Space movies are a truly peculiar bunch, aren’t they?

The world of film art has evolved to the point where telling stories set in the deepest reaches of space is a reality put to use by filmmakers such as Stanley Kubrick, Christopher Nolan, Andrei Tarkovsky, Steven Soderbergh, and most recently James Gray in the newest space odyssey, Ad Astra. Many space films often grapple with the nature and importance of our humanity and place within the rest of the universe, leading to the space sub-genre being boxed in as a sort of “mind-fuck” section of films.

The mysteries of space allow for filmmakers to flex their creative muscles and create wholly unique narratives that sometimes push the boundaries of what was thought possible in the world of fiction. Ridley Scott took your classic horror movie set-up and pushed into unknown territory with Alien, subjecting audiences to a fresh take on space travel that went on to spawn a whole franchise set in deep space.

However, space films aren’t guaranteed to sell like gangbusters to a general audience. Despite the recent success of films like The Wandering Earth, Interstellar, The Martian, and Gravity, space films tend to be hit-or-miss for audiences, who are either bored out of their minds or too confused to follow the space logic that many of these films live by. First Man, Sunshine, High Life, and Life are but few of the various space films that either underperformed or flat-out bombed in theaters, with home video sales coming in to provide a lifeline.

But even these movies, amidst all of their mixed success, have managed to maintain a sliver of relevancy in the film world, something which Pandorum has not been afforded as much. Released all the way back in September of 2009, the Christian Alvart-directed Pandorum was released to very little fanfare and poor critical reception, eventually earning a measly $20 million against a budget of $33 million, not including promotion and advertising. In short, the film was a bust in theaters and its underperformance led Overture Films, the studio behind the film, to declare bankruptcy and shut down only some months afterward.

Needless to say, being the film that was somewhat responsible for shutting down an entire studio is not something that can bode well for a long shelf life.

Even though box office gross is not symbolic of quality, this is ultimately what studios and a good chunk of the general population look for when looking at a movie. If it made money, then it MUST be worth seeing, right? With Pandorum failing to generate revenue or even good word-of-mouth, it’s no wonder that the film fell into horror movie obscurity.

Pandorum’s curse has continued throughout the years, failing to spark up much internet discussion apart from the odd article here or there about it. Even fans of actors like Dennis Quaid and Ben Foster may not entirely remember this movie to be a part of their filmography, but it’s there. This movie did indeed happen. Ben Foster and Dennis Quaid led the film’s cast (including a pre-Walking Dead Norman Reedus), and looking back, it’s nothing if not an underrated gem.

Pandorum certainly isn’t perfect, but the film’s story lends itself into creating some truly spectacular set pieces and an interesting story that takes full advantage of its name to craft a sense of real tension. The film follows Ben Foster’s character as he wakes up from a deep sleep and finds himself in a room on a space ship called the Elysium, which is designed to house thousands of living beings after overpopulation drains the Earth of all of its resources. He then discovers that various humanoid creatures are roaming around the ship, hostile and ready to tear apart any living thing they come across.

From there, we are thrown into a manic space horror-thriller that mixes films such as Alien and The Descent to create a toxic blend of paranoia and confusion. The chief element of this is a fictional term called pandorum, which in the film is used to describe a state of psychosis induced after heavy exposure to deep space, causing hallucinations and mental instability. It’s here where Pandorum differs from a film like Alien, which focuses a lot of its horror on the buildup to the creature attacking all of the ship passengers.

The creatures in Pandorum are most certainly a threat to look out for, but the real antagonists are the remaining humans’ own warped state of mind. Considering how long they’ve been in space, the character’s battle their own psychosis as they try to figure what the hell happened to everybody in the ship and why humanoids are suddenly attacking them. There’s an emphasis on character, forcing us to anticipate mental breakdowns in addition to external forces. If that isn’t bad enough, the film’s insanely frantic cinematography adds to the film’s crazy nature, putting us in the shoes of confused humans battling different threats in both their heads and in the ship itself.

An air of mystery hangs over Pandorum, as characters consistently question what is happening and the whole story revolving around a whole timeline’s worth of interesting events is being drip-fed to us from the unreliable minds of our main characters. We don’t know if anybody is telling the truth or if anything is what it seems within the ship. These elements harken back to John Carpenter’s The Thing and its use of paranoia to create an uneasy atmosphere where nobody is getting away scot-free.

It’s a crazy mind-bending trip into insanity and maybe that’s why people didn’t really seem to dig the movie as a whole. It does leave a lot up to interpretation and even when some things are explained, your mind may have to do some impressive mental gymnastics in order to accept the logic presented to you. Some critics called it too derivative of other space-genre films and it definitely wears its influences on its sleeves, but there’s enough going on in this heavily underappreciated gem to set it apart from its fellow space thrillers.

You get a mix of different movies blended together with a fantastic use of mental exploration and a phenomenal performance from a baby-faced Ben Foster to boot. In every way, Pandorum is as cinematic as a space movie can get and even better than a good portion of space movies that have come out since then. There have been some gems, sure, but not many of them contained the level of insanity that Pandorum kicked down the doors with. It may not be on the level of the first two Alien films, but in no way should you ignore this wonderful hidden gem of space-horror.