Is There an Event Horizon?

The image shows an area of space out of which no light seems to be escaping, right? Something small, something dense, something that not even light can escape. But it's not definitive proof that there is an actual event horizon there. We don't know that there's an event horizon. Maybe black holes don't have an event horizon, but the intense gravity of a collapsing star bends space. And so it stretches all the light to super long frequencies, like massively red shifts and everything.