Directed by: Christian Alvart
Starring: Ben Foster, Dennis Quaid
Other Actors of Note: Norman Reedus
Plot: Two astronauts awaken in a hyper-sleep chamber aboard a seemingly abandoned spacecraft. It's pitch black, they are disoriented, and the only sound is a low rumble and creak from the belly of the ship. They can't remember anything: Who are they? What is their mission? With Lt. Payton staying behind to guide him via radio transmitter, Cpl. Bower ventures deep into the ship and begins to uncover a terrifying reality. Slowly the spacecraft's shocking, deadly secrets are revealed...and the astronauts find their own survival is more important than they could ever have imagined. Taken from www.imdb.com.
If there's one sub-genre of horror I like more than period-horror (That's horror that takes place in the past, not horror involving menstruation) it's a good old claustrophobic space horror that isn't a sequel to a series of horror movies that previously took place not in space. (I firmly think that after they turned "Ginger Snaps" into period horror with "Ginger Snaps Back" they should make one in space and called it "Ginger Snaps Back to the Future")
Examples of these movies are "Alien", "Event Horizon", and the good part of "Doom" (I think there was a good part, for some reason when I think about that movie in-depth I begin sobbing uncontrollably and forget who I am for a month) so while I was stoked for "Pandorum" due to its cast and its premise I waited until it came to the dollar theaters because I've been hurt before and if I'm going to pay to be fucked by a cheap dirty whore of a movie, I'd at least like to spend less money for it.
"Pandorum" can best be explained as "Event Horizon" meets "The Descent" with a little bit of "Sphere" thrown in there for good measure. Our hero, Corporal Bower (Ben Foster) wakes up from hyper-sleep aboard a giant space ship, its 500-year mission: to boldy get the fuck away from a dying Earth and form a colony on an Earth-like planet several hundred years away.
Judging by the fact that Bower is alone, the power is frequently flickering, and the reactor seems close to meltdown then the people in charge of that probably did their jobs rather piss-poorly. Shortly after Bower wakes up, he's greeted by another officer: Lieutenant Payton (Dennis Quaid). It seems that both suffer from horrible memory loss from being in hyper sleep for God knows how long. So Payton sends Bower up into the ducts to figure out what's wrong and fix it.
But soon Bower comes upon a group of savage humanoid monsters that seem to gut and eat whatever human they come upon. They're fast, strong, and incredibly savage with no explanation as to what they are. Shortly thereafter Bower hooks up with some stereotypes and they all head off to the reactor to unfuck the ship and not get killed and eaten before everything assplodes.
Meanwhile, Payton gets visited by Gallo, another crew member from the bridge who seems to have a bad case of Pandorum (a case of wicked-bad "Ren and Stimpy" style Space Madness) a disorder which caused the officer on the bridge of a similar vessel to jettison the entire crew into space.
Ben Foster is one of the best and most under-rated actors working today and most of the reason why I give Shia LaBeouf a break for making "Eagle Eye." While the premise of "Pandorum" was interesting, it was Foster's name on the post that got my ass in the theater to actually see the movie.
Gladly Foster doesn't disappoint and delivers a believable and solid performance, it's just a shame the script doesn't give him much to do with is character. Bower gets kind of undercut as a character while Payton gets a shit-ton of depth. It's a solid role but I wish they would've given Ben Foster a bit more to chew on to make Corporal Bower a truly great and memorable character. As it is he's the most spectacular bland 2 an a half dimensional character in a world of 2-dimensional characters.
Dennis Quaid on the other hand doesn't quite fill the shoes of his character. Quaid gives a good performance but there's a lot more he could've done with Payton that it feels like he didn't. Payton undergoes a change midway through the movie and I felt that Quaid could have and should have handled the change better than he did. He doesn't come across in the way he should at that point. I really can't elaborate on it further without giving too much away, just trust me that you'll know it when you see it.
Early in the movie "Pandorum" ties into a lot of primal fears in much the same way that "The Descent" did. It ties into the fear of waking up in a strange place with no idea where you are or what's going on, the fear of the dark (the shadows seem to be a living thing, actively trying to keep us from the seeing more than a couple feet around the characters), fear of being completely alone, and an early scene involving Bower climbing through a ventilation shaft full of hydraulic hoses and getting stuck had my non-claustrophobic self squirming uncomfortably.
Unfortunately halfway into the movie all that shit gets thrown out the window. Bower hooks up with 3 stereotypes, gets in spacious well-lit areas, gets all his memory back, and even his stupid fist gun that didn't work against the monster before starts magically working. This is when the movie tries to scramble to get the terror back and starts playing up the monsters which aren't scary anymore now that you've seen them in plain view several times and moving forward some sort of half-baked mindfuck angle.
Unfortunately neither of these things are even slightly scary and managed to be less creepy than "Ghosts of Mars" in my eyes. It also seems to try and make us think that the monsters are all hallucinations and results of Pandorum but that idea has more plot holes than the plot of "High Tension" which is probably why it doesn't try very hard to convince us and ultimately just gives up altogether. Then we're treated to some kind of "Twilight Zone" meets "Planet of the Apes" reveal and the movie ends.
I'm told that "Pandorum" is part one of a trilogy but I really don't understand how that could happen unless they want to pull a "Chronicles of Riddick." Which, given the name of said trick, should signify that that's a terrible idea.
Of note is the fact that Paul W.S. Anderson (director of both "Event Horizon" and "Doom") appears in the credits as a producer. So anything wrong with this movie can probably be blamed on him (even if it's not actually his fault. He still owes us for "Doom.")
One final thing. I don't know who the sound editor for this movie is, but he deserves to be fired. So many times during the movie the ship's rumbling noises or the rave-metal soundtrack were louder than the voice track and you couldn't hear what the characters were saying. This might have been less annoying if it didn't seem to happen only when crucial plot points were being discussed. It was extremely sloppy, especially for a movie that, aside from the script, was very well put together.
"Pandorum" is by no means a perfect movie, it's certainly not as good as "Alien" or "Event Horizon" but it's better than "Doom." The sound design and the execution of the second half of the movie hurt things for sure, but they don't ruin what is a mostly effective horror movie.
I give "Pandorum" a 4 out of 5. It worth paying to see, just don't get your hopes up too high.
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