Pandorum

Plot

In 2174, the human population has exceeded the carrying capacity of Earth, leading humanity to build a huge interstellar ark named Elysium. It carries 60,000 people on a 123-year trip to colonize an Earth-like planet named Tanis. The passengers are placed in hypersleep, with a rotating crew who take turns awakening from hypersleep each two years to maintain the ship. Eight years into the mission, the ship receives a transmission from Earth in multiple languages: "You're all that's left of us. Good luck, God bless, and godspeed."

Some unknown time later, two members of the flight crew, Corporal Bower and Lieutenant Payton, are awakened. Improper emergence from the hibernatory state leaves them both with partial amnesia. The ship is experiencing power surges caused by an unstable nuclear reactor, and they are unable to enter the bridge.

While Payton stays behind to attempt to access the ship's computer, Bower ventures into the seemingly abandoned ship using the ventilation system with the intention of stabilising the reactor. He begins to suffer from "Pandorum, or "Orbital Dysfunction Syndrome" (a severe psychotic illness known to affect deep-space travelers). Pandorum led to the failure of a previous mission, as the captain of the starship called Eden, so afflicted with Pandorum that he became convinced that the flight was cursed, ejected all 5,000 passengers to their deaths.

Bower encounters Nadia, a geneticist, and Manh, an agriculturist, and they are attacked by a group of fast and vicious cannibalistic humanoids with a seemingly tribal culture. The trio flees into a barricaded chamber and finds a cook named Leland, who has been awake for years, living off the water leaking into the ship, the algae it creates, and resorting to cannibalism. Meanwhile, Payton finds a young man named Corporal Gallo, who claims that the ship is lost in space. He claimed that he killed his team in self-defense because they developed Pandorum after finding out that Earth mysteriously vanished.

Leland gives food to Bower's group and shows them mural drawings depicting their true origin. According to the drawings, after Earth vanished following an unknown catastrophe, Gallo went insane. After killing his team, he begins to "play God" by awakening passengers and abusing them. Taking advantage of their mental state, Gallo then convinced these passengers, many of whom are affected by Pandorum, to exile themselves to the ship's enormous cargo hold and survive by fighting, torturing and eating each other. Eventually, Gallo went back into hypersleep, leaving the descendants of the psychotics to evolve. After multiple generations, accelerated by an enzyme produced in the hypersleep pod's feeding tubes, the passengers' descendants adapted to their living condition and became a troglofauna species, with Gallo's savage game becoming the centre of their culture.

After eating Leland's drug-laden food, the group falls asleep. When they wake up, Leland is preparing to kill and butcher them. Bower convinces him to let them fix the ship's reactor, otherwise the ship will be destroyed, killing them all. Noticing the ship's power has been unstable recently, Leland agrees to free the group. Bower hopes to find his wife on the ship before the creatures do, but later his memories come back to him and he remembers that she divorced him and stayed on Earth, disappearing along with the rest of the planet. This revelation almost makes him give up on the mission and pushes him closer to insanity.

When Bower's group finds the reactor, they find a large crowd of mutants sleeping around it. Bower tries to access the reactor computer by sneaking, but fails. While Manh distracts the mutants, Bower restarts the reactor, killing many mutants. Leland flees, and Manh is cornered by the mutant leader. In a one-on-one fight, Manh kills the leader, but is then killed by a mutant child that he hesitates to slay.

As Gallo becomes increasingly aggressive, Payton grows more worried, and prepares a sedative injection to subdue him. After the power is restored, Payton attempts to access the bridge, but Gallo assaults him and injects him with his own syringe. Gallo suddenly disappears, leaving Payton holding the syringe in his own hand. It is revealed that Gallo killed the real Payton long ago. Because he went in Payton's pod, he mistakenly believed he is Payton.

Leland makes his way to the bridge, and Gallo kills him by stabbing him with the syringe. When Bower and Nadia confront him, Gallo opens the shutters on the bridge's windows, revealing that the ship is apparently adrift in deep space with no stars visible. The shock from the revelation pushes Bower even further to insanity and he begins to break down. Taking advantage of Bower's mental state, Gallo tries to convince him that they must maintain the violent society rather than attempt to revive civilization.

However, Nadia observes bioluminescent ocean life through the windows, and the computer displays that 923 years have elapsed since the mission launched. It turns out that the ship reached Tanis 800 years ago, and automatically landed itself in the ocean. Gallo attacks Bower and Nadia, and Bower hallucinates mutants invading the bridge. In his delirium, Bower breaks a window and water pours into the ship. Nadia manages to snap Bower to reality, and they climb into a hypersleep pod, while Gallo and the remaining mutants drown. The flood triggers an emergency protocol which ejects all active pods to the surface.

