Bullet Review: Pandorum

With a decent early score on IMDB and a premise that sounds interesting, what exactly is Pandorum like?

It’s like a cross between Alien and The Descent really but lacking the scares, tension or polish of those films. There is actually a really good film here waiting to get out. The posters seem to suggest that it’s all to do with peoples fear and mental states (the Pandorum effect), yet the film never really clamps down on this. We start out very well with two people awaking with little memory of where they are and why. As Ben Fosters character explores the ship, Dennis Quaid is left in the control room to his own devices. So not only have we only 2 people on the ship, we’ve now seperated them. The problem is the film doesn’t really know what to do with them now.

The Pandorum side of the film is mainly centred around Quaids character and this was the most interested point of the film I felt. Without giving too much away, we see his character unsure if he has or hasn’t got the diesease (one which involves split personalities, hallucinations etc..). The film though only uses this as a small side point until the end reveal (which you’ll probably guess at before it occurs) and you wonder if it some draft it was a lot more prominant in the script. It would certainly have made a more interesting film seeing a psychological film with the characters unable to trust each other and themselves.

Instead the film centres around Fosters character, whose mission to get the ship back up and running and find out what is going on descend into a chase around corridors with the creatures from The Descent. However it just isn’t able to pull off any tension or scares. I don’t think I jumped or gripped my chair arm once and for a horrory based film, this isn’t a good sign. The characters are just your normal cliche types and it’s hard to give any care to what happens to them.

Overall then, while Pandorum has a good premise, even if it has been seen and done before, it lacks in execution and overall fell flat for this reviewer.

RATING = 2/5