Pandorum

What does Pandorum mean? I think it is Latin for stinky movie.

Set in the 22nd century, Ben Foster stars as Bower - an officer aboard the Elysium during a long distance spaceflight to a galaxy far far away, as Earth becomes overpopulated. However, he awakes from some sort of induced, long term sleep with no memory of who he is and what mission he was on. As Bower's memory slowly starts to return, teammate Payton (Dennis Quaid) comes out of his deep sleep, and the two decide they must get the ship back in working order, take control of the bridge and discover what has occurred in the time they cannot remember.

Who, or what, else is aboard the ship?

Why did they blackout?

What was the mission and can it be accomplished?

Pandorum partly wants to be a scary horror movie and partly wants to be a cerebral psychological thriller, but the film completely fails at all levels. Director Christian Alvart desperately tries to inject some chills and shocks by constantly slowing down the action, so we can hear all sorts of screams in the distance and strange knocking noises around the spaceship, but none of it is all that special.

The strange creatures aboard the ship are a run of the mill hybrid between modern zombies and those weird monsters from I Am Legend, and we rarely get a good look at them as Alvart tries to cover up their ill-conceived CGI and makeup. Sadly, he has to do the same with bad fight choreography, so every battle scene is a complex, dizzying and unproductive mish mash of images crammed together like the film fell into a blender (and the result is not a tasty margarita). In between bad action scenes, Alvart sticks us with loads of nothingness and long stretches of bumps in the dark that don't raise your pulse, your interest in Pandorum or your hope for a better ending.

Eventually, I just started to root for the monsters to eat everyone and put me out of my misery.

Pandorum is rated R for strong horror violence and language.