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Pandorum Movie Review (SPOILERS: It Sucks...Hard.)

(Warning: The following review will contain spoilers. Not that you should care though. This movie sucks, and I advise you not to see it.)

Well, I haven't been posting a lot on my blog recently, because...I'm working on a super speshul project of mine that I will give you a preview of some time soon, but in the meantime, here's a review.

Probably one of the most influential horror movies of all time was Alien. It really is almost perfect. The atmosphere and the suspense are balanced perfectly. Characters you actually care about. Disgusting gore. Memorable scenes. Great creature designs. It inspired many sci-fi horror movies such as another classic The Thing. Unfortunately though, It also inspired this abomination of all things horror to be made.

Pandorum takes place in the 22nd century, where humans are on a journey to look for an earth-like planet because earth is dying because...because......uh.........because f*** you that's why! Anyways, they are on their way to the planet that they found, so they go into a hyper sleep chamber. 8 years or so later, Corporal Bower wakes up along with Lieutenant Payton. BTW Payton is played by Dennis Quaid, which leads me into a theory that I made long before I watched this movie. If you truly want a full-proof way of finding out if a movie sucks or is mediocre, then go see if Dennis Quaid is in it. I'm totally serious, every single movie he's in is never any good.

Anyways, back to the plot. Lieutenant Payton tells Bower to go look for the reactor for him so that they can get the ship running again, because apparently, nothing is working, and if the ship dies, they have no chance of getting to their destination. It's just like in video games where you are sent to do tasks for total tools who just speak to you in the comm ray thingy while you're out doing fetch quests because they are just downright useless. So Bower explores the ship and sees that something's wrong. He can't find any crew members at all, and sees dead bodies hanging from the ceiling as bait for...something...Now I'll go to one of the few things that this movie gets right: The atmosphere kicks ass. It's dark, dingy, oppressive, and the setting and set designs for it are really awesome. But this leads me to a big flaw: They never use it correctly.

Rather than using it to build up on tension, they just decide to hurl everything at you thinking that suspense without any form of build-up is a good thing. It's not. You never have a chance to bask in the creepy atmosphere. There is rarely ever any silence. In fact, it's because of this that there is literally too much atmosphere. Srsly, you literally hear all of the echoing of the corridors so loudly that it actually drowns out all the dialogue. Not that I'd want to hear the horrendous dialogue from the terrible actors *Cough Cough Dennis Quaid Cough*, but there is never a chance for the atmosphere to just creep in on us. Everything is just thrown at you hoping that it hits you, but it keeps on missing. Suspense without build up is the equivalent of a comedy without any jokes.

Which brings me to something else: There is too much suspense. And the suspense isn't even good. Once again, the director just decides to throw everything at you and hurl it all loudly. There's no time to appreciate the atmosphere. No time to appreciate the characters. No time to appreciate the creepiness of the "aliens" that are on board. They just keep pounding away hoping that they do something right. It feels more like a Michael Bay movie than a patient, horror movie. I know that there are some movies that are good at being all suspense all the time, but this movie has the concept influenced by Aliens and The Thing. It's supposed to be tension-filled. And it's hard to feel tension when the movie is louder and more obnoxious than Transformers 2.

There are some scenes that could've been soooo freaking awesome!...and they don't do anything right with them. There's a scene where Bower falls into a sewage filled with sleeping monsters, but it hasn't woken them up yet. So he literally has to wear some of their peeled skin (BTW: Another pro this movie has is that the gore is pretty cool sometimes) and crawl over all of the hundreds of sleeping monsters. Right when he reaches the ladder, his friend who's holding up the bridge for him accidentally drops the flashlight down in the hole, and makes a big loud splash. HOW AWESOME WOULD THIS SCENE BE! It sounds awesome when I describe it, but rather than being patient and letting you bask in the tension, everything is just loud loud loud. Silence is what brings us tension, not echoing atmosphere that is louder than an autobot's engines! You're supposed to watch out for a tiny noise that could've woken up those things, but you can't hear a d*mn thing!

