Pandorum (2009)

User Rating:

7.2/10   

Director:

Christian Alvart

Writers (WGA):

Travis Milloy (screenplay)
Travis Milloy (story) ...

Release Date:

25 September 2009 (USA)

Genre:

Horror | Sci-Fi | Thriller

Tagline:

Don't fear the end of the world. Fear what happens next.

Plot:

A pair of crew members aboard a spaceship wake up with no knowledge of their mission or their identities.

Plot Keywords:

Spaceship | Survival | Radio | Fish | Pit

Cast

Dennis Quaid	...	Payton
Ben Foster	...	Bower
Cam Gigandet	...	Gallo
Antje Traue	...	Nadia
Cung Le	...	Manh
Eddie Rouse	...	Leland
Norman Reedus	...	Shepard
André Hennicke	...	Hunter Leader
Friederike Kempter	...	Evalon
Niels-Bruno Schmidt	...	Insane Officer 'Eden'
Jonah Mohmand	...	Childhunter
Delphine Chuillot	...	Young Bower's Mother
Wotan Wilke Möhring	...	Young Bower's Father
Julian Rappe	...	Young Bower
Domenico D'Ambrosio	...	Wounded Officer 'Eden'

MPAA:

Rated R for strong horror violence and language.

Runtime:

108 min

Country:

USA | Germany

Language:

English | Vietnamese | German

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Certification:

USA:R (certificate #45512) | Ireland:16 | Canada:13+ (Quebec) | Canada:14A (British Columbia/Manitoba/Ontario) | Canada:18A (Alberta) | Philippines:R-13 (MTRCB) | Germany:16 | South Korea:18 | Singapore:NC-16 | UK:15 | Hong Kong:IIB

Filming Locations:

Babelsberg Studios, Berlin, Germany

Company:

Constantin Film Produktion

Trivia:

First movie to have brothers Ben Foster and Jon Foster work together. They share a scene in which Jon Foster wakes up to a nightmare as a nameless passenger and Ben Foster as Bower can't save him.

Goofs:

Incorrectly regarded as goofs: In the beginning of the movie they showed dust all over the gadgets in the control room. Spaceships are supposed to be sealed and hence no chance of that much dust gathering on the gadgets. However dust consists mostly of human skin. There are other passengers aboard ship, they have been in space for years, and there is ventilation, so the dust is reasonable.

Quotes:

Bower: What are you doing?
Leland: Nothing personal, guys. It's just "survival of the fittest"... Or maybe it's the brightest
[mumbles]
Leland: if you know what I'm saying.
Bower: You gassed us!
Leland: Oh yes! And I'm sorry, but I'm a little too old and too tired for the honorable way of hunting game.
Nadia: You better make sure I'm dead... oder ich reiss Dir Dein scheiss Herz raus du Wichser!
Leland: [stabs her]
Manh: [is yelling in Vietnamese]
Bower: You don't have to do this. We're on our way to save the ship.
[...]

Better than Event Horizon and Ghost Ship combined

Echoing such luminous sci-fi classics as 2001 and Alien, Pandorum is a terrific psychological thriller, although it does struggle at times to be coherent and original. But it's a true mindbender, and it's packed with action that moves so quickly neither the actors nor the audience can really catch a breath, which is a good move if your plot is shaky to begin with.

As with the best deep-space movies, the context is mental illness, what the Professor on Gilligan's Island called, oddly enough, "island madness." Only in space. In the distant, distant future, a ship has been sent from the Earth carrying a lot of people, headed to the only Earth-like planet ever found. Sometime during the journey, things go awry. We pick up the story as an astronaut named Bower (Ben Foster) awakens from hypersleep, abruptly; he's soon followed by his commanding officer, Payton (Dennis Quaid). The rest of the crew is gone, and the only door is locked from the outside. What's happened here? Making matters more difficult is the amnesia that each man suffers from, owing to their having been in hypersleep way longer than intended. Somehow, they must piece together what has happened and find out what lies behind that door - and throughout the rest of the gigantic ship.

Not only does the movie recall Aliens and 2001, you can also see similarities to The Descent and The Abyss; really, any movie in which people are trapped in claustrophobic environs. And although the pacing is frenetic at times, the movie is really chillingly shot (by Wedigo von Schultzendorff). On the one hand, the plot flows linearly - Bower needs to get to the ship's reactor so he can reboot it and save everyone - meaning that the actors race from scene to scene, running out of time. On the other hand, they don't piece together what's happened as quickly as they might in other, lesser films; they seem to figure things out gradually, as if assembling a puzzle in their heads. Bowers and others - and there are others - discover right away, though, that they're not really alone on the ship and that their enemies are extremely strong and fast and vicious.

Injected into this oh-my-goodness-what's-out-there madness is, well, madness. The movie's title is explained as being a sort of mental illness that affects astronauts from time to time, when they just plain go bonkers for seemingly no reason and kill everyone on board. Is that's what's happening here? Is Bower the crazy one? Or is it Payton? Are they, in fact, alone on the ship? Foster is excellent as the hero who remembers a little bit more of their mission as time elapses; Quaid, in turn, shows a few more layers than we're accustomed to seeing from him (he's usually more of a poor man's Harrison Ford). Both actors turn in convincing, full-throated performances that complement, rather than succumb to, the special effects and cinematic wizardry. Often, the effects are the entire show. Now, it's true that you won't see a lot of character development here, as you might in the most cerebral of sci-fi, but what works best here is the paucity of knowledge about the situation and the characters. By spinning the tale gradually, feeding the audience only a snippet at a time, director Christian Alvart dangles the mystery in front of his viewers without allowing them to settle back and solve the mystery on their own. When you're constantly kept on your toes with sudden lurches of unseen shapes and reverberating noises, you - like the befuddled characters - are concurrently kept off balance. The result is an unsettling, entertaining delight.