“In Space, No One Can Hear You Scream.” Now that was a movie tagline. Not only was it true, but it conjured up the image of terror with nothing to help you but the abyss of space.
“Fear What Happens Next” WTF? You call that a tagline? Let me tell you what happens next in Pandorum.
Two guys (Bower – Ben Foster, and Payton – Dennis Quaid) awake from hypersleep and don’t know who they are. They’re trapped in a room, on board a ship and the power is out. Something has gone wrong with their mission. Fortunately, without power, the ship has managed to keep a breathable atmosphere, somehow. But to discover the secrets, they’ve got to get out of the room. So Bower, being the smallest, climbs into the “air ducts” which are all stuffed full of unlabeled, non-specific, disorganized, black, flexible 4” tubing.
After crawling through the random, unlabeled, black tubing, Bower gets out and has an encounter with a woman, Nadia. (Antje Traue. You know her from movies such as “Der Staatsanwalt”, “Die Nacht davor”, and who could forget, “Berlin am Meer”) Bower, quite suavely, receives a very sound beat down from Nadia, who then attempts an armed robbery of Bower by trying to jack his “kicks”. (That means “steal his shoes”, mom.) And yes, amid the powerless corridors, she’s managed to find a HOT, “look at my hooters” leather outfit.
The robbery is interrupted when the new uninvited mutant looking guests aboard the ship suddenly appear.
I could continue with the plot, if you’d call that mish-mash of nonsense a “plot”, but I don’t want to spoil anything for any of you who might be “in” to donating money to theaters to see crap. There were 7, count them, 7 people in our showing. And all 7 of us left the theater shaking our heads, wondering why why why did we trust our hard earned money to Hollywood yet again?
It felt like the writers sat in a room and threw ideas from other movies into a giant pot, stirred, and then poured the resultant goo out on to paper and called it a plot. As if that’s not bad enough, they then went out into the pasture, scooped up a giant pile of manure, sprinkled powdered sugar on top, and said, “There’s your ending. Bon Apetite.’”
Was it scary? If Lucky Charms cereal commercials frighten you, then maybe you’ll jump a couple of times. Mostly you’ll just sit there with a puzzled look on your face looking at Nadia’s hooters.
1 out of 5 stars.
I give it a half star. The random fast closeups were almost comical. Pointless story. What a waste of money.