I walked into Pandorum feeling pretty peppy about the whole affair.  It had been a goodish while since I’d seen an actual space opera in theatres (I seem to remember my last experience with a massive spaceship in theatres as being Event Horizon but that was way back in high school) and so I was definitely looking forward to it.

And then the surprises started.  The interesting thing here, however, is that they did not let up until the very end of the movie, and it is for this reason I’m actually surprised to report that Pandorum kicked a whole lot of ass and I’m actually surprised to BE surprised.

The plot of Pandorum is actually pretty simple–it’s what they DO with it that’ll kill you.  We join a young corporal and his grizzled lieutenant on the flight deck of a massive spaceship that’s probably a few miles long at least.  It’s heading somewhere.  But no one’s sure exactly where because they’ve all been unconscious for who knows how long in hypersleep chambers and they’re just now coming around.  The ship is pitch black, seemingly falling apart…oh, and there’s SOMETHING running around belowdecks.

This bad day in space will only get worse–you may rest entirely assured of that.

And like I said, there will be a whole lot of fantastic surprises, and not just the ones built into the plot, either.  You’ll get an incredible performance from Dennis Quaid who most definitely has still got it.  You’ll discover Cam Gigandet can do more than swishy sparkly vampires.  You’ll discover all sorts of cataclysmic plot twists that will do an excellent job of holding your interest–at least, they held MY interest, and that’s saying something.

But perhaps the most mind-blowing surprise of all is that this really good lump of science fiction glee was brought to us by Paul W.S. Anderson.

You did in fact read that last sentence correctly.  Pandorum, a fantastic sci-fi deep space action flick, is directly connected to Paul “I Turned Resident Evil Into A Slipknot Video” W.S. Anderson.  Of course, he just produced this one, which is awesome as he’s finally found a niche where he can’t ruin perfectly good video games by turning them into godawful movies that are only vaguely related to their original titles.

Of course, the result is that anyone calling this a “Resident Evil in Space” will not be terribly far off, but the combination is surprisingly palatable and plenty of fun.  Call me biased if you must but I’ve always been fond of big ship movies, be they oceanic or interstellar, and Pandorum definitely provided.

The Screenhead Ten Scale hands over a full-on nine out of ten for Pandorum, a movie that managed to bring a whole bunch of surprises to the table, defy plenty of expectations, and still managed to let me have  a good time watching.  If you’re even vaguely into science fiction, folks, especially with a little dystopia on the side, well, this one’s definitely for you.