Pandorum: Worst of 2009

Peter Martin over at Cinematical begins his misguided review of Pandorum with:

Really good sci-fi horror flicks don't come along too often.

Martin then makes the mistake of praising the film, when this quote alone could fulfill the review of the film completely. Pandorum is dense in every aspect: acting, writing, editing, direction. You name it, they got it wrong.

We are introduced to Bower (played boringly by Ben Foster - but this could be the fault of the script), as he awakens from hyper-sleep on the space ship Elysium, in the future sometime in the future 2000s (forgive me for not remembering the date - I was distracted by the other problems of the film). After five or ten minutes of the same old "Where am I? Who am I?" looks and physical stutters, Lieutenant Payton (played by Dennis Quaid, sometimes very stiff and other times too melodramatic, like the storyline) pops in with the same problem. So, after at least fifteen minutes of stuttering their own histories, we finally get to watch Bower crawl through scary tight spaces speaking to Quaid through an electronic device. Again, dull. So twenty or so minutes into the film, the creatures/aliens from The Descent creep in and start going crazy. Are you bored by my synopsis of the first act of the film? Yeah, I was too. So we'll just skip to the problems.

The amount of unoriginality of the film extends beyond its box office intake this weekend. It seems that screenwriter Travis Milloy thinks adding a few "motherfuckers" and "assholes" in a script makes it more intense and realistic. Instead, we're greeted with over-the-top use of bad language poured into already poor dialogue. We also encounter a huge amount of stereotypical, generic elements as well. One, for example, is near the end of the film. Our heroine finally reaches his destination - which happens to be the home of the alien creatures (didn't see that coming!) - and has to cross a bridge, while the creatures snooze beneath him. But wait! The bridge is falling apart, so he has to be extra careful not to fall AND be quiet so he doesn't wake up the monsters!

Also, director Christian Alvart seems to be confused. When there is a fight scene (which there are, scattered here and there to wake you up from your own hyper-sleep), he seems to choose every possible angle and asked his editor to cut between each angle every half second. So we're force-fed into five minutes of cut-cut-what-the-fuck-am-I-looking-at "action." We're also introduced to two supporting characters, one of which speaks another language, the other uses some foreign accent. Neither elements make sense.

Perhaps the worst acting (again, limited by the script) comes from Cam Gigandet, star of Never Back Down (2008) and Twilight (2008). Oh wait, you didn't see those? Me neither. He's the hot guy who takes his shirt off. And here he is again, introduced with all of his clothes off. But it's not that appealing because he opens his mouth a few times, sputtering out lines like a broken garbage disposal (with a few "motherfuckers" thrown in for good measure).

There are many, many more mistakes in the film (maybe I should bring my laptop into the theater next time to take lengthy notes), but I would be here until 2AM reciting them. However, there is a pleasing twist at the end of the film, but I would imagine it would be much more thrilling if the hour and thirty minutes preceding it kept me interested and entertained. Instead, I left the theater wishing I experienced my own hyper-sleep, awakening to find myself unaware of the two-hour trash my eyes just devoured.