2000s SF film

[peteryoung]

Pandorum, 2009, Germany/USA   DIRECTED BY CHRISTIAN ALVART
In the 22nd century crew members of the one-way space mission Elysium wake up from a long hypersleep with little or no memory, and discover there's also something inhuman and dangerous aboard their enormous spacecraft. This might have been a straightforward update of It! The Terror from Beyond Space or even Alien, but there are a few extra threads to the story that make it original despite also resembling a 'film of a video game', which it isn't (the producers had a previous credit with the Resident Evil films). The spacecraft interiors are impressive although frequently inexplicable – 12 sets were created to provide for 45 different scenes – but then they were also designed to provide plenty of opportunity for running around in dark corridors and serve as the imposing background for the kind of twists and shocks that are lapped up with a big spoon by fans of this kind of mild horror SF. Dennis Quaid gives an authoritative enough performance but sees little action himself, and the creatures unfortunately look fresh out of Serenity, which is probably to dismiss them a little too easily as insufficiently scary. Two more Pandorum films were cancelled after this one's poor box office showing; it's easy to see why as it recycles far too many clichés, but does well enough what it set out to do regardless of its limited scope for invention.