| Pandorum |  | Director: Christian Alvart
Actors: Dennis Quaid, Ben Foster, Cam Gigandet, Antje Traue, Cung Le
Studio: Starz
Category: Movie
This item is no longer available
Rating:  122 reviews
Sales Rank: 10,588
Genre: Horror
Rating: R (Restricted)
Media: Video On Demand
Running Time: 109 Minutes
Theatrical Release Date: September 18, 2009
Release Date: February 17, 2010
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| Synopsis:
Two astronauts awaken in a hyper-sleep chamber aboard a seemingly abandoned spacecraft. It is pitch black, they are disoriented, and the only sound is a low rumble and creak from the belly of the spacecraft. They have no idea who they are, how long they've been asleep, or what their mission is. Corporal Bower (Ben Foster of 3:10 TO YUMA, X-MEN: THE LAST STAND) explores the spacecraft as Lt. Payton (Dennis Quaid of THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW) stays behind for guidance on a radio transmitter. As Bower ventures deeper and deeper into the ship, he soon discovers they are not alone. Slowly the spacecraft's shocking and deadly secrets come unraveled, and the astronauts realize that the survival of mankind hinges on their actions. |
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 122
 best since aliens July 22, 2010
R. Gonzalez (San Diego,CA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
this is the best sci fi horror movie since aliens in my opinion. watch at night for a better experience.
Truly Epic! July 19, 2010
Richard Martel (Miami, FL USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I'm not going to write a big long review explaining every scene in the movie because it would be full of spoilers and I just don't want to take the time to do it. BUT, I have to say this movie is awesome! I'm a pretty big sci-fi fan and a pretty big horror fan and this movie is both. I personally didn't like Event Horizon, however that's about the only other movie I have seen in this genre. Aliens too I guess, but aliens was more a sci-fi thriller in my opinion and not really a horror movie per say, but I guess that's a matter of opinion.
Anyway, Pandorum is epic. I saw the preview and thought it looked good especially since it was rated R, which I usually take as a good thing with horror movies because it leads me to believe they weren't watered down. This movie was definitely NOT watered down at all. Sadly I missed it while it was in theatres which is usually the case for me because I don't go to the movies much. The only real turn off I had going in was Dennis Quad. I'm not saying he's a bad actor but sometimes he just doesn't do it for me. Man was I eating my opinion of him with this movie. He was great, hands down the best performance I have ever seen him give. He's usually too dry and boring for my taste even in The Day After Tomarrow he just wasn't that great, though not unbearable. But man he gave Pandorum everything he had apparently. So hats off to Dennis for not only giving me a huge reason to like him now but for also not making Pandorum suck (I really mean that in a good way). All the other actors were terrific too, no poor performances in this film, everyone did a good job and played their roles very believably.
Now for the story all I want to say is if you are the type likes twists and psychological thrillers you will love Pandorum. I really don't want to give anything away or over hype anything but its got some real surprises you won't see coming. Horror fans will also love this movie because its creepy as hell, but real creepy not some stupid load noise to make you jump I mean full on claustrophobic feeling, scary ass tension that will make you start preying for the characters because you don't want them to get killed. Luckily this is a movie that makes you care about the lead characters. There's no one in the movie you're gunna be hoping gets his or her head ripped off, and thats what makes it great. You feel for the chars and really want them all to survive.
In the end Pandorum has become one of my all time favorite movies and definitely one of my top 10 sci-fi movies. I would rate it number 1 but I can't give that slot to any movie so all my favs jus go in my top 10 list, I think there's about 30 of em now :P
I can't recommend this one enough if there's any part of you that wants to see it jus buy it, at $11.99 for the blu-ray you won't regret it at all.
 Frustrating storytelling, disorienting visuals, and poor sound editing mar the film's interesting premise July 18, 2010
ninjasuperstar (Iowa)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Pandorum takes place on the large spaceship Elysium that is destined for Tanis (basically, Earth 2). Something happens where crew members wake up from suspended animation at the wrong times. They have memory loss, and eventually piece together that they must reach the ship's bridge and power up the ship's nuclear reactor. But wait, there's a race of killer humanoids roaming the corridors as well. And apparently there's a space sickness called pandorum, but who is affected? Let the sci-fi fun begin.
At least, I kept hoping it would begin. I don't mind that the script plagiarizes Alien (1979) or that the corridor creatures are virtual carbon copies of those in The Descent (2005) and Serenity (2005). Derivative movies can still be entertaining, yet Pandorum refuses to be so.
Pandorum was a box office and critical flop for many reasons. I'll give two. First, the plot is crippled with countless scenes of terrified characters running down nearly pitch-black corridors. I accepted that Corporal Bower (played by Ben Foster, who gives a good, physical performance) was going to have to traverse a large spaceship in the dark, but I didn't realize that was 85% of the movie. Most of the film is one dark tunnel after another, and too often the viewer can't tell what's going on. Second, the sound editing is horrible. There are many scenes where the music overpowers the actors. There are creatures around, so we need scary music and whispering humans to complete the illusion, but if the audience can't hear what's being said, the spell is broken.
