Pandorum Review
Sep 27, 2009 by Kofi OutlawWelcome to the first real disappointment of the fall 2009 movie season.
Short Version: Pandorum is a mess of a movie that squanders a lot of potential.
Screen Rant Reviews Pandorum
Movies often fail for varying reasons; sometimes the fatal flaw is in the script, sometimes the performances of the actors and sometimes because of the filmmaker’s total ineptness. Pandorum suffers from the latter case: director Christian Alvart has stitched together a patchwork of scenes that never really cohere into an actual movie. It’s a real tragedy, considering the potential this film had.
Pandorum opens as Corporal Bower (Ben Foster) wakes from cryogenic sleep aboard the starship Elysium (clever pun), whose mission is to ferry the last remnants of humanity to a new home planet. Bower wakes with all of his technical memory intact – how to operate the ship’s equipment, his military protocol – but his personal memories (events leading up to waking, such as where he is and how he got there) are all foggy. The room he wakes up in is sealed shut, and the ship’s power supply is in disarray due to a reactor malfunction. Soon after Bower gets on his feet, another cryo-pod pops open and Lieutenant Payton (Dennis Quaid) joins party.
As the slimmer man, Bower heads up into the ventilation ducts bound for the ship’s reactor, which he seems to recall being assigned to operate and fix. With Payton guiding him via comm link, Bower enters the bowels of the ship and steps right into a living nightmare.
Monsters have taken over the ship (as if you didn’t already know). They are a species of pale white, inhumanly fast and strong warrior-killers, who spend their days hunting down the remaining humans and feasting on their bodies. After narrowly escaping the creatures, Bower meets a pretty ecologist-turned-survival expert named Nadia (Antje Traue) and a hunter-warrior named Manh (martial arts star Cung Le). After a violent introduction, the three humans band together to venture into the heart of the ship and reset the reactor before the vessel loses all power and the last of humanity dies in space.
While the field team is at work, Payton is running point from the cryo-chamber room and is eventually joined by Corporal Gallo (Cam Gigandet), who claims to be one of three crew members awake for the Elysium’s initial lift-off from Earth. According to Gallo, his crewmates became afflicted with the space madness known as “pandorum,” forcing Gallo to kill them all. The corporal tells Payton that Bower might also be suffering from pandorum, since he ventured out on a veritable suicide mission; for the good of the ship, Payton should seize control of the situation.
What unfolds from there is as predictable as your first guess and is even less exciting than you imagine. Like I said, this film is a patchwork of scenes that never feel connected, set in the framework of a film that never can decide which story to tell. Is the focus Bower and Payton’s mysterious pasts? Is it a survival story? Is it a psychological thriller about space madness (what the hell is “pandorum,” exactly)? And where did those creatures come from and what are they after? That last question does get some explanation (I think), but again, even the story behind the story is such a mess that I’m not quite clear what the explanation was. The shots and action sequences are often so incoherent that you’ll lose track of where YOU are or what is going on, just the characters themselves. It’s not a favorable position to put a movie audience in.
I will take a minute to absolve the stars of Pandorum of blame, since I don’t believe the fatal fault lies with them. Everybody on screen looks lost and/or confused most of the time (see pic above), and rightly so: most of the scenes look like they were shot with the director sitting up on a high chair yelling “Do This! Ok… Now do that!” in random increments over a megaphone while the actors just tried to keep up. There is no character development (we’re supposed to believe that these characters’ choices are their choices just because the film says they are), and worst of all, I didn’t like, dislike or connect in any way to even one character in this film, and when you can remain that indifferent for an hour and a half…
Instead of depth and meaning we get a mindless progression – Event A, followed by Event B, followed by Event C. Whatever happens, happens, with absolutely no regard for whether or not the occurrences are consistent with the characters, or whether or not they make any narrative sense. It’s storytelling in the dark. Poor Dennis Quaid suffers the brunt of it – his entire role is set in the cryo-room, engaged in increasingly ridiculous back-and-forths with Gigandet. God bless him – I would have shot myself.
