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Pandorum

     Back in the year of 1997, when my mind was the tender sponge of any pubescent 13-year-old boy, blue dresses were getting stained with semen in the oval office, and scientists in Scotland were cloning sheep and naming them "Dolly", I watched a film that shaped my brain in relation to horror and sci-fi movies. That film was titled Event Horizon. Its plot dealt with an abandoned spacecraft that had--come to find out during the horrific scenes of the film--literally gone to Hell and back. It was and still is scary, tense and disgustingly violent. It was and still is the benchmark for which I interpret films that fall into this entertaining genre. Pandorum, which I saw in theaters late last summer, is a worthy successor in this niche of filmmaking. Although it's not a film that one would see due to it's originality, Pandorum is a melting pot of great aspects of movies such as the aforementioned Event Horizon, The Descent, and Aliens.
     Pandorum is a sickness, at least in the world in which this film takes place. The effects of it develop after long periods of hyper-sleep (which obviously all of the crew members just awoke from). The symptoms: paranoia, hallucinations and homicidal tendencies (sounds like some good weed if it wasn't for the paranoia). Two crew members awake from the deep sleep with no memory of who they are, what they are doing, and what the fate is of the 60,000 people on board of their spacecraft. What follows next is claustrophobia, fights with hellacious humanoid creatures, and the story of the ship slowly spinning into their grasp. Carrying most of the workload of finding out the tale of the ship through truth and lies is the actor Ben Foster, who is becoming one of my new favorites after witnessing his amazing diversity in the show Six Feet Under and the films 3:10 to Yuma and 30 Days of Night. Although I'm not sure how much I dig the ending, and although the general critical consensus for the film may be a bit off-putting for the general public, if you're a fan of sci-fi (and sci-fi horror in particular), then Pandorum is a scary, satisfying slope to navigate through from the comfort of your pitch-black living room.


30% on Rotten Tomatoes