Big Screen and Beyond

Pandorum
By Julie Anne Maurer 

Anyone who was

a teen or tween in the mid-1990s might remember Ben Foster as the cute guy from Flash Forward. No, not the short-lived show this year that tried to be the new Lost, but the show that was the first original series created by the Disney Channel.

 
Because of my strange fondness for Disney Channel shows and the cute boys of my youth, I added the new sci-fi horror flick Pandorum to my Netflix cue.  I should probably throw in a warning here that despite my Disney references, Pandorum is not a movie for the family. There are a lot of scary things that jump out of the dark in this one, and even some cannibalism. Definitely not something you want to watch when the kids are around, unless you want to be on nightmare duty for the rest of the month.  

But despite its scariness, Pandorum is one to give a shot if you are a sci-fi fan, I mean, “Alien” was scary yet fun, wasn’t it?

 
Maybe I’m desensitized from spending hours watching my husband play Bioshock or Halo, but I kind of felt like this movie would have made a better video game.  

The plot began as two flight personnel (Foster and Dennis Quaid), from a mission to colonize a new planet away from Earth and its dwindling resources, wake up from cryosleep with no memory of who they are and what their mission is. They do, however, remember all the scientific stuff they have to know to run the ship. The two-person crew that was supposed to be there when they wake up is gone, and the ship is on auxiliary power. Access to the bridge is blocked. Some of the other people in cryosleep are still there, but other pods are empty.

 
The two must discover what went wonky and if either is suffering from pandorum – the total psycho craziness that is a rare side effect of super-long cryosleep.  The most video game worthy moment for me is when Quaid’s character is directing Foster through the darkened ship through the comm. link in his ear. Also, with each level of the ship comes scarier and scarier stuff, much like a video game. Finally, the ending has some fun “big reveals” that are also video-game like. But I won’t ruin those for you, because that wouldn’t be very fun. 

Overall, I recommend Pandorum, especially if you have Netflix and can stream it for free. It is a fun watch – provided you are not too squeamish about things jumping out of the dark and crazy cannibal zombie-like things.

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