As for the monsters – which Pandorum kept veiled in secrecy during the ad campaigns – they’re badass, but unfortunately just as hollow and flimsy as everything else in this movie. And oh man, by the time you get to the “twist ending” you’ll want to hunt down the filmmakers, bop them on the head with a rolled up newspaper and say, “Bad dog! No! No!”
In the end, there is nothing redeeming about this movie. For the first twenty minutes you’ll be handed the promise of a freaky sci-fi thriller (thank Foster, as usual, for making a lot out of a little), but after that, if you hang around for the rest of Pandorum, you too will be forced to watch that promise denigrate into cosmic slop.
Welcome to the first real disappointment of the fall 2009 movie season.
Our Rating:
1 out of 5
Around the web:
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I haven’t seen the film, but to me it doesn’t look good and reading through the explanations from both sides, it sounds like Kofi’s conclusion and explanations make much more sense.
HOWEVER, I do agree with 790 that Kofi was a quite aggressive with his first response. I mean, I’m obviously not 790′s best bud and I definitely don’t agree with most of what he says, but still, I sense a bit of hostility between them, even more than between 790 and I, lol.
@John “Kahless”
LOL, Battlefield Earth, that’s a bad example, that film deserves 0/5… 1/5 implies 20% ok, which that movie wasn’t, hahaha.
They’re just movies guys. There’s no right or wrong. If a person doesn’t like it they can give it a 0/5…if they like it they can give it a 5/5. Neither is wrong, it’s just their opinion and just because someone writes an article about it doesn’t give their opinion any more weight than someone that just watches it. To state that a movie is Great or Horrible as if it is fact is ridiculous…everyone has their own point of view. Why don’t you guys just agree to disagree…anyway, I’m done here. I’m going to go read a different article. Laters.
Kofi, as a movie reviewer, I’d think you could show more decorum when someone disagrees with you. Have you ever seen siskel flaming ebert? It’s really not worth responding to criticism, it detracts, and distracts, from your review regardless of whether one agrees with it or not, and makes this site look bad. I’ll probably never bother to read a review on this site again, because it seems to me that the reviewers have a lot more personal investment in their reviews than objective criticism. If anyone wants to reply to this comment in a negative (or positive) way, just know that I will never, ever, read your comment, and as such don’t care what you think.
Tim sure feels very important…
I’m jumping off this thread, guys. See the film and decide for yourselves. I stand by my assessment.
And no, I don’t think anyone was being “rude,” there were no curses or personal attacks (other than the repeated claim that I’m an idiot who didn’t understand the film). I argued hard and aggressive for my point, 790 argued for his. We’ve agreed with one another plenty times in the past and I’m sure in the future we will again. That’s as far as it goes for me. As a grown man, I don’t “Hate” 790, or April, or anybody else who disagrees with me over a movie.
Everybody relax. It’s done.
Ah being human,,,
I’m sure across America in countless rest homes, old folks are arguing back and forth about “Pandorum” ,,,
It was good, it sucked! You suck, no you suck,,, !!!
Blah!!! Get out of my rec area, screw you this is my rec area !!! Not anymore, (grabs cane hits guy with it). O yeah pulls wheel chair out from under him,,, arhg!!! Screw you , no screw you ,,, take that !
Then the nurse runs in with the medication….
Hope I die before I get old,,,
2012 is soon 790, don’t worry lol!
@Ken J
Touche (I guess that’s how you spell that) to the Battlefield Earth being 0/5.
We’ll be lucky to see 2010,,,
I’m glad you 2 (790 and Kofi) kissed and made up (EWWWW!
). And Tim, even though you may not read this, it’s usually not like this between the normal posters and the SR writers. I chalk it up to too much caffein…or mutual pandorum. 
@790
I did see 2010 and it was a pretty good movie.
Does this mean the fight is over?
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I guess I can go back to class now.
Should i jump in in the usual “its your opinion” or is it too late…? Either way by reading the comments i think i could wait for the dvd rental. Funny though that i didn’t even know this movie was out already till i saw the post for the review… “I was that excited for the movie”.
Yeah Kahless, we should be exploring Jupiters Moons by now (2010). Instead the world has to hear about water discovered on the Moon from an Indian lunar probe.
