PANDORUM (2009)
Who out there amongst you doesn´t enjoy a good science fiction/horror flick? Hands up. No one? That´s what I thought. Unfortunately, a movie belonging to that genre doesn´t fall into your lap too often so we´re left to scavenge the past for the few decent entries in this subgenre because it isn´t exactly brimming over with new entries. It´s not like the vampire genre these days. That´s why you have to cherish those moment when a movie shows up, that actually seems to embrace both genres, has a decent budget and a good cast. I mean, how often does that happen these days? Hell, I think I work out more often than that.
That is why when you´re about to pop a movie like “Pandorum” into your DVD player, you´re kind of nervous. I know what most of you out there are thinking: “Wasn´t that the movie that was produced by Paul W.S. Anderson?” and yes, it is. That alone is enough to make most people run away from it in fear but let´s not forget that Anderson wrote and directed the space-horror classic “Event Horizon” and I dare you to find a movie that makes better use of the concept “haunted house in outer space”. “Event Horizon” is a severely underrated film and the trailer I saw for “Pandorum” a couple of months back made me very curious.
The movie starts out with two astronauts who awaken in a hypersleep chamber aboard a seemingly abandoned spacecraft. It´s pitch black, they are disoriented, and the only sound is a low rumble and creak from the belly of the ship. They can’t remember anything: Who are they? What is their mission? With Lt. Payton (Dennis Quaid) staying behind to guide him via radio transmitter, Cpl. Bower (Ben Foster) ventures deep into the ship and begins to uncover a terrifying reality. Slowly the spacecraft’s secrets are revealed…
Now, that´s a great set up for a horror movie in space, right? And at first the mood of the film is both tense and exciting. The scene where Foster wakes up from his hypersleep is pretty realistic, at least I would imagine so since I haven´t had that much firsthand experience from sleeping in a hyper kind of way. I mean, I have found myself in some pretty deep sleeps over the years, especially after I´ve done some drinking and it´s no picnic waking up from those but in my expert opinion I think that has more to do with the drinking than the sleeping. But anyway, it really comes across that this hypersleep-business isn´t a very pleasant experience.
The set up is pretty cool, as well: the two crew members can´t remember who or what they are because of them being in hypersleep for so long. This means that the audience is left there right alongside them, without a clue of what´s going on. Now, since both you and me have probably seen a hell of a lot more sci-fi-horror movies than these two guys, it doesn´t take long for us to figure out what the hell it is that´s going on but for a pretty good amount of the film, they actually manage to string us along and keep the audience in the dark. And when I say that they keep us in the dark, I mean that literally!
You see, this whole business with the darkness is a matter all of its own. I can understand that director Christian Alvart wants to create a certain kind of mood and it is pretty obvious that the guy´s inspiration is the first “Alien” movie and all that, but really… it´s too fucking dark! Hell, most of the time you can´t even see what´s going on. You´re not supposed to have to wear one of those night vision goggles just to keep up with what´s happening on the goddamn screen, are you? At first you kinda buy into it but after about 45 minutes of just flashlights, it gets pretty tiresome. Remember “The X-Files” and how when Mulder and Scully entered a crime scene, all they had were their two flashlights that lit up the place? Hell, it´s like watching two hours of those scenes.
“Pandorum” also takes a cue from Neil Marshall´s “The Descent” in that it does place its leads in a fair number of pretty uncomfortable scenes and the ones where Ben Foster are forced to crawl through tight ventilation shafts and whatever the hell it is, are pretty claustrophobic.
I wanna say that I really liked “Pandorum” and that I recommend it but to be honest, I´m not sure exactly how much I liked it. This movie might just be a case of me being so starved for something, anything at all, to come along in this genre that I´m not sure if I liked the movie for that reason alone. You almost feel a debt of gratitude towards Alvart and Anderson for making this movie and because not that many sci-fi-horror movies are being made these days, you´re willing to accept the fact that it may not actually be that good.
But I´m gonna take the high road here and say that I did like it. I do think that they could´ve been a bit more generous with their editing tools because it does drag on a bit every now and then, and say what you will about “Event Horizon” but at least it wasn´t boring, right?
By the way, since Dennis Quaid is in it, let´s discuss him for a while. I´m pretty fascinated with that guy´s career lately. I´ve always been a fan of his but I´m pretty surprised at the fact that the guy seems to be starring in genre movies exclusively now. That´s a pretty weird turn for his career to take, I think. In the last couple of years the guy has been in “Horsemen” (serial killer), “Legion” (angels running amuck on earth) and “G.I. Joe: Rise of the Cobra” (toy soldiers blowing shit up). It´s not like I´m complaining, I like the guy and I´d rather see him in action or horror movies than in weepy dramas but I think it´s surprising, considering the fact that during the 90´s we didn´t see him in hardly any genre movies. However, that “Legion” movie was inexcusable. Let´s not force anyone to sit through a pile of dredge like that ever again, ok? You need to get your priorities straight there, Dennis…
But back to “Pandorum”. Despite the fact that you can´t hardly see what the hell is going on in the long corridors of the ship for most of the time, I have to say that director Alvart does a pretty good job of raising the tension along with Foster moving deeper and deeper into the heart of the ship. I also like how they add the threat of mental illness into the mix. We don´t know who is showing signs of Pandorum, which is kinda like a jacked up version of cabin fever, and if there´s something that every movie that´s set in deep space needs, it´s the lurking threat of dementia. So basically, these guys know their genre and they use the conventions to maximize the tension and I think that it works.
Now, since we´re gonna round up this rambling here, there are one last thing that I have to discuss, but if you haven´t seen the damn thing here´s a SPOILER!!!-alert for you. I don´t think that it´ll come as a big surprise for you that the ship is haunted by monsters and we all love that, right? However, what I didn´t expect was that those fuckers from “Ghosts of Mars” and the crawling creeps from “The Descent” parts I & II apparently have gotten together on their spare time and managed to spawn the bastards we see in this one. Every good horror movie that´s gonna feature some sort of a monster or mutant needs a good one and I´m afraid I was a little disappointed in this one. It was just too similar to ones we´ve already seen.
But on the other hand, I did get to see a brand new science fiction-horror flick, so what the hell am I complaining about? Sometimes, that´s all you can ask from life.
Until next time: take scare!
Thomas