Review of Pandorum (2009) by Richard S — 31 Jan 2011

By Tom Kilbey for remotegoat on 05/10/09.

I was looking forward to seeing this film. Space Sci-Fi horrors generally have a habit of being very good, in their dark and claustrophobic environment. The story had excellent potential, but its downfall was in the execution. Viewers were bombarded with an hour and a half of pure action which results in an incoherent mess.

Under the direction of German Christian Alvart, the film begins with two astronauts who awake on a ship drifting through space, 500 million miles from Planet Earth. This could have potentially have been the starting point for an excellent psychological thriller. It could explore how humans would react to complete isolation and come to terms with their new environment. In truth, instead it's a case of humans resulting to psychotic and homicidal rage; the latter is far less elegant, and dare I say less effective.

As the film progressed, it reminded me of an outdated platform video game. Characters would wander around the ship until crazed space mutants emerged out the shadows, only to be butchered. I almost expected either of the main characters to die, only for the words "Game Over" to appear on the screen.

But as it blundered on across a sea of blood and gore, I couldn't help but to be slowly, and rather surprisingly, drawn in to it. Although the performance of Dennis Quaid won't win him an Oscar, his role as the level headed father figure was reassuring, and reasonably effective. But the action was completely relentless, and without a minute to pause or reflect, it led the audience headlong into a barely coherent, and hardly logical final half hour.

Pandorum is like my Nan's cooking. Without any real purpose, tasty ingredients are thrown together in the hope it makes something good. This film has been compared to The Descent, Alien and the Resident Evil films. But as most concoctions, the result isn't as good as it sounds. The film needed more development, and fewer murders. More clarification, and less psychopaths. The sheer number of mutants was demonstrated well, but left the viewer wishing that the story would move on from its stagnant scene of brutality and actually build on the interesting foundations it laid.

In reality, it was more a case of "In space, no one can hear you say, wow, that sucked.".