Unreal Movie Review: Pandorum

Pandorum follows in the tradition of a long line of sci-fi classics that have experimented with mixing evil with space travel. Most recently we’ve seen Danny Boyle’s Sunshine, before that, Event Horizon, and even further back, the one that started it all, 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Now those are pretty big shoes for Pandorum to fill, and frankly from the trailers, it didn’t seem like the film had what it takes to be a genre classic. But viewing the movie itself is a bittersweet experience, because it could have made it, it really could have, but a great concept is marred beyond recognition by poor execution and faulty logic that unfortunately causes Pandorum to float in dead space.

The film opens dumped you headfirst into the mystery of the Elysium, a massive spaceship crafted by humanity to bring a group of settlers to colonize a distant earth-like planet when our own runs out of resources.

Corporal Bower (Ben Foster) awakes from hypersleep in a daze. He doesn’t know who he is or where he is, as memory loss is an unfortunately side-effect of long-term stasis. He gathers himself together and frees another crew member, his commanding officer, Lieutenant Payton (Dennis Quaid). They’re eight years into the journey, and it’s time for their two year shift. Unfortunately, the crew they’re supposed to relieve is nowhere to be seen, the power on the ship is out, and the door to the bridge won’t open.

Bower crawls out an air duct and has Payton navigate him toward the reactor, which needs to be fixed in order for the ship to regain power. He heads down the dimly lit corridors where he encounters bizarre, inhuman creatures that seem bent on dismembering him, and along the way he collects a few other survivors to help him figure out just what happened to the ship. And to make matters worse? Everyone has to deal with Pandorum, a type of space sickness that is nearly impossible to detect, until it’s driven you completely insane.

Pandorum starts at the absolute bottom. It’s a mindless, poorly lit mess that features little more than Ben Foster crawling around pipes and scampering through hallways while avoiding what appear to be the creatures from The Descent wearing bone spike armor and wielding blow torches and all the while has Dennis Quaid shouting nonsense at him from the stasis room.

But as the movie progresses, it gets more and more interesting as you learn just what happened to the ship, and you start to figure out that it hasn’t been only eight years since launch and in fact, it’s been longer, a lot longer. And once Bower’s memory comes back, he starts to remember things that explain a lot, and the revelation of how things came to be and where they ended up is a surprisingly excellent twist worth of Shyamalan’s prime.

Unfortunately, it takes more than a good idea to make a good movie, and Pandorum wastes a fantastic concept by not thinking it through well enough. There are countless amounts of plot holes just asking to be stepped in (a ship the size of Rhode Island trusted with the entire future of the human race is manned by three people at a time?), and the explanation for the appearance of the creatures is hurried and doesn’t make a whole hell of a lot of sense. In fact, the movie could have probably done without that “ooga-booga” aspect of the film entirely, but decided it needed something to jump out and say “boo!” so audiences wouldn’t get bored.

The entire premise of Pandorum (a mammoth ship’s doomed voyage to a new earth) is much better than the aforementioned Event Horizon (spaceship goes to hell and back), Sunshine (let’s nuke the sun!), AND 2001 (a murderous computer and a giant black metaphor). That may sound like blasphemy, but it’s not, as those are all much better films regardless of inferior storylines. It’s unfortunate that someone came up with this good of an idea, and then gave it to people who had no idea how to craft a good movie out of it.

This is one the only times I can remember thinking this while reviewing a film, but here’s to hoping that in 30 years, someone looks back and decides it’s time to remake Pandorum, but this time, do it right.

2.5 out of 5 stars