storytime, guys. so back in late 2009, maybe early 2010, when pandorum hit dvd, so did the neveldine/taylor joint: gamer. now, i dunno about everyone else, but when i went to a hollywood video or a blockbuster video, i kinda expected the opinions of the clerks and managers to hold some weight. like a librarian who you could ask for a book recommendation. in this particular hollywood video, 13 year old me had befriended the manager. i kinda idolized the guy. he was maybe 30? looked like jesus and introduced me to the films of david fincher and mike judge. i didn't realize he had quit, or why the store was selling off most of their movies- the writing was on the wall and i was oblivious. the store was closing, and behind the counter were two temp clerks to ride out the last dying gasps of the store until it closed its doors for good. so here i was, enough pocket change to rent one new release and i had it narrowed down to gamer and pandorum. i asked the clerks for their opinion, and in a resounding consensus they both insisted that pandorum was boring and gamer was great. so i rented gamer... and fuckin' hated it. to me it was a bland and soulless rip-off of the running man and death race (which was already a soulless remake, but an entertaining one at least). then i eventually saw pandorum... and loved it. rental stores died for me on that day. my childhood illusion of the workers at hollywood and blockbuster video being akin to sagely gatekeepers with a world of movies at their fingertips was fucking shattered. they were just lots of early 20-somethings who probably didn't give much of a fuck about movies in general. it was a job to them. i'm older and wiser now, and as a teen, a stint of working at gamestop thoroughly purged any ideas i had about working at "cool" places being anything other than... y'know... work. having said that, pandorum is still cool as fuck. ben foster and dennis quaid play the least creepy things on a ship that looks like it tried to out-creep the event horizon. there's some freaky ass cannibal mutants, some vague body horror, the grossest hypersleep chambers you'll ever see, some boss-ass sets, a haunting atmosphere, and a really neat concept. tl;dr, it's cool, dark, and a lot of fun.