledge my failure. By the time.

What is done is done, and whoever has never set out to look for forbidden cassettes in parents ‘drawers, let him throw a stone – which I failed to do the first time, I did a few months later, unable to throw away the growing fascination with the continuation of the crew members’ stories ” Lewis and Clarke ”off the head. Again, I was struck by the amount of blood, the amount of blasphemy and, most of all, the amount of ideas that I had not even dared to think about until then. So the hidden dimension did all the work for the Alien discovered some time later – it shaped my preferences and requirements for space horror movies until today.

A pinch of history

And it didn’t have to be that way. Following the success of Mortal Kombat in 1995, Anderson was tempted by the possibility of directing a continuation of the computer brawl, and even an emerging X-Men comic book . Fortunately, for fans of works like the aforementioned Xenomorph, the director rejected all offers to make a horror in the R age category instead of another film aimed at the PG-13 rating – that is, one where the camera does not turn around during bloody scenes.

The first version of the script by Philip Eisner that Paramount Pictures sent to the Briton did not meet with his approval. While the idea of ​​a “haunted house in space” was impressive, according to Anderson, the presence of monsters dangerously brought the plot closer to the aforementioned Ridley Scott film. The director changed most of the scenes to achieve an effect similar to Robert Wise’s Haunted or Kubrick’s The Shining . The basic element of the horror of the Hidden Dimension was originally supposed to be what was beyond the viewer’s sight.

We all know how these plans ended. The viewers of the introductory versions of the film quickly became convinced of it, who – if you believe the words of Anderson himself and the producer of the film, Jeremy Bolt – had to take such a dose of gore that they literally fainted during the screening. Horrified by such reactions, Paramount Pictures forced the director to cut a large number of bloody scenes, and thus the film, lasting 95 minutes, not two hours, entered the cinemas.

As strong as weak

In fact, it’s hard to tell what went wrong. The hidden dimension , in theory, had everything it took to become a hit. An invested budget, an intriguing backbone of history, an interesting cast with Sam Neill and Laurence Fishbourn at the helm – these elements turned out to be insufficient to attract the attention of a wide audience. Space horror gained a second life only on video cassettes and DVDs. It was in the privacy of the home of fans of romantic horror that he slowly began to gather a crowd of loyal followers.

There was something to be delighted with: the plot itself, skillfully combining the Christian vision of hell with the scientifically unproven, but invariably fascinating theory of black holes as wormholes, made for thought. The funds invested, in turn, allowed for the creation of a monumental, gothic scenery of the ship and credible-looking CGI effects that can make an impression even today. All this added up to an extraordinary, heavy atmosphere of mystery and an overwhelming impression of encountering a kind of metaphysics that cannot be clearly explained with “glass and eye”. Cut gore scenes, in turn, have become an industry legend over time, especially after it turned out that the copy of the film containing them was irretrievably lost.

To be absolutely honest, though, it’s hard not to admit that all of these advantages don’t make up for some of the film’s shortcomings. Not quite successful jumpscares (such as Sam Neill’s scream at one of these types of scenes, which became the breeding ground for a few mocking YouTube remakes), focusing on the action instead of building the atmosphere in the second half of the film and completely unnecessary, rather miss in a shield, comedy elements – these nuances can effectively throw a slightly less indulgent viewer out of a suspended state of disbelief.

The legend lives on

However, this does not change the fact that the Hidden Dimension is above all a fascinating idea of ​​the kind that ignites the imagination. And it continues to this day. A few months ago, Paramount Television and Amazon Studios announced that a serial version of Anderson’s film, directed by Adam Wingard , who is responsible for Blair Witch , is in the making .

Will we have a work of over two decades of impact, equal to the film version? Time will tell, but the very fact that large studios are ready to spend money on the implementation of this type of idea may definitely fill us, fans of cosmic horror in a “hidden dimension” with optimism.