Oh, I see. It came from the Paul (Wild Stallyns) Anderson factory. Or, at least, it has his name on it. It seems that credit lies elsewhere, specifically with a young German filmmaker who is unknown enough to be promising.

A new EVENT HORIZONesque, RESIDENT EVILish, SILENT HILLy, SUNSHINEy kind of thing? How is it that I've never heard of this? I guess I just wasn't paying attention. :rolleyes:

Good thing too, because after SUNSHINE and MOON, I find my appetite whetted for this type of genre piece. And given the fact that it gets the seal of approval from that hit or miss exploitation guy, I find that I am very much in the mood for this indeed. It certainly looks more promising than THE BOOK OF BLOOD (although not quite as promising as the Barker adaptation, DREAD, which is getting some pretty good buzz).

I don't even know what this is about, but that won't stop me from guessing:

*NOTE: This is a made up synopsis done for the purposes of satire so please don't be mad at me if I'm actually getting all this right.*

Two astronauts wake up in a ship which has done something extraordinarily scientific and perhaps more than a little bit unintentionally blasphemous. The gates of Hell have opened up on the ship sending ghosts and stunt zombies on the hunt forcing our growing team of misfit survivors to turn on one another and find the demonic space zombie inside of themselves. One character gets religion in a big way (probably the guy played by Ben Foster as per the economy of character actor typecasting) and becomes a homicidal antagonist.

Towards the end, only Dennis Quaid and one other crew member (probably that stunt woman-looking young lady) remain alive and they realize that they only way to save humanity is to kill themselves and destroy the ship (not necessarily in that order). Quaid makes the ultimate sacrifice, but Stunt Woman Ripley gets into a super smackdown with the queen/king/alpha zombie/alien/demon/reaver thing which leaves her close to death but alive. She goes back to earth with the intent to save it, but has a funny look in her eye suggesting that she just took a ride on The Black Freighter.

Just before the movie ends, we learn that the corporate company behind this ship is really controlling everything.

The End...?

It looks interesting. So far, the ads remind me of the very creepy video game DEAD SPACE.

I've been trying to get into an advance showing, but there doesn't seem to be any love for my area :(.


And in yet another DOH! move, this opens the same weekend as SURROGATES, a Sci-Film with Bruce Willis starring. Nope, both films couldn't possibly appeal to the same audience. Not at all :wacko:

I've seen far more boneheaded movie opening strategies (usually involving The Weinsteins), but this certainly doesn't seem wise.

Fortunately, PANDORUM looks far more interesting than SURROGATES (to me) and besides, I feel like I've already seen the entirety of SURROGATES thanks to the overly thorough trailer.

True, I feel like I've already seen PANDORUM before as well, but it looks like a movie I'd watch more than once. SURROGATES doesn't. Had it been made a decade or more ago, it looks like something Peter Hyams would have shot.

Not that I necessarily have a problem with Peter Hyams, but I never feel the need to rush out to the theater to see one of his films. :)

Besides, it would probably seem silly to imply that I'm skipping SURROGATES because it looks like a hack job and going to PANDORUM because it doesn't. It's all a matter of which hack genre movie looks tastier. Hell, if Peter Hyams suddenly did a space-bound EVENT HORIZON/SILENT HILL knock-off, I'd be all over that.

That, and the fact that SURROGATES only has about 83 minutes (without credits) to pick through.

Yeah - to think we have to wait for the 3 hours and 17 minutes long Director's Cut on DVD!

And then the 2 hours and 46 minutes Ultimate Cut!

LOL - of course! With the Penn & Teller commentary.

Kudos to Tom - I talked about your educated guess at lunch, with a bunch of NY criminal lawyers who are also flick fans, and they appreciated it.

Excellent!

I'll try not to be too spoilerish and merely say that I was 50% accurate. I'd go higher if you accept that I was right about certain things but wasn't accurate about how they applied.

And now that I've seen it, I'm pleased to report that I was nicely surprised for the most part. This film's biggest asset is Ben Foster who gives a performance that actually manages to elevate this and make it seem better than it is. Of course, the other major asset is the young German lad who directed it. He shows enough skill here that I'm actually keen to go back and check out her German-language films.

I'm a sucker for this genre and all I ask is that it be watchably entertaining, exciting and not too terribly insulting. And PANDORUM, while certainly flawed, exceeded my expectations by a good light year or two.

It's murky (with some of the grainiest, muddiest cinematography I've seen in this digital age), it tosses around the old cliches here and there and the humans, while mostly well played are never given enough time to develop their stories, but it plows ahead with enough basic skill and restless energy that it does its job as a claustrophobic, scare-&-fight survival movie very well. The experience is a bit like seeing PITCH BLACK or THE DESCENT for the first time and when you want a good, intense ride at the movies, that can be enough.

While none of the twists are particularly earth shattering (you'll have a key one figured out within 20 minutes), PANDORUM is a nicely suspenseful movie and I pleased to realize midway through the last act that I wasn't entirely sure how it was going to end.

And when the creatures and cliches are cleared away, there actually is an idea or two in there worth thinking about. Of course, there are also the type of unanswered questions that certainly unintentional, but hey! It's a reasonably well done thriller with some effective jolts, genuine suspense and a particularly excellent performance courtesy of Ben Foster.

I can forgive it for not exactly being airtight.

Saw this today and found it...just OK. Outstanding visuals and set design but it comes up pretty weak on the plot end. For the most part, it's EVENT HORIZON + RESIDENT EVIL + THE DESCENT. Director Christian Alvart also made the serial-killer thriller ANTIBODIES as well as the three-years-on-the-shelf Renee Zellweger thriller CASE 39, which is supposedly due out sometime soon.

But back to PANDORUM--is it necessary for all of these Constantin Film/Paul W.S. Anderson-Jeremy Bolt, German-British co-productions to have a Milla Jovovich stand-in? Why is there a hot, sexily-clad ninja-skilled ass-kicker on the ship? Most likely because it's a dry-run for when Antje Traue gets her own Constantin Film/Paul W.S. Anderson franchise. I was totally with this until Traue's character showed up (it's no fault of Traue herself), and then it just got increasingly formulaic. Don't be surprised when Traue starts getting the roles that Rhona Mitra turns down when she herself is too busy taking the roles Jovovich and Kate Beckinsale rejected.

All in all, PANDORUM was OK, but nothing special. It's totally skippable and can be seen when it hits DVD by mid-January, if not earlier. A year from now, this will be a permanent fixture at $8.99 in the Best Buy flyer.