Another night with a movie that leaves a bitter taste, Pandorum takes a few brave turns but unapologetically obscures them.

Directed by Christian Alvert, the film takes place aboard a spaceship where two members of a crew wake up from cryo-sleep. They don’t know how long they’ve been out but all indications point to a long time. As a result, their memory is dicey at best. Anyone who’s been in cryo-hibernation for long periods of time obviously knows that.

The film does a great job, however, at insisting upon its own brand of horror sci-fi. The first 20 minutes of the film are palpable and creepy. The atmosphere of being trapped in space with no memory or power leaves the two members of the ship Elysium – Corporal Bower (Ben Foster) and Lieutenant Payton (played by Dennis Quaid)- at odds with their immediate, waking surroundings. That Pandorum starts this way affords it a relatively scary beginning.

However…

The film doesn’t do too much after that and with that beginning the film takes far too long to offer any answers. Other characters that are stumbled upon on the ship throughout the course of the movie don’t know anything, don’t speak the language or are too crazy to get a complete thought out. With how much time I invested into the movie at that point, getting little to no answers as to what we happening aboard this ship was entirely too frustrating to surmount with how Pandorum played out. In other words, Foster’s great acting in this film was relatively wasted on a story that was dragged out for far too long without some form of worthwhile reveal.