DVD Reviews

Pandorum – Blu-ray Review

By Frankie Dees Jan 24, 2010, 12:27 GMT

In Pandorum, Dennis Quaid (Vantage Point, The Express) and Ben Foster (3:10 to Yuma, Alpha Dog) join Cam Gigandet (Never Back Down, Twilight), Cung Le (Tekken, Fighting), newcomer Antje Traue, and director Christian Alvart (Antibodies) to tell the terrifying story of two crew members stranded on a spacecraft who quickly – and horrifically – realize they are not alone. Two astronauts awaken in a hyper-sleep chamber aboard a seemingly abandoned ...more

A riff on ‘Alien’, ‘Solaris’, ‘Sunshine’, ‘The Descent’ and producer Paul W.S. Anderson’s own ‘Event Horizon’, Christian Alvart’s ‘Pandorum’ isn’t particularly original, but I imagine most sci-fi fans will respond to the effective production design, workable tension and strong leads that do their best to sell the material.

‘Pandorum’ as explained in the film is what happens to astronauts who suffer from spaceship fever - a paranoia and delirium that sets in through the isolation of hypersleep. In other words, ‘Pandorum’ is a convenient plot device to explain away any and everything that might appear to be real.

Despite ‘Pandorum’ being used for the title, I actually found this to be the most frustrating part of the film, a device that practically telegraphs the twists to anybody with a half a brain.

But with that annoyance out of the way, I ended up quite liking this little sci-fi chiller as a whole knowing full well that it basically serves as a fix for my love of these types of claustrophobic sci-fi films.

The film starts off with Cpl. Bower (Ben Foster) roughly waking up from hyper-sleep amidst painful wires and a gooey protective skin. Hypersleep in this film is no easy task and takes a hell of a lot more than a cigarette to recover from with extreme memory loss associated with waking up from hypersleep which will sometimes instigate the aforementioned ‘Pandorum’.

Aimlessly wandering around a small chamber with no idea where he is or what his mission is, he stumbles across another hypersleep chamber where he manages to wake up Lt. Payton (Dennis Quaid). Payton recovers in basically the same manner – with no answers. What they do know is that they are trapped in this chamber and if they want answers, they will have to go searching for them.

So Bower goes tearing into a small duct in the ship to see what he can discover while Payton stays behind and offers radio contact support through a computer station they manage to start through an emergency generator.

For vidgame enthusiasts, these scenes are very much played out like games of a similar atmospheric ilk like ‘Dead Space’ where a lone protagonist negotiates dark, spooky passageways while in communication with an ally (or are they?) who offers up their next goals.

Soon, Bower discovers a human female (Antje Traue) with a nasty violent streak which is explained away quickly when they both come under the attack of quick-moving humanoid beasts decked out in medieval-like armor and weaponry. Bower soon realizes that these beasts are running the ship and that the few humans that have survived have basically turned into warriors or nomads.

Only the last remnants of the ship’s power is remaining which means the chances of piloting the ship are running short so Bower manages to convince the few survivors that he needs to reach the ship’s reactor to supply enough power to pilot the ship.

Little details of the mission slowly reveal themselves and they come to realize the ship’s mission was to find a suitable and livable substitute for Earth but where has the ship stalled? And with the lair of the beasts surrounding the reactor, will the answers be worth it?

For some, possibly most judging by reviews, probably not, but I’m by and large easy to please when it comes to these type of genre films. While the middle act sags a bit and the film overstays its ideas, the tension was palpable and the beasts a well-designed amalgam of the bat-like creatures in ‘The Descent’ and the post-apocalyptic warriors seen in everything from ‘The Road Warrior’ to ‘Fallout 3’.

Ben Foster, great in ‘3:10 to Yuma’ and ’30 Days of Night’, makes a fine lead here and Quaid is serviceable if succumbing to some of his weaker overacting tendencies.

Christian Alvart is less successful with the quick-cutting action where the human warriors lock knives with the beasts in a flurry of convoluted cuts that do little to engage the viewer. No, the film is best when we’re as lost and confused as Bower and wondering what comes next. The ending manages to be both implausibly silly but kind of cool.

The 2.35:1 1080p AVC encode leaves a bit to be desired but is mostly due to the underlit, grainy black look of the film itself. There’s a thin layer of grain that seems appropriate to the subject matter but might prove distracting to some viewers but detail and black levels are otherwise fine.

Probably the best the film could look at home as it’s never going to sparkle. But I bet neither will ‘Alien’ when Fox gets around to it. The Dolby TrueHD 5.1 track is quite good though and really envelops the viewer in the film’s considerable atmosphere.

Special Feats start off with an aud commentary from director Christian Alvart and producer Jeremy Bolt that’s a pretty slow affair from what I sampled. ‘The World of Elysium: Behind-the-Scenes’ is 14 minutes long and explains some of the loftier ambitions of the pic that didn’t quite conveyed as well as the filmmakers wanted.

‘What Happened to Nadia’s Team’ is a quick look at what happened to Antje Traue’s character’s team in the film. ‘Flight Team Training Video’ is a three minute view of the world of ‘Pandorum’. There’s a whopping half hour of ‘Deleted Scenes’ that are marginally interesting for fans but nothing that really screams to be cut back into the already overlong film. Still Galleries, the theatrical trailer and the Bonus Digital Copy finish things off.

Your enjoyment of this pic will really depend on how forgiving you are of this type of material. If you check out SyFy movies on a regular basis just because of your love of the genre then you probably won’t regret visiting ‘Pandorum’.

It’s definitely a hodgepodge of the best of this type of sci-fi but not everything can be as wholly unique as ‘District 9’. I responded to the production design, atmosphere and cast and while the video is just okay, the aud is banging and the special features decent. Recommended for forgiving sci-fi fans.