After human overpopulation depletes Earth's resources, humanity builds an interstellar ark, the Elysium. It carries 60,000 people on a 123-year trip to colonize Tanis, an Earth-like planet. The passengers are placed in hypersleep, and a rotating crew wake biennially to maintain the ship. Eight years into the mission, the ship receives a transmission from Earth: "You're all that's left of us. Good luck, God bless, and Godspeed."
An indeterminate time later, two members of the flight crew, Corporal Bower and Lieutenant Payton, awaken. Improper emergence from the hibernatory state leaves them both with partial amnesia and possibly suffering from pandorum, a space-related disorder that causes psychosis when under emotional duress. The ship experiences power surges caused by an unstable nuclear reactor, and they are unable to enter the bridge. While Payton stays behind to access the ship's computer, Bower uses the ventilation system to search for the reactor.
Bower first finds a disemboweled body and a trapped mechanic, named Shepard. Shepard wakes up, startling Bower, who then frees him. Shepard mistakes Bower for a rescue team, before dousing his body in oil to cover his scent. Shepard then tells him to escape "them". Bower tries to order Shepard to tell him what is going on, but Shepard refuses, citing there is no longer a chain of command. The noise summons a group of cannibalistic humanoids who appear to respond mostly to sound. They both flee and hide but are soon found by the creatures. Shepard is killed by the group, while Bower tries to attack them with a non-lethal weapon he found earlier, which proves ineffective. He flees and continues on and encounters an environmental scientist, Nadia, and a farmer, Manh, who does not speak English; both are hostile. He encourages them to band together, and the trio flees into a barricaded chamber, where they find a cook named Leland. Leland has been awake for years, living off the water oozing through parts of the ship, the algae it creates, and resorting to cannibalism. Payton encounters Corporal Gallo, who claims the ship is lost in space and that he killed his team in self-defense.
Leland feeds Bower's group and shows them mural drawings depicting what has happened: after Earth vanished following an unknown catastrophe, Gallo went insane, killed his crew, and induced pandorum in other passengers. After goading them into a violent and tribal culture, Gallo went back into hypersleep. Aided by accelerated evolution from an enzyme meant to help colonists adjust to life on Tanis, the descendants have turned into cannibalistic mutants. Leland gasses the group, intending to eat them, but Bower convinces him the reactor must be stabilized.
As they search the ship for the reactor, Bower hopes to find his wife in an area for family in hypersleep but remembers that she died with everyone else on Earth when she refused to join him. This revelation almost makes him give up and pushes him closer to insanity. After surviving an encounter with the cannibals, Bower's group finds the reactor. A crowd of mutants sleep under the reactor, and Bower crosses a walkway to reset it. The walkway collapses, and Bower climbs down into the mutant pit to reach a ladder. While Manh distracts the mutants, Bower restarts the reactor, killing many mutants. Leland flees, and Manh is cornered by the mutant leader. Manh kills the leader but is killed by a mutant child he hesitates to slay.
Gallo becomes increasingly agitated, and Payton prepares a sedative. As they wrestle over the sedative, Gallo is revealed to be a hallucination as Payton is Gallo. Gallo killed the real Payton long ago when he developed pandorum upon hearing Earth was gone. Because he went into Payton's pod, Gallo mistakenly believed himself to be Payton when he woke up with amnesia. Leland reaches the bridge, and Gallo kills him with the sedative. When Bower and Nadia confront him, Gallo opens the shutters on the bridge's windows, revealing that the ship is adrift in deep space with no stars visible. The shock pushes Bower further toward insanity. Taking advantage of Bower's mental state, Gallo argues they must maintain the violent society rather than revive civilization.
Nadia observes bioluminescent ocean life through the windows, and the computer displays that 923 years have elapsed since the mission launched. The ship reached Tanis 800 years ago and landed itself in the ocean. Bower hallucinates a mutant attack and breaks a window. As water pours into the ship, Nadia and Bower climb into a hypersleep pod and eject it. The flood triggers an emergency protocol which ejects the remaining 1,211 untainted pods to the surface, while Gallo and the remaining mutants drown. Bower and Nadia surface near a lush coastline, and they witness the other pods ascend.
Cast
Dennis Quaid as Lieutenant Payton/Older Corporal Gallo – The Ship's Lieutenant and captain, later revealed to be Corporal Gallo
Cam Gigandet as Younger Corporal Gallo – A Corporal who went insane and killed his team, and believed himself to be Payton throughout most of the movie
Ben Foster as Corporal Bower – The ship's Corporal and presumed head mechanical engineer
Antje Traue as Nadia – the ship's environmentalist, who teams with Bower
Cung Le as Manh – an agricultural farmer, who teams with Bower and Nadia
Eddie Rouse as Leland – the mentally unstable cook who has resorted to cannibalism.
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 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.[5]
Pandorum was announced in May 2008 with Quaid and Foster in lead roles. Christian Alvart was attached to direct the film from a script by Travis Milloy.
The movie was financed by Constantin Film through a joint venture deal with subsidiary Impact Pictures.[6] 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 [de] (FFA) and the German Federal Film Fund [de] (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.[7][8]
Summit Entertainment handled foreign sales and presented Pandorum to buyers at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival.[6]Overture Films distributed Pandorum in North America, Icon Film Distribution in the United Kingdom and Australia, Svensk Filmindustri 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.[5] If it performed well, Impact Pictures could green-light one or more sequels.[7]
The director and producer commentaries on the DVD indicate that an unrated version of the movie exists but has not been released.
Reception
Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports an approval rating of 27% based on 88 reviews and an average rating of 4.6/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "While it might prove somewhat satisfying for devout sci-fi fans, Pandorum's bloated, derivative plot ultimately leaves it drifting in space."[11] At Metacritic, which judges on a 0–100 scale, the film holds a "generally unfavorable" score of 28 based on 13 reviews.[12]
Science fiction magazine SFX stated that "Pandorum is the finest interstellar horror in years" and awarded the film 4 stars out of 5.[13]Film Ireland also gave Pandorum a positive review, appreciating the film's synergy of cinematic techniques, set design, and developed characters.[14]
The film was a flop, grossing $20.6 million worldwide on a $33 million budget.[2] It opened at No. 6 at the US box office with weekend receipts totaling $4.4 million. Overture Films declared bankruptcy the following year.[15]
