Review of Pandorum (2009) by David Q — 12 Oct 2010

Pandorum is Noah's Ark with monsters set in space.

The result of two scripts mashed together the movie struggles to find its sub-genre touching on various themes including the psychological torture of deep space isolation and the loss of loved ones left behind (both handled much better in Duncan Jones' Moon), the overly saturated environmentalism message (humans are evil and we'll destroy the planet) and the ever faithful favorite 'monsters in space' - action / horror (though Alien this is not) but despite the filmmaker's best intentions it never really explores any of these subplots or themes to any real satisfaction and ultimately relies heavily on cheap thrills and frenetic action pieces to go the distance. The end result is little more than a B-grade 'zombies in space' flick (but with a decent budget) which is not surprising given it was co-produced by Paul W.S. Anderson of Resident Evil fame.

There are two main characters, both have recently woken up from a long hyper-sleep with no idea who they are. One, the action man, is played by Ben Foster, who spends most of the film wandering around the ship being attacked by the zombies and various other survivors (some of whom join his journey to find and reset the ship's reactor in order to save the ship and the mission) and the other, the thinking man, is Dennis Quaid who sits around in a control room repeatedly asking if Foster can hear him over the intercom while struggling to come to terms with who he really is.

The production values are high and it's easy to see where the money was spent, the sets, costumes, creature makeup and visual effects are all top notch, it's just a pity they didn't factor in enough money in the budget to rent another light or two as most of the action sequences are so dark they might as well have taken place off screen.

Despite being a big sci-fi fan I found myself tempted to switch Pandorum off several times (starting when the first space zombie surfaced) but I hung in there hoping it would eventually click into gear and engage me, unfortunately it never really did.

I wouldn't say it's a terrible film and it does have some decent action and suspenseful moments, such as a scene in which Foster is dropped into a sea of sleeping zombie mutants (or Hunters as they are called), but over-all it fails as a complete package. The ending has a nice twist and could have been a much better payoff if explored in more depth but unfortunately by the time it was revealed my care factor was so close to zero it was all but wasted which is a pity as it did get me thinking - not about the film I'd just seen but rather about better ways to explore the idea in another story which I'm sure wasn't the intention of the filmmakers.