(MA15+) **

Director: Christian Alvart.

Cast: Dennis Quaid, Ben Foster, Antje Traue, Cung Le, Cam Gigandet.

TAKE Event Horizon, Alien, Pitch Black, Predator, Cube, Sunshine and pretty much every other sci fi/horror film you can think of, stir them all together, and you're part way to getting your head around Pandorum.

At first, that might seem like a potentially cool movie, but unfortunately the key word is "potentially".

The premise is gripping and compact - two officers on board a space voyage awake from hyper-sleep to find everyone else is dead or missing, the ship's power is out, they can't remember what happened, and there's something lurking out there in the darkness.

As their memories return, they realise they are onboard the Elysium, a Noah's Ark of sorts headed for an Earth-like planet to restart society.

But there's a lot standing in their way - scary creatures, survivors, a nuclear reactor that needs to be restarted, and there is always the dreaded onset of space madness (called pandorum in this movie).

While the film hopes to be a thoughful sci-fi with a psychological edge, it also wants to scare the dark matter out of you, and on both counts its a fail. The script is overburdened with ideas - the future of humanity, mutations, survival, paranoia, space discovery, the mental pressures of prolonged isolation, morality, judgment - most of which come off half-baked and are unfulfilling.

That's not to say that Pandorum is a total waste - there are enough ideas in there that occasionally some stick for a while, plus the alone-in-the-dark scenario has a few decent scares, even though you can't see what's going on half the time.

The film's main advantage is Foster and Quaid, who, despite the thin-ness of their characters, bring gravitas to roles that are straight out of the direct-to-DVD box.

But really the film is a mess - not surprising given that the director Alvart and writer Travis Milroy crafted the script out of two separate stories, attempting to mash them together.

Pandorum has its moments but ultimately its multitude of ideas proves to be a disadvantage rather than a plus.