Thursday, April 22, 2010

Netflix'd Review: Pandorum

There is half of a really good Sci-Fi movie in Pandorum. Read on to find out more, but be aware that minor spoilers are ahead.

The premise of the movie is solid: two flight crew members awake from "space sleep" to cover their shift piloting their ship, the Elysium, as it travels to a second earth-like planet.  However, when they awake there is no previous crew to greet them.  Something is wrong.

The movie title, Pandorum, refers to deep space pilots who suffer a mental breakdown and kill their co-pilots.  As one might guess, one of the two flight crew members turns out to be mentally unstable.  The details of that, I will let the viewer collect, as its the good half of the movie.

Unfortunately, crew member #2 isn't bat shit crazy, but he does get to travel into the heart of bat shit crazy, hyper-evolved space ship people country.  This would be the half of the movie that sucks.  There is no build up or suspense to finding out what is haunting Elysium.  Within minutes of venturing out of the safe hold, crew member #2 is greeted by snarling, flesh-eating creatures.  Then some ninjas come and save him.  Long story short, feeding tubes with evolution juiced turned the ship's inhabitants into mutants.  I couldn't make this shit up if I tried.

My suggestion is to watch this movie as the ending has a good twist, but ignore everything crew member #2 does the entire movie, including the end of the ending.