Pandorum (2009)
Directed by Christian Alvart
Two crew members wake up on an abandoned spacecraft with no idea who they are, how long they've been asleep, or what their mission is. The two soon discover they're actually not alone – and the reality of their situation is more horrifying than they could have imagined.
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23 films that influenced Pandorum
What critics say influenced Pandorum
It’s “Alien” meets “The Descent” in the new film “Pandorum” (opening September 25 throughout San Diego).
Imagine, if you will, taking the basics of Danny Boyle’s Sunshine (2007) and 28 Days Later ... (2003), tossing in the aesthetic of a Resident Evil picture, adding a little Event Horizon (1997), sprinkling a thin dusting of A.I. (2001) over it all, inserting a laugh-out-loud, transparent plot twist, and then shooting the whole thing in a murky imitation of Ridley Scott’s Alien.
Astronauts Dennis Quaid and Ben Foster awake from suspended animation on a spaceship grimy enough to make the one from Alien look like a Trump casino.
Bower's journey through the ship is reminiscent of Ridley Scott's "Alien," and if Alvart is going to rip off someone, it might as well be the Oscar-nominated director who understood the secret to keeping the audience on edge was letting their imagination and fears run wild and showing the antagonist as rarely as possible.
TAKE Event Horizon, Alien, Pitch Black, Predator, Cube, Sunshine and pretty much every other sci fi/horror film you can think of, stir them all together, and you're part way to getting your head around Pandorum.
Alvart has an eye for spectacle and has used his $40-million budget wisely, constructing spellbinding exteriors that pay homage to the past work of special-effects director Douglas Trumbull ( Close Encounters , Blade Runner ).
Surrogates, starring Bruce Willis as a homicide cop hunting a high-tech killer, is an amalgam of The Matrix, Blade Runner, The Island, The Stepford Wives, Terminator, Westworld and I, Robot.
Imagine, if you will, taking the basics of Danny Boyle’s Sunshine (2007) and 28 Days Later ... (2003), tossing in the aesthetic of a Resident Evil picture, adding a little Event Horizon (1997), sprinkling a thin dusting of A.I. (2001) over it all, inserting a laugh-out-loud, transparent plot twist, and then shooting the whole thing in a murky imitation of Ridley Scott’s Alien.
Directed by Christian Alvart (“Antibodies”), “Pandorum” is more easily described as a riff on the 1997 chiller, “Event Horizon.”
Cinematographer Eduard Grau (best known for films like Buried and A Single Man) deserves quite a bit of credit for capturing the story’s magnifcent visuals.
Imagine, if you will, taking the basics of Danny Boyle’s Sunshine (2007) and 28 Days Later ... (2003), tossing in the aesthetic of a Resident Evil picture, adding a little Event Horizon (1997), sprinkling a thin dusting of A.I. (2001) over it all, inserting a laugh-out-loud, transparent plot twist, and then shooting the whole thing in a murky imitation of Ridley Scott’s Alien.
Also, like Resident Evil, there is a lone female fighter that comes to the rescue played by an attractive Eastern European brunette, and unraveling the plot's mysteries requires characters with amnesia to get their memories back.
Review in a Hurry: From the producers of the Resident Evil movies comes...a Resident Evil rip-off in space!
Fans of films like Event Horizon, Alien 3, and Resident Evil are sure to get their money worth, but I feel anyone outside of the “club” is sure to be disappointed.
Murky both literally and figuratively, the film was shot in Berlin's Babelsberg Studios where 80-odd years ago Fritz Lang made Metropolis and Woman in the Moon, the movie that invented the countdown for a space launch.
Murky both literally and figuratively, the film was shot in Berlin's Babelsberg Studios where 80-odd years ago Fritz Lang made Metropolis and Woman in the Moon, the movie that invented the countdown for a space launch.
The monsters run like Aliens and have developed a tribal hunting society reminiscent of the Predators, not to mention the humans being hunted by them are in an enclosed maze-like environment.
TAKE Event Horizon, Alien, Pitch Black, Predator, Cube, Sunshine and pretty much every other sci fi/horror film you can think of, stir them all together, and you're part way to getting your head around Pandorum.
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The disc features the new retrospective documentary “Beautiful Streamers,” with new interviews with film actors Matthew Modine, Mitchell Lichtenstein and George Dzundza discussing working with the text, collaborating with the other actors and Altman’s working methods, which they all appreciated.
The scene where Bower (his face covered so they can’t see his nose, I guess) makes his way across a roomful of snoozing mutants is startlingly like the cartoon Beatles tiptoeing through the sleeping Blue Meanies in Yellow Submarine (1968).
It’s “Alien” meets “The Descent” in the new film “Pandorum” (opening September 25 throughout San Diego).
Bower's subsequent journey through a maze of airshafts, rubber tubes like tentacles lining the walls, is equipped with a similar sense of constriction and doom as 2006's " The Descent ."
It's nearly bad enough to make Anderson's film, from which it borrows heavily (along with The Descent and Roger Corman's Galaxy of Terror and many other, better films) look downright Kubrickian in its space-oddityness, but not quite.
The carnivorous creatures stalking the cramped corridors of the sprawling "Elysium" look like someone crossbred the monsters from The Descent with the Orcs from Lord of the Rings.
The end result is a seriously disagreeable piece of work that instantly establishes itself as the worst sci-fi horror flick to come around since 1992's Split Second, which effectively cements Pandorum's place as an Ed Woodian debacle of almost unprecedented incompetence.
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But he also made the superior thrillers Breakdown and U-571 a decade or so ago, so perhaps he (or a surrogate?) is returning to form.
But he also made the superior thrillers Breakdown and U-571 a decade or so ago, so perhaps he (or a surrogate?) is returning to form.
Unfortunately, that all goes out the window with the introduction of superfluous supporting characters and a race of villains who, with their leather, spikes and face paint, look like the same albino goths who previously starred in 2001's " Ghosts of Mars ."