When Pandorum came out last September, it got dragged through the critical craphouse.  Critics used words like "unpleasant", "unwatchable", "lazy" and "derivative".  This ill-treated movie currently suffers from a rating of 29% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes.  So with all the bad press and negative reviews, I did not bother to see it in theaters.  I have to admit that the trailers and posters were uninspiring and boring as well, so kudos to whatever marketing agency slapped those together.  But the DVD finally came out, and I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised.  (if one can be pleasantly surprised by a movie as dark and violent as Pandorum)

The basic premise of Pandorum is that two officers on the passenger spacecraft Elysium awake from cryo-sleep without any memory of who they are or how they got there.  The two men, Bower and Payton, proceed to explore the ship only to discover a roaming mob of flesh-eating mutants wielding makeshift weapons and wearing bits of scrap metal for armor.  Ok, sounds simple enough.  Fairly ho-hum actually.  Take a bunch of guys that look straight out of Mad Max and put them on a spaceship.  Yes, I'll just admit right here that Pandorum does take inspiration from various sources (Alien, Event Horizon and any movie with people going crazy on a spaceship).  However, Pandorum starts with this space-horror formula, and through its many plot twists, succeeds in turning the formula on its head.

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