PANDORUM

ICON

RELEASED 2 October 2009

Corporal Bower (Ben Foster) awakens from hypersleep onboard the seemingly abandoned spacecraft Elysium. He has tubes all over his body and a tight protective membrane which he rips off. He’s wearing disturbingly small pants too! He’s cold, confused, and alone. As his memory gradually returns (a side-effect of hypersleep), he searches the dark command room with a luminous green glow stick and finds he can’t open the main door that leads to the bridge of the ship. Every so often, the ship worryingly rumbles and creaks loudly. When the other life-support module in the room opens and Lieutenant Payton (Dennis Quaid) falls out, the pair decide to try and find a way out via the narrow airshaft, which Bower crawls through, while Payton navigates him on a radio transmitter.

Before I go any further, I want to say we’re currently about twenty minutes into the film. We don’t know very much, but we do know Bower and Payton haven’t emerged from hypersleep when they should have done. The film has created a tense atmosphere, it’s very dark and intimidating, and the script and look of the film are all working well. I’m really enjoying the movie, and am intrigued as to what surprises may await.

Well everything that happens from here on in is entirely predictable, unexciting, and repetitive. From liking the film to start with, I loathed the movie by the time we reached the dull (and poorly rendered special effects-filled) conclusion. The movie introduces a cannibalistic race of monsters who have somehow got onto the ship, and Bower discovers a couple of fellow crew members (dressed like tribal warriors) who have been living off their wits for some time. As they team up to try and reach the ship’s reactor (the thing shaking the ship) so they can reset it, this is how the movie proceeds: Investigate the ship; get attacked by jumping white monsters; run away. Repeat about five times. Just in case that isn’t exciting enough for you, Payton barks into his communicator, ‘Bower, do you copy?’ at five minute intervals.

Ben Foster projects real fear in the early scenes, but soon looks as bored as I was as another monster pops up. Dennis Quaid’s character devolution is so bad, he ends up shouting at himself. 

It’s really sad how a film can start so well, and yet fall so badly into every sci-fi/horror cliche you’ve ever seen. The science-fiction has no imagination, and the horror only made me jump because I don’t like loud noises!

Director Christian Alvart has produced a loud, dumb sci-fi horror movie that neither scares, chills, excites or does anything new with the genre. One of the worst movies released in 2009, without a doubt.

ONE OUT OF FIVE