At first, I thought that this was the worst it could get...it wasn't. Apparently, they decided to throw in two twists. And I'll not bother and just spoil them right away. Twist #1: Payton has split-personality disorder. That one captain who was supposedly evil that he found, was actually just his split-personality, and once it takes over, he becomes all evil. It's bad but not too bad right? Right. BUT...the second twist is so mind-numbingly awful, so excruciatingly bad, that if I saw this movie sooner, I would've given it a top spot in my recently written "Worst Twists Of All Time" list. So here is a major spoiler.

You know how they've been trying to get to that planet all along? Well it turns out that the ship was on the planet THE WHOLE TIME since our characters woke up. They could've easily went into an escape pod and ejected themselves RIGHT AT THE BEGINNING if they knew this earlier, and all those people wouldn't have had to die, and we wouldn't have had to have dealt with this stupid movie in the first place. WHAT THE F***?!?!?!?!?! MRRRRGH! I HATE YOU MOVIE!!! F*** YOU F*** YOU F*** YOU! RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!

We apologize for the inconvenience, but our reviewer has gone through a slight mental breakdown. Don't worry, we'll be back with our regularly scheduled program soon. But in the mean time, here's a picture of a tiny turtle that's conjoined with another tiny turtle.

This movie sucks ass! This movie sucks balls! This movie sucks ass balls! However, the main problem here isn't that it's bad, it's that it doesn't do all of the things it could've done awesomely correctly. In shorter terms: It's trying too hard. It's too ambitious and therefore leads to pretentiousness. It really wants to be the next Alien or The Thing, but it struggles at giving true tension. It has a solid atmosphere, and great gore, but does nothing to expand on these great things that it has. So Pandorum gets a 2.25/5. That's all for now, if you'll excuse me, I need to finish up my SUPER SPESHUL SECRET PROJECT! AND YOU CAN'T KNOW ABOUT IT YET!!! MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAA!!

Comments
  • 2 - Headed turtle..................

  • I cant wait to watch it.I love to watch a movie for myself to decide whether it sucks or not.

  • 2.5 out of 5 means not bad.

  • that looks soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo cool 8)

  • Nice turtle. And good movie review- you always give me a chuckle or two.

  • I'm really beginning to look forward to  your caustic brand of wit.

    That said, wow...you're right. That twist *does* suck. It's hundreds of years in the future and they don't have windows? Or a sensor? Or even the basic sense that if the ship is entirely shut down, then how are they still experiencing any approximation of gravity, yet alone a conspicuously alien level of gravity? My head hurts.

  • There were no windows in the ship, with the exception of the captains chair. And that room is locked in the beginning and it opens up for them RIGHT AT THE FREAKING END!! Not only that, but Dennis Quaid's split personality character knew this the whole time, but since his other personality inhabited him during the time he met Bower, he couldn't tell them. It just makes no d*mn sense!

  • LOL

    Hillarious I just love the 'mental breakdown'

    Back to all seriousness, great review. I'm just going to wait for the blu-ray and rent it on Netflix.

  • two headed turtle ftw :D

  • I hated the creatures in the movie... it would have been awesome if they were animals instead, animals from the planet, which would also hint at the fact that they're on the planet the whole time... and Dennis Quaid, I thought, was pretty good in the movie. It was the guy who played Bower that sucked... change the pace, creatures into vicious, weird planet animals, and the cast and I think it would have been an awesome movie.

  • Good thing when my dad rented this a few days ago I though, I bet this movie sucks. Looks like I was right.

  • My parents rented it the other day, but since no horror movie is scary anymore, I didnt even bother to watch it.

  • Actually, it wasn't a split personality disorder, just memory loss. Gallo's younger self is just the embodiment of his memories coming back to him, hence the fusion.