Movie Review: Pandorum

So a while back I saw this movie at a friend's house during one of his monthly movie marathons. I had only heard about it once maybe twice before but had never seen the movie or knew what it was about, but that it was good. I then saw it again during my friend's Halloween Horror Movie Marathon and I even caught some things I didn't see the first time.

Pandorum (2009)

Pandorum is a sci-fi psychological horror movie that revolves around astronaut Corporal Bower (Ben Foster) as he wakes up from extended hyper sleep to find that he is alone, with mild memory loss, and a dark deserted ship floating in space with an unstable reactor. After awakening his lieutenant, Payton (Dennis Quaid), who also has memory loss, both of them team up to unravel the mystery of the events that have took place on the ship while in they were asleep.

If there was anyway to describe how the movie's feel would be, it would be almost, if not exactly, like that of Dead Space. Corporal Bower, after realizing he is the technical engineer for the nuclear reactor, goes on his way to try and reach the reactor with radio guidance from Lieutenant Payton in the cryo chamber room. Sounds like Issac Clarke and Kendra Daniels doesn't it?

As the movie progresses, bits and pieces of the puzzle star appearing, none of them feel like they fit together. When Corporal Bower manages to find a way out of the cryo chamber to explore, he finds another flight team member hanging in the middle of the darken hallway booby trapped and recently killed. He then gets jumped by another ship member, gets robbed of some of his supplies, but vanishes after she witness these blue lights approach both Bower and the unidentified assailant. It becomes clear there is something else on this ship and its not friendly.


Without giving away spoilers, nothing appears as it seems as the story continues. Bower manages to find a couple of survivors as well as Payton finding another flight team crawl out of a hole in the cryo chamber who is suffering dementia. And as the reactor's condition get's worse, they are running out of time before the systems shut down and the "aliens" reign and control the ship and float in deep space forever.

The acting done by Ben Foster and Dennis Quaid is amazing. Dennis Quaid as Payton especially when in a scene he deals with the Corporal Gallo (Cam Gigandet) suffering demntia in a psychological face off in the cryo chamber where Payton tries to keep his sanity in check as well as ensure the well being of Gallo.

Some of the dialogue and cinematic was kind of awkward at times. Later in the story Bower comes across another passenger who speaks Chinese or some sort of Asian language and they try to awkwardly communicate as the story goes on and after a while, despite the language barrier, it becomes irrelevant because the non-english speaker then understands him during key points of the movie. In reality it wouldn't be that simple but I guess it could be done in this attempt to be realistic.

The plot is very original an interesting, as the audience are left in the dark about everything until the last pieces of the puzzle fall into place at the end of the film, making everything make sense and come together. And if you actually think about several details and small parts of the movie as it goes on, it actually foreshadows the end of the movie and the current situation and predicament of the ship and everyone else.

This is overall my favorite movie and one that should be shared with friends.

 My rating: 4.5/5