(Rated R for pervasive profanity, grisly violence): Well into this claustrophobic film, that takes place in the year 2174 within a gigantic space ship, is a scene in which an all ghostly white, skinless little girl looking pathetically lost appears in front of one of the few remaining crew. With pity, the man lets down his caution, reaches out to help her. With a shriek like scratching on blackboard she leaps up & neatly slits the man's throat, then flies off, still screeching, into the dark bowels of the ship.
Cut to next scene, with another sudden surprise, then more, one after another - which happens to be the pattern for this movie as it slips episodically from one incident to another in a series of confusing criss-crosses through the disabled ship. En totum, they suggest this huge ship (about the size of a small city) has been filled with as many living beings from a dying Earth as possible, then sent into space in hopes that it would find another livable planet - or something like that. The bits of information fed us, little by little, are fuzzy enough to prevent clear comprehension; that's part of the fun, guessing.
In a labyrinthian world, mostly dark & dank, not unlike that of "Alien" in more ways than one, all rubbery tubing, rusting metal & miles of walkways on many levels, add to the queasy unease, with our main hero (Ben Foster in one of his better Kirk Douglas-type roles) goes creeping, crawling, dangling, with untold numbers of those ghost white creatures showing up at the darndest times - for scare purposes more than anything else.
Meanwhile back at the control panel is the commander (Dennis Quaid) who, along with his sidekick and the ubiquitous femme (Antje Traue) seem to be key performers in this game of Battleship-in-the-dark.
Clichés abound, with reminiscences from "Aliens" to "Lord of the Rings" to scenes from "Waiting for Godot" and others, but interest is kept up by constant cross-cutting and inclusion of one surprising element in the ship after another - in a variety of colored lights, in mist, slime, dripping liquids or fog, to the popping up mutated (?) passengers - all the while our hero is hell bent on getting to a "reactor" in time to prevent the ship from blowing up - or something like that.
After dozens of cliff-hangers, one character, realizing they might never reach the reactor in time, whimpers, "We're all going to die!" as if that sentence is heard for the first time. That's when the film plunges into silliness; is pandorum (descent into madness) happening? Will our hero get to the reactor within seconds to save them all? And will they get the shock of their lives when they discover, much as at the end of "Planet of the Apes," the biggest surprise of all? Stay tunedŠ
Through all this, the incredibly created dungeon of a hull, with MTV pacing & blasting thuds coming from somewhere every 5 or 6 seconds to emphasize each sudden surprise, big or little, the movie actually holds interest until it becomes ridiculous; from there on, except for that final surprise, it's all downhill, hard to take seriously.
Travis Milloy had an interesting idea for his plot, but difficult to sustain for 108-minutes, and even director Christian Alvart runs out of clichés before it's half over. Pity. What's left is a roller coaster ride of fascinating & downhill results. Memorable set design, but little else. (Grade: C-)
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