Pandorum

It's time to fire up the old Script-O-Matic! It's the device every Hollywood studio apparently has, where they feed a bunch of old scripts into the machine at the same time, and a new one pops out. We already had a pretty good example of this kind of movie with Fame, but now we have Pandorum, which seems to be recycled from the bits and pieces of the scripts for the Alien movies after being fed through the Script-O-Matic.

If there's one movie genre I'm tired of, it's sci-fi horror movies built entirely around actors lurking around in the dark corners of a spaceship, while aliens or mutants wait in the shadows to leap in front of the camera and scream real loud. This type of movie has been played out, to the point that the only thing that changes anymore are the character names and their faces. For example, instead of Ripley from Alien, we have Bower (Ben Foster), who is forcefully awoken from hypersleep, and finds himself on an abandoned and seemingly deserted spaceship without a sign of life anywhere. He's soon joined by Lieutenant Peyton (Dennis Quaid), who awakens shortly afterward. Both men have been in hypersleep so long, they've lost most of their memories, even what their mission was supposed to be. As Bower beings to explore the bowels of the ship for an energy source to restore power, he soon finds dead bodies of fellow crew members, and ravenous mutants who kind of look like deformed albinos with fangs.

While there is some subtle creepiness during the early scenes, with the two men trying to find their way around and trying to remember what happened, Pandorum quickly turns into yet another "Boo Movie". Things jump out and say "boo", the characters run, have a small dialogue scene or two to move the bare bones plot along, and then get attacked by the lurking mutants once again. There are a few other survivors on the ship, who don't get any real personalities or even a genuine explanation as to how they've survived so long with the creatures. Bower is joined up with Nadia (Antje Traue) and Manh (Cung Le), who both seem very adept at fighting the creatures in hand-to-hand combat. (In one of the film's goofier moments, Manh is facing down one of the monsters, and the creature tosses him one of its weapons, just so they can have a martial arts battle with each other.) As the plot slowly unravels, so does the movie itself. With each revelation, I found myself less interested in what was happening.

And yet, the later moments hold the most visually interesting moments of the movie. Up until then, director Christian Alvart has focused on dark hallways, murky lighting, and actors who look like they're in desperate need of a shave and a shower. I understand the film's setting is on an abandoned spaceship, but there could have been some interesting touches here and there. The film's closing moments bring about some plot revelations, which I will not reveal, that bring us some interesting images. Too bad the movie's pretty much over as this starts to happen. This is a movie that thinks we'd prefer to watch shaky-cam footage of creatures waving their arms in front of the camera, then gives us something visually interesting in the last two minutes or so. The design of the creatures and the ship itself wasn't enough to hold my attention through the whole movie. Add to this that very little happens in the actual screenplay, and you have a very dull movie.

Pandorum left me feeling empty. Walking out the doors of the cinema, I knew I had just watched something, but didn't feel like anything had stuck with me. Considering what theaters are charging today, there's no excuse for a movie like that. Movies should make us feel at least something, or give us something to think about. All Pandorum does is make us think of things we should have done with the time we spent watching it.

See the movie times in your area or buy the DVD at Amazon.com!

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