Pandorum

Pandorum (2009)

Image From IMDB

I remember being really excited about this one when it came out. It’s just my type of movie. Something in the vein of Alien meets Event Horizon. The poster was cool. The trailer looked interesting. Ben Foster is always great. I remember sitting in the cinema during a late night showing and largely getting what I wanted, except, two things kinda brought it down for me: The insane editing, and the too close camera work on all the action sequences––Felt like that awful Blade Trinity Movie in that regard.

Pretty much fifteen years on, I must admit, I still have the same problem with it. But… let’s focus on some of the positives first as I do think this is a good movie.

The concept is great. Earth is dying and we need a new planet. A mammoth ship is sent to a new planet lifetimes away to effectively start Earth Two. But, as always, shit goes horribly wrong and what remains left of the crew has to figure out what the hell has happened, and what’s trying to hunt them down and eat them.

The ship looks amazing. I love the lived in sets. The pace is great with a slow burn start before the clock really starts ticking. The ticking clock in this film is the reactor, and its need to be vented before things somehow get even worse. The creature design and character design is cool. I always enjoy good world building and this feels like it has plenty. I could imagine a very good art and design book coming out of this one.

So, there’s plenty to enjoy. But, it’s just so over-edited. Every fight or chase scene gave me a headache. The camera was constantly too close to everything, and combined with the music video editing and lights flashing all the time, it all felt unnecessary. With some calmer camera work i’d have nothing bad to say at all, which I would have liked because I much prefer being positive about the movies I watch.

The only reason i’m bring up the negatives––as I usually try and avoid them––is because I wanted Pandorum to be great, rather than good. Because like I said, it’s a good movie. I’ve watched it a few times and will no doubt check it out again in the future. But, that style of editing has rarely worked for me, and this is another case.

Overall, it’s decent. It has a lot of good stuff, and strong ideas, it just failed a little in the execution. If there’s a non metal music video cut out there, i’d love to see it.