CamGigandet Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Really good sci-fi horror flicks don't come along too often. Pandorum may be burdened with the unfair stigma of "not screened in advance for the press" (at least in my area), but it proves to be a superior picture, expertly establishing and maintaining a charged atmosphere of unhinged ferocity.

Director Christian Alvart displays an assured grasp of visual storytelling and provides a solid framework for Ben Foster and Dennis Quaid to let loose with intense, uninhibited performances. Four years ago, Alvart made the powerful Antibodies, a haunting serial killer movie that neatly subverted expectations, and he has delivered another impressive genre-buster. He even made me sit on the edge of my seat a few times, an inclination which I nearly always resist.

Foster and Quaid are apparently the first two members of their mission team to awaken from hyper-sleep on the spaceship Elysium. They're both badly disoriented; hyper-sleep is supposed to induce brief memory loss, but they look like they've journeyed through all nine circles of suffering in Dante's Inferno, which might feel like a picnic in the park compared to their situation.

The ship appears abandoned; no one is present to greet them, the power has been shut down, and they're locked in a chamber with impregnable metal doors. They can barely remember their names, much less their mission or even their own qualifications. Just wait until they find out they're not alone. And whatever is out there is very fast, very ugly, and very hungry.

Any movie that begins with a dog wearing a human mask is in serious trouble. If it wants to use that kind of dream snippet as a launch pad for exploring a demented and increasingly bizarre world, if it wants to embrace a loony aesthetic and milk it for all it's worth, wonderful. Deliver a solid, jolting, dazzling, surprising thriller, and all will be forgiven.

On the other hand, if it desperately wants to be taken seriously, if it proceeds in a very measured and sober manner, if it becomes increasingly sedate as it calmly plods through tedious exposition, then you have a mess on your hands.

The Unborn looks like a ghost story, feels like a ghost story, and kinda sounds like a ghost story, but it's dead on arrival. Because writer/director David S. Goyer has been associated with a host of projects with which I have a natural affinity, I was cautiously optimistic that his fourth directorial outing (after ZigZag, Blade: Trinity, and The Invisible) might reflect more of the pulpy, noirish mood and momentum that are evident in some of the best scripts for which he's been credited in part or in whole (Dark City, Blade II, Batman Begins).

Instead, all the juice has been drained from The Unborn. Not even the sight of the lovely, lean and fit Odette Yustman, whose last name became Yowza! when the trailer and pics first hit the net, can salvage the film from mediocrity.