Watching Pandorum has made me realize how anxiously i await Duncan Jones’ Moon (2009). How long has it been since we have had an interesting, grown-up and cerebral film about the emptiness and scariness of space without the film resorting to superfluous tricks and cheap thrills? Around 30 years since Outland (1981) and Alien (1979), 37 since Silent Running (1972) and Solaris (1972) and more than 40 since 2001 (1968), every effort since feels hesitant, disjointed and happy to compromise for the sake of reaching out to a wider audience. Event Horizon (1997) is perhaps one of the scariest films ever made but i remember the gore much more than i remember the psychological. Sunshine (2007) had a lot of potential but eventually disappointed by turning into ‘just another horror film’. And then there is Pitch Black, Red Planet, Dante 01, Mission to Farce, and countless others, films that range from the decent to the terribly bad and that use space as an excuse for superficial entertainment.

ATTENTION SPOILERS AHEAD
Pandorum reminds us of many such past efforts. On the positive side, its production design owes much to Alien with its sweaty, smoky, dark and claustrophobic corridors where what one does not see is more terrifying than what one does see. There is also, on a couple of occasions, a reasonable depiction of the madness that can ensue after too much time spent in cold-sleep (Pandorum is the name given to such a condition). Yet, we are very far from what Solaris showed us about madness in space and much closer to Event Horizon’s extrapolations. On a more negative side, the camera movements are obscenely fast and disorientating and i continue to wonder why an increasing number of directors and cinematographers endorse this type of film making. It always feels a bit like a cope-out to me, a method to avoid thinking harder about how to create tension or confusion or even rhythm. The result of combining such camera movements with lots of darkness, smoke and selected light sources is that one spends a large part of Pandorum seeing pretty much nothing. But the most disappointing aspect of the film for me were the mutants who looked straight out of I am Legend (2007) and The Descent (2005). First, for them to have evolved in such a manner in a few decades (at least i think it is a few decades - someone correct me if i am wrong as the time frame was not made exactly clear; i am assuming this is the time for Cam to age into Dennis plus a few additional years in cold sleep) makes absolutely no sense, especially not when you consider that they all seem to have a penchant for Mad Max fashion. And second, couldn’t the creators just come up with something a bit more original and plausible?

Pandorum feels to me a bit like Sunshine did. Lots of potential, a good premise that becomes weaker towards the end, and too much energy and focus spent on the wrong parts of the screenplay. If only there had been a bit less of a ‘i am going to eat your flesh’ angle and more time spent (with less crazy camera movements) on the symptoms and consequences of Pandorum in the humans, i would have liked this film a lot more.