Date Night with Zak and Mandla

Have you been lying awake at night wondering when the next big horror movie set in space is going to come out? If so, you're in luck. "Pandorum," the new sci-fi chiller from the producers of "Resident Evil," is certainly no "Alien," but if dark and scary abandoned spaceships are what float your boat, then it'll probably do the trick.

The film starts out with a couple of spaceship crew members, Payton (Dennis Quaid) and Bower (Ben Foster), waking up from cryogenic sleep. They can hardly remember who they are, where they are or what their mission was/is. It seems that their ship has been abandoned, but of course it hasn't, and the nasties aboard are out to eat everyone. These wall-crawling, gash-covered, pale-faced creatures that infest the ship look exactly like those found in the caves of "The Descent" (a much better film, NOT set in space), and there is little to be learned about them throughout the movie.

The not-so-nasty humans left on board are out to save themselves and no one else. But of course, Bower, whose mission in the film is to restart the ship's generator, befriends an attractive, agile and foreign woman (Antje Traue) and a non-English speaking martial artist (Cung Le) who assist him in his quest to save the ship from shutting down for good so that they can hopefully reach their destination of Tanis, an Earth-like planet set to be colonized.

One of the main problems with "Pandorum" is that it's confusing as hell right from the start. Travis Milloy, the writer of the film, thought that it would be a good idea to clear things up by having Foster and Quaid engage in forced and unnatural dialogue consisting entirely of expository information. It wasn't. In fact, it was almost as bad as one of those classic "Family Guy" moments they make fun of in "South Park": "Hey, you remember that one time that one guy got that space illness called Pandorum on that one ship and killed everyone?" If only we were exaggerating.

Along with the convoluted story, it doesn't help that the ship is a jumble of dark corridors and dripping ventilation systems (there is no power, hence the only light we get for the first half of the movie is from flashlights and glow sticks that come in all the colors of the rainbow). The plot unfolds like a wet towel that's been submerged in ABC gum. Only in the last ten minutes do you really figure out what is going on, and it seems that the writers had no intention of giving any clues as to what the true story could be.

The choppy editing in the film doesn't help either. There were multiple times, especially in the first half of the film, when it was nearly impossible to tell who was whom, or where they were. At one point, we thought Bower had been stabbed by one of the zombie space mutants, but thanks to Milloy's ingenious writing, it was hastily explained in the next scene that the mutant had stabbed and taken a dead body. Ahhh . . .

One positive consequence of the poor writing is that by the end of the film, you'll have a pretty good sense of what's going on and the history of the mission, but that doesn't mean there aren't plot holes. Trust us. They exist, and they're gaping.

Despite its many flaws, there are a couple redeeming qualities to "Pandorum," one of them being the intricate production design. The sets are elaborate and convincing, although we'll never understand why there were heavy metal poles that could be used as weapons or for prying open doors at every single turn. The acting wasn't bad either. Foster and Quaid give good performances . . . for what they had to work with. And what they had to work with felt like something a couple of middle school students could have come up with.

There were a couple points where we definitely felt like the director thought, "How cool would it be to have the mutant leader and the sidekick get into an epic battle?" and then implemented it regardless of the fact that it had no bearing on the story whatsoever.

Mandla: Though "Pandorum" has enough gore and action to keep it entertaining, the fact that the mystery is more complicated than trying to solve a Rubik's cube with your mouth means you leave the theater clutching your worn-out jaw and feeling confused and tired . . . but the gore was good. Especially that one bit when the weird guru guy gets it with a needle to the eye. That's what I call great sci-fi chiller stuff! [2.5/5 Stars]

Zak: I expected "Pandorum" to be better. And that was my problem: I had expectations. Go into this movie with low to no expectations and MAYBE you won't be disappointed. Or just go see "Surrogates," although I've heard that's not much better. [2/5 Stars]