Guest Review: Pandorum

My brother Jamey returns this week with a review of the new space horror movie Pandorum. I was most intrigued by the Crunch Master 6 aspect of the movie, though in full disclosure I never saw it.

Pandorum is a film about an underwear model who wakes up on a spaceship after a prolonged hypersleep only to find that he has no memory (hibernation sickness, though his eyesight returned on the spot), and that the ship seems to be abandoned. After peeling off several layers of skin from his nap (perhaps the only thing about the character that I identify with) he begins to search about his immediate surroundings. Now, I know what you're thinking, but don't worry because in the future every Hyper Sleep Chamber is fitted with a Crunch Master 6, so our hero is sporting rock hard, tasty abs right from the get-go. Equipped with nothing but a pair of sexy briefs, which I can only imagine were custom made to be specifically the length of his penis, and a pair of legs that are apparently immune to the effects of atrophy, the protagonist (Corporal Bower) locates some clothes from his own locker and can thankfully continue with the story.

After a few moments of ambling, we are introduced to the next principal character; the less talented Quaid brother (Dennis). Bower quickly attends to his newly awakened comrade, whose Crunch Master, it seems, must have malfunctioned during hypersleep. They quickly search for things that they have in common, and though they can't remember what their favorite colors are, or whether or not they both love cashews, they do realize that they are part of the flight crew and that Randy Quaid's brother (Lieutenant Payton) is the superior officer. They agree that they would like to find out what happened onboard, and attempt to escape their confines. Bower is elected to climb through a vent to open the door from the other side, as the ship has no power. They realize that they have to recalibrate the nuclear reactor, of which Bower is intimately knowledgeable because he is the ship's mechanical engineer (thank God, right).

This movie, as far as I am concerned, shoots itself in the foot early on by not allowing itself to be scary. The scary setting is there sure, but the problem is that instead of allowing the setting to be frightening by its own merits, the filmmakers decided to give the audience aural queues. The creepy setting is usually always accompanied by creepy score. Now while that might sound like it makes sense, it really just panders to the audience. You should not underestimate the effect of silence and ambient noise. In fact the few times there is silence, it is such a departure from the norm that the audience should realize that something scary is about to happen, which is exactly how it goes, but since it's so obvious, it doesn't pack any suspense. If there is silence all the time or only slight ambient scoring, then the viewer truly begins to fear for the characters at all times, as there's no distinction from when the characters are in a safe mode versus danger mode. The ghost is also given up a little soon for my tastes. The encroaching menace of space monsters is revealed, basically, immediately upon the realization that there might be the menace of space monsters onboard. The creatures themselves are postulated as being evolved humans, or at least mutated humans, which isn't a stretch given their similar appearance, minus a few details such as the, obviously evolutionary, loss of nose. I don't know about you, but when I think "evolution of man," the first thought in my head is, "Voldemort's got it; vestigial, plain and simple." It seems, in this regard though, that the filmmakers were not planning on using these creatures as the source of suspense, rather they intended to use the titular Pandorum (a fictional psychosis brought on by deep-space travel that is accompanied by hallucinations and, eventually hostile, paranoia).

Pandorum, as a means of suspense or terror, falls a little bit short as well, in the regard that, except for one or two instances, it is again accompanied by obvious queues that it is taking place. To its credit, though, it does lend an idea of what the characters are going through psychologically, and that at least helps you to fear for them. Besides this the movie only offers tenuous backstory that doesn't so much rally the audience to the plight of the protagonists, so much as it merely offers up that they were real people once, before they got into this mess. Given the circumstances of the story, though, whether or not Bower had a girlfriend before they launched really wouldn't have an effect on what his goal is, and accordingly in the movie, there is only one (maybe one and a half) moment where it actually does affect him.

Now, as if the aforementioned reason weren't enough to sway the movie away from being truly suspenseful, the film also falls victim to some of the usual post-apocalyptic tropes of movies today. Through Bowers search of the ship he eventually runs into survivors. It seems, by way of the plot, that there are a few people on the boat in a similar situation to Bower. These characters follow the usual archetype of grizzled survivors who hate you for being so clean and are too hard-bitten to fill you in on what has been happening. Characteristically though, and this could be a good thing (in the hypothetical situation of the movie, not for plausible fiction) every survivor is luckily trained in the Martial Arts. One such person Bower runs into is a Vietnamese Agriculturalist who doesn't speak a word of English but is luckily fluent in cock-punch. I can only imagine how lucky he felt when he woke up realizing that although he wasted his life studying agriculture, at least he jogged every weekend to the San Shou Kung Fu temple just for kicks (and punches I guess). Of Bower's other comrade I am less convinced. A shockingly stab resilient German scientist who, I'm pretty sure, was handed a pamphlet when she awoke and was told to "CHOOSE YOUR MARTIAL ART", to which she replied "knife". The super-human fighting ability phenomenon would be a little harder to swallow had the monsters actually been terrifying. As I said before, they are basically just ever present, and as I learned as a child while watching From Dusk till Dawn, if the monsters are always visible, they are not scary. When they are dumb and obvious, they are even less scary. For example, despite setting a rather elaborate trap, baited with a live survivor; assumingly to draw other prey to his cries; apparently our hungry friends are so thrilled at the fact that it actually worked, that their plan goes from setting a clever trap to blitzkrieging down the hallway towards their prey wearing blowtorches. Really. Despite all that, the survivors refer to them as hunters several times, which I guess is true enough, in the same sense that a retarded boy chasing a cat with a sprinkler is essentially a hunter, too. As far as characters go there's really only one more important one. Payton, not to be outdone, also finds a survivor while sitting on his ass in the first room he woke up in waiting for Bower to fix shit. This character is one of the previous team's flight crewmembers whose face you want to punch. The actor's actual name is Cam. Finally, there is a brief performance by Norman Reedus, whom douchebags will recognize from The Boondock Saints, and everyone else will recognize from The Boondock Saints II: All Saint's Day (that's not a joke).

In the end, the film isn't bad. It's entertaining, it just wasn't what I was hoping for as it only went for the cheap scares (BANG! Whoa!) and it sort of didn't mind being an action flick. It is enjoyable as long as you don't expect anything new. There is only a hint of romance implied in the movie, but it's so small that it doesn't interfere with the plot, or plausibility(of plot progression). While I won't say that everything in the plot is callable, I will say that none of it is surprising. In this movie climate, audiences are conditioned to expect the twist ending, and while this movie sort of has one, it's little more than a big "who cares?" Besides being another cautionary tale for Gothic stylish space architecture conclusively being curse-prone, this is a movie that I didn't ultimately regret paying money for. Take your girlfriend to see it, put your dick in the popcorn, it might be scary enough (to girls) to get away with. The movie, not your dick.

Grade: C - for cock punch