Pandorum

Directed by Christian Alvart

Runtime: 108 min.

Pandorum, the latest Hollywood-funded science fiction missed opportunity, makes no sense. It doesn’t really try to by the end but nevertheless, it should be said up front so that nobody has any illusions about the film since its creators certainly didn’t. Flattering themselves that they could get by on the film’s atmosphere alone, screenwriter Travis Molloy and director Christian Alvart—whose indie horror flick Antibodies kick started his career—don’t aspire to much more. And sometimes they accomplish what they set out to: The tour of the ship Bower (Ben Foster) takes in his quest to reset the ship’s energy reactor is, for the most part, exciting. Still, it’s hard to think any film with mutant cannibals with spiked shoulder pads and scimitars that look like they should be used to slice up plus-sized baguettes is especially moody.

The film starts simply enough: Bower and Payton (Dennis Quaid, still making a career by out-Shatnering Captain Kirk) wake up from “Cryo-sleep,” on a spaceship with a bad case of amnesia. When they discover a potentially fatal malfunction with the ship’s reactor, Bower remembers he’s an engineer and sets out to fix the problem, leaving Payton on his own to space out and dilate his pupils to excess. On his way, Bower discovers a lot has changed since they’ve fallen asleep: monsters have over-run the ship, a sexy chick with motor oil all over her chest and a foreign guy with a big baguette-eviscerator have been fighting them off this whole time, the world ended while they were away and an extra-potent strain of “Pandorum,” the space-version of cabin fever, is going around. If you have questions now, forget ‘em. The answers Molloy and Alvart give aren’t worth remembering as they’re all clichés cherry-picked from most any generic scifi and/or horror films you can think of.

What is moderately exciting about Pandorum—though not enough to make the film more than a promising mess—is how its big budget allows the ever underutilized Ben Foster to slither through some of the most elaborate set pieces worth recalling from a contemporary sci-fi blockbuster. The vents and corridors he wriggles through to get to his next obstacle elicit a sense of dread that makes the film impossible to completely dismiss, even if explanations as to why a ship has an emergency evacuation button that boots all of its passengers scattershot off the ship aren’t forthcoming. That’s what Direct-To-Video sequels are for.