Bower and Nadia surface near a lush coastline, and witness the other pods ascending one by one. Thus begins Year One on Tanis, with 1,213 survivors from the original 60,000 passengers.

Cast

Production

The film began life as a preliminary script written by Travis Milloy in the late-1990s. The story was originally set on a prison ship named Pandorum, transporting thousands of Earth's deadliest prisoners to another planet; the cannibal hunters were the end result of the prisoners' degeneration. The characters played by Antje Traue and Cung Le were inmates. Ben Foster's character was a non-prisoner who did not trust anyone.

Believing no studio would want to make the film, Milloy thought about making it as a low-budget film shot on video in an abandoned paper mill with unknown actors. However, it attracted the attention of filmmaker Paul W. S. Anderson and Jeremy Bolt, and they gave it to Impact Pictures, who green-lit it. The producers gave the script to director Christian Alvart who was struck by the similarities to his own screenplay titled No Where. His dramatic story was about four astronauts aboard a settlers' ship who suffer from amnesia. Alvart decided that they should meld the two screenplays together, and the producers and Milloy agreed. With the ship now changed to a settler's ship, the use of the word "Pandorum" was changed from the name of the ship to a type of mental illness caused by sustained deep space travel.

Pandorum was announced in May 2008 with Dennis Quaid and Ben Foster in lead roles. Christian Alvart was attached to direct the film, based on a script by Travis Milloy. The movie was financed by Constantin Film through a joint venture deal with subsidiary Impact Pictures. The partnership helped fund the $40 million production. Constantin drew subsidies from Germany's Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg (MBB) regional film fund, the German Federal Film Board (FFA) and the German Federal Film Fund (DFFF). The German Federal Film Fund provided $6 million to the production, the fund's second-largest 2008 payout after $7.5 million for Ninja Assassin. Filming took place at Babelsberg Studios in Potsdam in August 2008.

Release, director's cut, and sequel

Summit Entertainment handled foreign sales and presented Pandorum to buyers at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival, but due to a deal with Contender Films in the UK, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures took over and handled foreign sales to the film. Overture Films distributed Pandorum in North America, Icon in the United Kingdom and Australia, Svensk in Scandinavia, and Movie Eye in Japan. The film was set up as a possible franchise. According to Travis Milloy, it was to have a sequel and a prequel. If it performed well, Impact Pictures could green-light one or more sequels.

The DVD and Blu-ray Disc release occurred on 19 January 2010 in the United States over Anchor Bay Entertainment.

The director and producer commentaries on the DVD indicate that an unrated version of the movie exists but has not been released.

The film had gained a cult following, as in 2010 fans started a Facebook group, with users urging a Pandorum sequel. Director Christian Alvart later became a member of the group. The group currently has over 3,700 members.

Reception

Pandorum gained mixed reviews. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports the film holding 28% positive reviews out of 81, with the site rating it 4.2/10. The site's consensus is that "While it might prove somewhat satisfying for devout sci-fi fans, Pandorum's bloated, derivative plot ultimately leaves it drifting in space".

At Metacritic, which judges on a 0–100 scale, the film holds a "generally unfavorable" score of 28 based on 13 reviews. Science fiction magazine SFX was more positive, stating that "Pandorum is the finest interstellar horror in years", and awarding the film 4 stars out of 5. Film Ireland also gave Pandorum a positive review, appreciating the film's synergy of cinematic techniques, set design, and developed characters.

The film grossed $20,645,327 worldwide, failing to bring back its $33 million budget. The film opened at #6 at the US box office with weekend receipts totaling $4,424,126. This is most likely due to a lack of advertisement: the Facebook fanpage mentioned above states that most of its members only learned about the film through Netflix or late night television. The lack of promotion was likely due to Overture Films lacking the budget, as the studio went bankrupt several months later.

Soundtrack

Track listing

1. "All That Is Left of Us" (2:43)
2. "Pandorum" (3:58)
3. "Anti Riot" (4:17)
4. "Shape" (2:03)
5. "Hunting Party" (2:48)
6. "Kulzer Complex" (4:40)
7. "Tanis Probe Broadcast" (2:01)
8. "Scars" (2:20)
9. "Fucking Solidarity" (3:28)
10. "Gallo's Birth" (2:22)
11. "Biolab Attack" (2:25)
12. "Kanyrna" (3:22)
13. "The Stars All Look Alike" (4:32)
14. "Boom" (3:55)
15. "Reactor" (4:08)
16. "Skin on Skin" (3:21)
17. "Fight Fight Fight" (2:56)
18. "Bower's Trip" (7:51)
19. "Discovery / End Credits" (7:55)