Review: Pandorum

Sometimes, a movie comes out which paints a bleak vision of the future of the human race, a vision in which our worst characteristics are shown, bright as day, even though they’re as dark as night.

This bleak vision of the future is painted brilliantly in the 2009 movie, Pandorum.

Starring Dennis Quaid (Frequency, The Rookie) as Payton And Ben Foster (X-Men: The Last Stand, The Punisher) as Bower, two astronauts aboard a ship called the Elysium, which is transporting 60,000 humans to a planet, Tanus, to colonize the human race, as Earth is suffering from massive overpopulation.

Payton and Bower awake to relieve the crew before them, and they are unable to access the bridge of the ship. The two are trying to figure out how to get to the bridge, and Bower takes it upon himself to get to the bridge, being guided by Payton on radio.

Early in the film, Payton [as an obvious plot device] explains to Bower about Pandorum, a condition, which is brought on by extended periods of hyper-sleep combined with deep-space travel. Those who are afflicted suffer from bouts of paranoia, hallucinations, and even homicidal tendencies.

Moving on around the ship, Bower starts to discover the outcome of the crew, all the while being hunted by humanoid creatures, which move extremely fast and appear to be hunting humans on the ship. What these creatures are, and how they became to be on the ship gets revealed throughout the film.

The film itself is visually a good one, but very dark. Taking place on a grim-looking spaceship, it looks very authentic. Foster and Quaid are both really well, and carry the film very well.

Featuring a very small cast of relatively unknown actors, it afforded the makers of the film the ability to make the film for a relatively small budget of around $40 million. The film, while in theaters was not very successful, bringing in a total of around $19 million, and was not very well received by critics.

There are some very good things to be found in the movie. The first, being the performances of Dennis Quaid and Ben Foster. Both are very good actors. Second, the special effects and props teams did a very good job of creating a very realistic and believable environment aboard the Elysium.

Some of the minuses of the film would be the story. When watching the film, if you pay attention, you should be able to figure out the whole plot relatively early in the film [the first 30 minutes, I would say]. It’s nothing that you probably haven’t seen before, but the effects of the film make up for it in the end.

I recommend the film if you like movies like Alien, or Event Horizon.

I give Pandorum 6 ½ out of 10.