Love it go Nasa space prog. That’s one thing that struck me in the opening montage in Pandorum,,,
“Its 2153 and they still haven’t invented faster then light travel?” Cryo sucks!!!
@INK
These are not the arguments you were looking for.
These are not the arguments I was looking for.
You can go about your business.
I’ll go about my business.
Move along.
I’ll just move along.
You weak minded fool!
@790
Well, it’s not like we’re spending billions on meaningless stuff. Oh, wait…..
@INK
The action never ends in “HALO 3 Orbital Drop Shock Trooper” now available only on Xbox 360,,,
I think he gets a few bucks from Microsoft every time he mentions that game, lol.
Wow. You guys are really passionate about this! I saw the film and I think the film started very well and ended very well. The problem is the sinking middle where they feel like they have to explain EVERYTHING and wrap it up all neat and tidy. I didnt like the lets run, fight and stop long enough to explain everything scenes…Other than that, I enjoyed the film. Sure, some of the scenes in the film bordered on just plain silly, but I dont think we were looking for this film to be deeply cerebral like 2001 or Solaris. We are all entitled to our opinions on this film and I think they have been expressed..TO THE FULLEST! LOL! Maybe we will get an unrated DVD version that will knock our socks off
ben foster is a great actor and should be either joker, or the riddler in chris nolans batman 3 movie.
I never expected this movie to get this much debate, and anytime something like this happens you’re just too curious not to watch it.
The premise of the movie, from the trailers at least, always reminded me of the Dead Space game.
Look how much debate Transformers 2 got? Still not worth watching, lol.
OK, due to all this debate and angst I decided I needed to see the movie myself – so I took off from work a couple of hours early to check it out.
Sorry guys, but I’m standing behind Kofi’s review – if I had reviewed it I might have given it an extra half star, but that’s it.
Vic
@jwalka, No film deserves 1.5 stars? You must have missed The Day The Earth Stood Still.
@Kofi, I’m going with your recommendation (sic) on this one. I’ll pass.
@790, I like the way you stood up for yourself, “You’ve done a man’s job!” -Blade Runner
@Vic, You were way off!…Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen ROCKED!
:O)
I considered seeing this movie, but then I realized, “Wait, I’ve already seen Event Horizon.”
That…and its got Cam Gigandet in it.
(Skips film, prays to bust of Marlon Brando to haunt bad actors)
bwahahahaha!! Excellent!^^^^^LOVE it!
Wait … I’m confused … have I been reprimanded?
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Wait … why is my mind telling me it’s tired?
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ODST is too manly for me.
Well, I enjoyed this film.
No, it’s not “great”.
And no, it’s not “bad cinema” (anyone who says that has NO idea what the hell they’re talking about).
However, giving it 1 star makes a mockery of any sort of rating system.
Does Screen Rant have negative ratings?
If this film deserved a single star, then how did you rate Transformers 1? (I never saw 2, so other than going by what other people have said, well, it probably deserves less than Pandorum on ANY scale).
Because, honestly, Transformers 1 is one of the most dreadful pieces of drek I’ve ever had the displeasure of laying eyes upon.
So if Pandorum got a “1 star” rating, I really REALLY want to know what this reviewer gave to Transformers.
Come to think of it, I actually had a few chuckles during Transformers, so I’ll change that “what about” film choice and say, if Pandorum deserves 1 star, what the hell did the absolute and utter crap that was “Armageddon” get?
I’ve seen a lot of bad movies (SyFy network, anyone?), but those are sort of an “off the ratings scale” type of “bad”. We don’t even bother to give them a rating, because well, come on… they’re SyFy!
Sorry, but after two years of studying cinema at university, I just can’t stoop to the extreme negativity that this reviewer gave this film. Yup, it has flaws. Yup, it COULD (and should) have been better. But it’s just not THAT bad.
There are just too many REALLY crappy films that are getting RAVE reviews on this website for anyone to get away with calling Pandorum a “bad movie”.
Thanks Mike E, well said,,,
I hope others check out “Pandorum” for themselves.
I can’t believe SR thinks “Transformers2″ or even “Surrogates” is better,,, but whatever.