I am not sure why Dennis Quaid gets top billing in this film. He doesn't have much to do until the end of the movie. It's Foster's performance that drives most of the film, with Cam Gigandet (I won't reveal his character because it is a spoiler) picking up the slack later in the film. The beautiful Antje Traue is a welcome addition to the cast. She gives a good physical and tense dramatic performance.
I really wanted to like Pandorum. It's great at generating tension, but terrible at relieving it every now and then. The storytelling is frustrated by dark visuals and poor sound editing. It simply wasn't an enjoyable experience.
 One of the better sci-fi films of the last few years July 17, 2010
Jason (Backwater, Alabama)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Hyper-sleep, a stasis for humans traveling in space for years, is a relatively sacrosanct concept in sci-fi. It's a life preserving process shown in everything from Planet of the Apes to Alien. From Star Trek and Stargate to Avatar. But what happens when the chambers, and the mechanisms for keeping humans not only alive but functional upon awakening, malfunction on the immobile bodies?
The malfunction of stasis is the basis for Pandorum, both the movie and the resulting condition.
Bower (Ben Foster) awakens from his hyperbunk. Searing pain, confusion. When this space vessel left Earth in year 2174, the population had skyrocketed to unmaintainable levels and the ship's mission was to follow a probe that found possible salvation for Earth's remaining, starving population. Only Bower doesn't know how long he's been asleep, it's pitch black, and he hears strange noises. When Lieutentant Payton (Dennis Quaid) wakes up at least there's two of them. Right?
Initially just about everyone thought this was going to be Event Horizon's sequel. In some ways that is true. The difference, however, is that this adds another plot-dimension instead of an alternate dimension. Think of the visionless claustrophobia of Descent, where every pin drop is an atom bomb, every faint screech is the unknown danger lurking around the corner, waiting to kill, to torture, to feed. When Bower and Payton slowly uncover the ship's terrifying secrets - powered by a futuristic set and production that looks imminently dangerous - the film becomes perpetually tense and creepy.
Pandorum has not received widespread recognition, making it criminally unknown because of woeful promotion. A solid sci-fi, thriller the combination of action, horror, and sci-fi is captivating from beginning to end. Sure, it's derivative, and a few scenes could probably have been edited out, but the overall product is an exploration of tried and tested sci-fi practices. Highly recommended for sci-fi fans, the multiple twist endings should also draw in other cinema fans.
Jason Elin
 Decent horror; terrible sci-fi July 11, 2010
Ana Mardoll (United States)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Pandorum / B002QW7ALM
As a horror movie, I would give "Pandorum" 4 stars, but as a science fiction movie, I feel that 3 stars would be generous. When Ben Foster wakes from cryogenic sleep for what should be a routine flight shift on a space-faring colony ship, he is surprised to find that very little seems to be functioning on the ship, and utterly horrified as he comes to realize that the colony ship is infested with what can only be described as "space orcs" (a la "Lord of the Rings"), who mercilessly hunt humans through the darkened corridors of the ship and whose main feeding grounds are the cryopod chambers, where they wait for poor, doomed souls to randomly pop out of cryosleep (due to general ship malfunctions) for them to feast upon.
The horror aspect of this movie is relatively well done. The scariest parts, to me, were prior to the discovery of the space-orcs - with Foster floudering around dealing with the demons of isolation and claustrophobia, not to mention the horror of finding dead bodies down jeffries tubes and hanging in the dark corridors - that's enough to scare anyone silly. Once the space-orcs show up, the horror dials down a bit - the monsters lack the nightmare fuel potential of, say, the aliens from Aliens, and orcs can never truly be scary after "Lord of the Rings" - you can't help but feel that Gandalf will show up any minute to shoo them off the ship. Still, the "trapped on a ship with homicidal maniacs" plotline will get you pretty far, and "Pandorum" does a very solid job with what it has to work with.
Plot-wise, however, is where it all falls down. There's very little criticism I can level at the movie without causing massive spoilers, except to say that the plot has more holes than a sieve and (to paraphrase Yahtzee) contains science so soft you could spread it on a dinner roll. Not that soft science in movies isn't a legitimately proud tradition, but there's a difference between "technobabble" and "just making stuff up" - and the final plot resolution shouldn't contain so many dangling threads that there's no way anything you just saw could logically have happened, given basic human nature, laws of physics, and common sense. As usual, all this warping of reality is done to service a couple of major plot twists - and, as usual, the twists are quite good except for the fact that they're logically impossible. But - again - I don't want to spoil, so I'll just say that if you come to "Pandorum" for the horror, you'll probably be satisfied as long as you're careful to not think too hard (or, really, at *all*) about the plot.
~ Ana Mardoll
Showing reviews 1-5 of 122
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