Pandorum (2009)

User Review

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  TheMovieDiorama

  4 / 10

  Pandorum succumbs to its own delirious psychosis. A small dosage of 'Resident Evil', a splash of 'The Descent' and the claustrophobic setting of 'Alien'. These Lovecraftian horror elements should've been fully maximised to create an atmospheric sci-fi horror. But despite the often intriguing plot strands, it's a boring dull mess. Human overpopulation leads to an interstellar ark being built to find an inhabitable planet and colonise it, however some crew members are abruptly woken up and must survive against a horde of cannibalistic humanoids. Again, another case of wasted potential. The ideology of maintaining a newly evolved society instead of reviving current civilisation was an interesting perspective, which brings across many religious overtones and themes of existentialism. Yet, my resistance to boredom was weak and unfortunately this film was too poorly executed and directed to save me from falling asleep. It's low-budget thrills were unable to keep me entertained, with the strangely athletic cannibals being the main focus. These "horror" scenes had no suspense or mystery, as the first cannibal the corporal comes across is fully shown to the audience, leaving little to the imagination. The fast-forward editing to make these creatures seem fast, with half second jump cuts and limited lighting accompanying this, only made the experience nauseating and impossible to see. The characters were one-dimensional and lacked any personality (honestly, looking at space for 108 minutes would've been more charismatic). Foster's performance was fine, but Quaid's was terrible. Any twists that did occur towards the third act were predictable and made no impact to the story and its characters. The constant need for explanations and theories made the plot extremely bloated, diminishing chances for character development, which ultimately is Pandorum's downfall. More attention should've made to the eponymous psychosis and not the cannibal mutants, atleast then it would've been more original and concise. Alas, it's just another dim star in the vast space of science-fiction.

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