PANDORUM!

Those of you that have been at the butt end of my venom spitting rants about Transformers 2, highlighting how vile and contemptuous that movie is, would be safe to assume I have chosen my worst film of the year already. I had, that is until I spend 10 bucks to see Pandorum. Ben Foster and Randy Quaid wake up in a spaceship from ‘hyper-sleep’ and find they are ‘alone’ and have no ‘idea’ what is going ‘on’.
There is a lot of yawn-atron science talk where Foster and Quaid explain how the reactor needs to be turned on or the ship will something or other, leading to the ship exploding and whatever whatever. It really isnt THAT important, just take it for me that Foster needs to get to somewhere quick and that means going facing off against body piercing aliens out for blood.

So yeah, nothing ground breaking, but it doesn’t need to be, it needs to entertaining and is it?

…

…

No.

I like Ben Foster and he has always had the (just barely) supporting roles see 3.10 To Yuma, 30 Days of Night and The Punisher and he is always pretty damn good in them. So he gets a nice starring role here and I’ve suddenly developed high hopes! Here is a brief run down of how I felt as this movie…happened.

Ten Minutes In – Don’t know what happening, cool, cause that builds mystery and tension and shit.

Twenty Minutes In – Don’t know what’s happening, ok, there are monsters on board but I don’t know what they look like cause the camera was all over the place. Nice. Way to build some serious monster tension for some sweet big reveal and shit.

Fifty Minutes In – Eh…there ARE monsters on this ship so like why are we pissing about with these guys who are like tribesmen now? Huh? Also why is this fucker explaining the whole stinking story to me.

One Hour In – I don’t care.

Bear in mind between the minutes of forty-five to fifty, I am fairly certain I wanted to leave. But what’s the problem? Its not so much the acting as across the board it’s pretty solid, where the problems lies, is, well, everything else. The lighting is too dark, the camera is obviously on speed and the twist is so inherently dumb but has a smugness about it like if a stupid person looked you dead in the eye and said an outrageous lie but you can't disprove this lie, even though you know its incorrect.

What’s worse is the immense boredom throughout the near two hour length. I can handle stupidity (The first Transformers aint gonna win any Smart-ass prizes but its damn entertaining) but its when its coupled with extreme levels of boredom due, mainly, to many of the key scenes looking like a camera vomited onto the projector. Any monster attack is coupled with the camera darting all over the screen as if to look anywhere BUT where the monster is at. There are moments where I genuinely thought our hero was in danger when it turned out he had been in the clear for several minutes. The direction didnt manage to tell the story in any way. That might explain the clunky, convoluted dialogue that peaks in one scene where we are actually explained everything by a man who for all intents and purposes is pointing at a blackboard telling you pretty much everything has gone down up to that point. This film had such little respect for its audience that it needed to sit them down and walk through the entire back-story just so they ‘get it’ when the final reveal comes. Its one of these horrible set-ups that is a wink to the audience, a ‘oh, be sure not to forget THIS’ that just lost me entirely.

OK so it’s not Transformers 2 bad but its big problem is that it damn smug. It has this idea that it’s a dark, psychological horror that will shock and terrify you, when its just really badly made. There is little to no benefit to see this, its one of these films that will show to the party, leave and everyone will ask the next morning, “wait…Pandorum was here last night?!”

- Pahl Disasterfield