Director: Christian Alvart

Cast: Dennis Quaid, Ben Foster, Cam Gigandet

Synopsis: A pair of crew members aboard a spaceship wake up with no knowledge of their mission or their identities.

Intended as the first in a trilogy of films, any chances of Pandorum receiving a follow-up movie were destroyed by the film’s abysmal box-office returns. It’s not difficult to see why moviegoers stayed away. The film takes place on an unimaginably massive spaceship journeying from a dying earth to a similar planet capable of sustaining human life. A crew member named Bower (Ben Foster – Rampart, Contraband) awakens from hypersleep with amnesia. He’s joined by another crewman names Payton (Dennis Quaid – The Alamo) and together the two men try to figure out why the ship they’re on appears to be abandoned. Bower goes exploring, and runs into dead bodies, a trio of survivalist crew members, and a horde of flesh-eating mutants. It all takes place in near-darkness (the power’s out) and it’s not long before Foster’s ongoing flight from the dangers in the bowels of the ship grows extremely tiresome. In fact, watching Pandorum is a lot like watching one of those pointless film adaptations of a video game in which various tasks have to be completed before the player can move on to the next level. The difference is that the hapless Bower stumbles from one level to the next and, like us, never figures out what is going on until a big reveal in the last five minutes which falls absolutely flat.

(Reviewed 7th November 2014)