Pandorum

Pandorum has a solid idea, but the problems lie mostly in the structure of the screenplay. I'm a sucker for sci-fi horror movies like Event Horizon and Aliens, so I obviously have a little bias towards it, but I did still think that some things were confusing and that the structure of the plot itself didn't really hold up. The main problem comes in the problems posed by the script, and how they're solved. The actual ideas themselves, the ending, the pandorum mental degradation, and the idea that Earth's gone are all very solid sci-fi ideas, but when it comes to the plot and problems posed within the script, the actual flow of the story falls apart. A lot of problems seem very confusing or hastily solved, with little care to the ship's actual geography and how most of the tech works. The beginning falls prey to this the most for me, as I did enjoy the ending, and the middle was solid, I guess. The beginning felt like I was being whiplashed with all this information that was interesting, but the plot really hadn't shown up yet and I didn't know what each character's goal was. The characters also were a bit of an issue, because I really didn't care about any of them. The main guy's story with his girlfriend, his new girlfriend, and the guy who literally had no other character trait besides speaking Vietnamese and being skilled in a fight, I all could care less about. Dennis Quaid's character was honestly the most interesting to me, but his plot only really starts halfway through the film, so the first half is a little underperfoming for me. Oh, also, the visual style of this film really is something. I mean, I liked it at some parts, but at others it felt like the editor was high on speed half the time. The shots didn't really have that much of a coherence most of the time. Some were cinematic. Some felt like an after-school special. I do, however, like the ideas posed in this film. Exploring what a lack of information can do, the memory loss actually being a solid storytelling device (albeit underused), and the whole sci-fi elements which really did feel like an Event Horizon-esque movie (which, if you didn't catch it earlier), I love. And I honestly didn't expect the ending, but it wasn't out of left field, so that's a plus. Pandorum had a lot of potential. If the plot was reworked structurally and the ideas were presented more cleanly and less confusingly, the movie could be much better. However, as it is, it's alright. also if i had a nickel for every time there was a main character trying to find his wife on a survival horror spaceship, i'd have two nickels, but it's weird that it happened twice