Paul S.W Anderson and Jeremy Bolt have worked together to produce over the past ten years a whole group of glorious films, truly classics of our generation: Resident Evil, Dead or Alive, Death Race and of course, the Citizen Kane of our time, Alien Vs. Predator. And now Pandorum can be added to their illustrious line of films.

The plot (a wonderfully convoluted, over the top affair); two white-American astronauts awaken in a hyper-sleep chamber aboard a spacecraft with no memory of how they got there. We are then told they are trapped, I must emphasise the word trapped, in their hyper-sleep chamber room and they spend the next twenty minutes speaking absolute nonsense jargon and trying to find a way out. Corporal Bower (Ben Foster) finally manages to escape leaving Lt. Payton (Dennis Quaid) behind as a guide, of sorts. If you haven’t been able to follow the plot so far, don’t worry, they tend to repeat their names and “I don’t know” about 3-4 times in every scene.

The plot begins to develop - well, when I say 'develop' I mean get confusing and racist - as Cpl. Bower, our blonde, blue-eyed, educated American begins to explore a dark, barren ship for its failing power supply. The ship is inhabited by feral foreigners and minorities, (a Kung-Fu kicking Asian, a free running, moody French woman, and a primitive, cannibal Black man) and it’s also inhabited by either mutants or aliens, which the directors never really settle on through-out the film. These mutant or aliens, whatever the fuck they are, have turned the giant ship into a ritual hunting ground, and stalk the American Cpl. and his team of minority sidekicks. Also, throughout the story we are told that someone could be suffering from Pandorum; a form of deep-space cabin fever which causes aggressive paranoia and delusional behaviour.

After what seems like forever, the plot begins to lose every piece of cohesiveness as the script brings in a sub-plot for Lt. Payton as he comes into contact with Sheppard (Norman Reedus). Sheppard is a naked, crazed Corporal who just berates Dennis Quaid for twenty minutes and who has somehow managed to orchestrate the whole sordid scene of the ship. Now I won’t ruin the terrible ending, however when all is said and done you will be leaving the cinema in a state of angered confusion.

Besides the terrible plot, the acting is just atrocious. Dennis Quaid and Ben Foster seem completely dazed throughout, and of course this could be on purpose, but after Ben Foster has taken his third or fourth 20ft. fall onto his head, this gets very annoying. Quaid being the guide as well, saying he doesn’t know his way around the ship and over-acting by screaming into the microphone would irritate anybody.

I would usually comment on the direction at this point, but what direction? The film is an absolute mess and has absolute no set objective. Another problem is the emphasis on certain sounds. Now this may seem like a minor point, but when every door opens louder than a roaring lion, and every fall sounds like a mini-explosion, it gets exhausting (someone at the screening actually asked for the volume to be turned down it gets so bad).

The only positive thing I can say about the film is that the set design, CGI and make-up are all amazing-looking. But just like the rest of the film there is inconsistencies here too, this becomes very apparent with doors and the initial chamber room. In one scene, three people will have great difficulty in opening one door, however when the actor needs to get away he may somehow find the strength to open a similar-looking door quite easily. And the initial chamber changes in size and shape on three different occasions - it's two rooms at first, then tiny, then huge at the end.

Only see this film if you like watching bad movies. For a measuring bar for people; this film is as bad as Dreamcatcher.

- Peter Downey