Pandorum

A critical and box office failure, the concept and trailers were still enough to make me want to watch this movie.  When it became available on Netflix instant watch I didn't even have to potentially waste a DVD delivery on it which is always a good thing.

Pandorum is I am Legend meets Cube meets Titan AE. Corporal Bower (Ben Foster) violently awakens from hyper sleep on a large space cruiser as his sleep chamber malfunctions.  He manages to exit, but with no memory of what he is doing there - an apparent side effect of suspended animation.  This wouldn't be a problem except that there is no one else around to fill in the blanks for him.  The ship seems to be dead or dying and there is no evidence of anyone else awake.  He manages to revive the only other person in the room,  Lieutenant Payton (Dennis Quaid) but two people who can't remember a thing aren't much better than one.  Payton is able to get a control console working on backup power and Payton struggles through the claustrophobic ductwork in an attempt to reach the bridge and figure out what went wrong.  Once out he realizes that they are not completely alone but might have preferred  it that way.  It seems that there are a few rogue crew members surviving on their own, but the higher population appears to be that of alien zombie type creatures who are deadly fast and strong with an appetite for flesh.

Part of the appeal this movie has to me is something which may bother others and that is how the viewers are left nearly as much in the dark as Bower and Payton.  The only thing we know which they do not is that their ship's mission was to take them, a large population, and a catalog of Earth life to a new planet in order to escape the destruction of our own.  What went wrong, where they are, what the creatures are and how they got there, etc. is still as much of a mystery to us as it is to them with the answers only coming as discoveries are made and memories slowly return.  It creates a much more tense environment completely suited to the situation.  The movie is not without faults.  If you are at all familiar with the genre some of the surprises are predictable and some plot points feel like they were added out of necessity and lack of a better idea than actually thought out and developed.  The representation of Pandorum - a space sickness that causes paranoia and insanity - is appropriately stressful most of the time but dips into cheesiness occasionally.

I don't care if other people say this was a bad movie, I enjoyed it all the way through, appreciating it for the science fiction thriller it is.  It thrilled me at parts and fascinated me at others.  I left the couch for a couple of hours and became trapped in a maze of cables, corridors, and hatches lost half the time and running for my life at others.  Good job, Pandorum.

**** 4/5 stars