Pandorum (***)

Directed by: Christian Alvart
Starring: Dennis Quaid, Ben Foster, Cam Gigandet, Antje Traue, Cung Lee
Seen: November 12th 2009

*** Out of ****

Space horror. How long has it been since I’ve seen a decent one. My first review on this blog was for the movie Alien vs. Predator: Requiem, in what was probably the last space horror film I saw before this one, and what a stark contrast…

Pandorum is filled with pretty effective scares, and it definitely got me a few times. The monsters are some scary sons of bitches, and the menace they inspire is truly visible in just about every scene in the movie. The only thing wrong with this is that the monsters are maybe presented a little early in the film, not allowing the tension to grow to levels you dread.

The scene: the Elysium is sent from earth, carrying 60,000 passengers, on a space journey to assure the survival of the human species on Tanis, the only other planet found to be similar to earth. The crew works in shifts of 2 years each on a 123-year trip through space, and everyone not actively flying the ship is put in some sort of suspended animation, or hyper-sleep. Corporal Bower (Foster) wakes up from his pod and is confused at first, finding out that memory loss is one of the side-effects of hyper-sleep. As he tries to orient himself, Lieutenant Payton (Quaid) also wakes up, and together they decide to find the bridge of the ship in order to be able to navigate it as they realise the engines are misfiring (or malfunctioning in some way, I do not want to give away plot…).

So Bower starts crawling through ventilation and cabling ducts, and the paranoia is dialled up with every passing second. Along the way he meets Nadia (Traue) and Manh (Lee), two survivors who’ve been awake far longer than he has. They are initially hostile towards him as they have to be to survive with the monsters running around on the ship, but eventually the troupe works toward a common goal – survival.

The tension is palpable in Pandorum, a name which refers do a disease of paranoia and insanity, and the lead actors do a very good job of convincing you of their fear and slow capitulation of mental facilities. Pandorum is a very dark film, and this not only describes the subject matter, but also the visuals. The colours are pale hues of what they should be, except for the fluorescent lights used on occasion – green, blue and red. Everything is dirty and seems old, apart from one chamber used as a residence by Nadia. The conclusion felt, for a minute, a bit too smart for its own good, but in light of the revelation it comes with it is not inadmissible. In conclusion, Pandorum is a quite effective space horror with good scares and good adrenaline rush-type chase scenes through a lonely ship’s hull. Not for the faint-hearted…