Paul W S Anderson is one of the producers so lower your expectations.

By 2174 planet Earth is overpopulated and resources are scarce. has reached a limit. A giant spaceship has been constructed, a kind of ark sent out to deep space. The spacecraft Elysium is heading for planet Tanis which can sustain life.

The crew are sent to hyper sleep for the long flight. Corporal Bower (Ben Foster) wakes up due to a malfunction in his pod. He is unsure where he is and suffers from amnesia. Lieutenant Payton (Dennis Quaid) also wakes up and discover that the ship's reactor is not working. Bower goes to fix it but realises that the ship has sinister secrets.

As Bower goes through the dark passages he finds out that there are mutant cannibal figures, super strong lightning fast and out for flesh. Payton discovers that after the ship was launched, some of the crew went mad and regressed. Bower comes across some isolated survivors, members of the crew who have awoken and fighting to survive from the mutants.

Pandorum has an incoherent story, it is a mess and borrows from other films. It has bits of Alien, Event Horizon, Sunshine, even Fight Club.

A lot of the film takes place in the dark, it keeps the budget down. The mutants are there for jolts and make no sense. Humans do not mutate in hundreds of years and given their abilities, the mutants should have killed everyone in the ship by now.

Despite the derivative feel of the film, Ben Foster keep the film going. It has enough action and mystery to be passably entertaining and I liked the ending.

When I first heard of Pandorum, I was intrigued but to be honest I was not expecting much. The character development could have expanded perhaps in places, and Cam Gigandet overdoes it a tad, but Pandorum was much better than I expected. The story mayn't be the most original concept on the block, but it was intriguing, worked well and remained interesting. The script is credible enough, the music is atmospheric and there is a compelling atmosphere too. The direction is competent too, and the acting from the likes of Dennis Quaid is better than expected, but the real stars are the production values and special effects which are pretty much superb. All in all, far better than I'd hoped. 8/10 Bethany Cox

In 2174, the Earth has reached a limit. It sent out a massive spacecraft carrying humans in cryo-sleep to a newly discovered planet. It's a sort of space ark. The crew of the spaceship later receives a message, "You're all that's left of us." Later still, Bower (Ben Foster) wakes up from his chamber to find the ship dark and desolate. He doesn't remember much. Then another person Payton (Dennis Quaid) wakes up. Slowly, the two discover a ship filled with terrifying secrets. Bower encounters people one after another. All of them on the run from the horrific creatures.

This movie has atmosphere to spare. Its slow pace can feel tedious at times. It takes quite awhile to get started. Director Christian Alvart really needs to start this off much faster. It is a claustrophobic horror that is reminiscent of Alien. That's one of my favorite horror movie, and I appreciate the similarities. It looks good. It just needs a better and a more consistent pace. Antje Traue is the hot chick survivor. Cung Le doesn't speak any English. Norman Reedus gets a quick scene where he gets ripped apart. It's probably a mistake to separate Ben Foster and Dennis Quaid. And the paranoia exposition just confuses the movie. It would be a whole lot better to keep the story simple. The whole Pandorum idea is a mess, but I like how this movie ends.