Pandorum (2009)

You know, this could've been so good. It could've been that movie Event horizon came so close to be. And Pandorum is at times that good. There is only one "little" thing about the movie that I dont like. More on that later.

Pandorum has that classic scifi movie setup. A crewman wakes up on in a freezerunit on a spaceship. He knows where the spaceship is going, but nothing more. The controls are dusty and broken, like they havent been used in ages. He manages to wake up another crewman, he too with no memories. Now begins the quest of finding out what happened to spaceship, why they didnt wake up as planned. And then there's the matter of the strange creatures hunting everything that moves...

Most things about this movie are well made. The setting, a run down dark and claustrophobic spaceship is fucking perfect. Long endless corridors with terror at every corner, wunderbar! The story itself is exciting with the right amounts of surprises and turns, and even has the nerve to come up with a really good ending. It would have been even better if they had made it a bit slower, prolonging the mystery. Well, the Pandorum bit is kinda.. predictable, but still, it serves its purpose. The actors are more than competent with all of this, and Ben Foster makes a great hero (which I initially thought that I would've problems with since my previous encounter with him was his hilarious role in a My name is Earl episode). The only thing that I do not like is the design of the nasty critters that stalk the corridors.

Kinda spoilerish:

They look like the creatures from The Descent grew up on a diet of only Road warrior and all the italian rip-offs. Not a bad thing in itself, but they dont really inspire any real terror in me, especially when I keep waiting for George Eastman or Michael Sopkiw to pop up. The explanation for how they came to is a bit simple, just mentioned in two sentences and then they move on to something else. All in all, they work as an opposing force but I think they could've come up with something more nasty.

Ending spoilerish.

But other than that, Pandorum is a damn fine film. In fact, its probably one of the best scifi/horrors of the last few years along with Dark Lurking. It misses out on some of the potential horror but is still exciting and smart. Well worth seeing.