Pandorum DVD “Trick Or Treat” Review

Pandorum DVD “Trick Or Treat” Review

By Jose

Plot:

A pair of crew members aboard a spaceship wake up with no knowledge of their mission or their identities.

Review:

Echoing sci-fi classics as 2001 and Alien, Pandorum is a terrific psychological thriller, although it does struggle at times to be coherent and original. But it's a true mindbender, and it's packed with action that moves so quickly neither the actors nor the viewers can really catch a breath, which is a good move if your plot is shaky to begin with.

In the distant, distant future, a ship has been sent from the Earth carrying a lot of people, headed to the only Earth-like planet ever found. Sometime during the journey, things go wrong. We pick up the story as an astronaut named Bower (Ben Foster) awakens from hypersleep, abruptly; he's soon followed by his commanding officer, Payton (Dennis Quaid). The rest of the crew is gone, and the only door is locked from the outside. Making matters more difficult is the amnesia that each man suffers from, owing to their having been in hypersleep way longer than intended and the appearance of Gallo (Cam Gigandet) who seems to bother and torment Payton a bit too much. Somehow, they must piece together what has happened and find out what lies behind that door - and throughout the rest of the gigantic ship.

Not only does the movie feel like Aliens and 2001, you can also see similarities to The Descent and The Abyss; really, any movie in which people are trapped in claustrophobic environments. And although the pacing is frenetic at times, the movie is really chillingly shot. On the one hand, the plot flows linearly - Bower needs to get to the ship's reactor so he can reboot it and save everyone - meaning that the actors race from scene to scene, running out of time. On the other hand, they don't piece together what's happened as quickly as they might in other, lesser films; they seem to figure things out gradually, as if assembling a puzzle in their heads. Bowers and others - and there are others - discover right away, though, that they're not really alone on the ship and that their enemies are extremely strong and fast and vicious.

Injected into this oh-my-goodness-what's-out-there madness is, well, madness. The movie's title is explained as being a sort of mental illness that affects astronauts from time to time, when they just plain go bonkers for seemingly no reason and kill everyone on board. Is that's what's happening here? Is Bower the crazy one? Or is it Payton? Who is Gallo? Are they, in fact, alone on the ship? Foster is excellent as the hero who remembers a little bit more of their mission as time elapses; Quaid, in turn, shows a few more layers than we're accustomed to seeing from him. Quaid, Foster, and Gigandet turn in convincing, full-throated performances that complement the special effects and cinematic wizardry. Often, the effects are the entire show. Now, it's true that you won't see a lot of character development here, as you might in the most cerebral of sci-fi, but what works best here is the knowledge about the situation and the characters. By spinning the tale gradually and feeding the audience only a piece at a time, director Christian Alvart dangles the mystery in front of his viewers without allowing them to settle back and solve the mystery on their own. When you're constantly kept on your toes with sudden lurches of unseen shapes and reverberating noises, you (like the characters) are concurrently kept off balance. The result is an unsettling, entertaining delight.


Final Thoughts:

I have been sitting on this review for a long time now editing and adding here and there. Not because I felt the review was bad or that the movie was bad too. I didn’t want to give a half ass review for a well done sci-fi movie.

Ratings 4 out of 5