Pandorum ~ review

This movie has all the elements that I like. Stranded spaceship, check. Zombie-like creatures, check. Creepy atmosphere, check. Ben Foster, check. I went into the cinema hall expecting something good and I got more than I paid for.

Pandorum follows Bower and Payton who had awaken from their hyper-sleep and found themselves with no memory of who they are and what they are doing. Furthermore they are trapped within their room on the spaceship Elysium (nice name) and there seem to be nobody else around. When Bower got out from the room through the ventilator (I guess its the ventilator) and further explore the spaceship, he found creepy and cannibalistic humanoid creatures, lots of dead bodies and a few survivors. The power is running out and in order for them to survive, they must reset the system. And so Bower and the other survivors make their way to the spaceship reactor with Payton's guidance in the control room to restart it while at the same time fighting their way through these humanoid creatures.

Pandorum is actually a fictional psycological condition caused by extended periods of hyper sleep (suspended animation) and its symptoms and effects include severe paranoia, vivid hallucinations and homicidal instincts.


To be honest, I really, really love Pandorum. I fall in love with it! I love the story, I love the characters, I love the settings, I love everything about it. The acting, especially from Ben Foster, is just fabulous. Ben Foster is truly amazing in this movie. And the other two characters that I like are Nadia played by Antje Traue in her first ever English-language role, and Manh, played by Viatnamese American kickboxer, actor and mixed martial artist Cung Lee. However, I think Dennis Quaid's Payton character is a bit underdeveloped. Other actors include Cam Gigandet as Gallo, Norman Reedus as Shepard, and Andre Hennicke as the Hunter Leader.

What about the plot? Being a sci-fi movie, I think Pandorum do have problems in explaining the complicated background and concept that were featured in it. Audience needs to fully concentrate on what the actors are saying to fully understand it. Plus, there are several things that I think did not seem right. However, I think the story about human survival in Pandorum is very interesting and this in effect tend to make me overlook all the negative things about the movie.


To sum it up, I LOVE Pandorum! It's obvious from my review right? 4 and a half stars out of 5 for the incredible Pandorum.

Oops! I forgot. I do have several other things that I don't understand about Pandorum. Two of them are; why most critics hate it? Another one is, why did it failed in the US box-office? Two big questions there.