Review: Pandorum

When two members of a spaceship flight crew awake from hyper-sleep to find that they have no memories and a ship in disarray; they are forced to piece together a dark chain of events that led them there.

The concept of Pandorum, scared survivors trapped in a confined space pursued by unknown evil force, is noting particularly new or original (See Event Horizon or The Descent for much better examples). The only way to make a film like this work is to have a quality script and an atmosphere of dread and claustrophobia created by good sets and a constant threat of harm on the characters. Sadly, Pandorum fails in most of these areas.

The first twenty minutes of the film is spent in an attempt to create a dynamic between the leads Dennis Quaid and Ben Foster and force as much back story as possible down the throat of the viewer at the same time. This portion of the movie is painful to watch at times. The interplay between the characters comes off more like reading a sci-fi instruction manual then it does a natural conversation.

The characters are supposed to have extreme and prolonged memory loss, and yet remember vital and highly specific functions of the ship at the most opportune times. Back story is recalled randomly and for no particular reason. There is a scene that highlights all this in the middle of the film delivered like a nursery rhyme by a side character that is borderline laughable.

Dread is hard to come by in the film as the creatures are more creepy then they are scary. Creatures aside, the real problem here is the clear and forced separation between action and story. It becomes obvious early on that the director wants you to understand what is going on whether you like it or not. Monsters attack, people run, a door is sealed, and then on with the back story without interruption. This makes it impossible to maintain an atmosphere of fear essential to this type of movie.

The one saving grace is the ship itself. The sets are varied and look plausible. It also creates a real sense of disorientation as they more through the ship; as I imagine a person would experience in real life. The ship is proclaimed to be massive, and you get a real feel of that as the scenes change.

Pandorum is not a terrible movie, but a weak script and to much meaningless back story distract from the good set pieces and claustrophobic environment. Overall its a weak entry into the genre, best left for the video store shelves.

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