Pandorum Pandemonium

Don't fear the end of the world. Fear what happens next.

From Ridley Scott’s Alien to 2001: A Space Odyssey, the science fiction-horror hybrid has found boundless success with its crossover genre appeal. The next film looking to capitalize on this combination is Pandorum. The film, set to be released in April 2009 features Dennis Quaid (Lieutenant Payton) and Ben Foster (Corporal Bower) playing a pair astronauts who awake from suspended animation without any memory of who they are and what their mission is aboard an abandoned spacecraft. But as Bower sets out determined to find his missing wife and the others, he discovers that he’s not alone in the darkness.

The ship is crawling with albino-looking creatures that resemble something out of Neil Marshall’s The Descent. At first Bower thinks these alien beasts are the reason the passengers are missing until it’s revealed that they are the passengers themselves. They have been transformed into monstrous creatures by pandorum, the biological side effects of deep space travel which has also given them superhuman speed and strength. But time is running out as the remaining survivors find themselves showing symptoms of the same condition (the shakes and a skin rash), turning into the very creatures they are fighting against for survival.

Coming from the producers of the Resident Evil films, many fans initially mistook Pandorum for a filmic version of the first person shooter Dead Space. But aside from this case of mistaken identity, Pandorum with its mix of horror and science fiction seems primed to make a killing with fans of both genres.