Editorials
Unseen in Space: Celebrating the 10-Year Anniversary of the Underrated ‘Pandorum’
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.
Of the three films that make up the Diabolical Trinity of classic religious horror films—Rosemary’s Baby (1968), The Exorcist (1973), and The Omen (1976)—The Omen is the most purely entertaining.
While Rosemary’s Baby digs into the societal shifts of the 60s and The Exorcist explores spiritual tensions between faith and doubt in an ever-shifting world, The Omen seems most interested in just telling a thrilling story. It achieves this by blending two major trends of the 1970s, the devil movie and the paranoid thriller, into one crackling adventure yarn. In the process, The Omen has sparked fear and curiosity about what could happen in the “end times” if such events are to occur.
After seeing The Exorcist, producer Harvey Bernhard contacted writer David Seltzer and said something along the lines of, “Hey, write me one of those.” Seltzer, having never read the Bible, thought it would be an interesting challenge, so, according to various interviews, he read the Bible and several commentaries in search of a story. Then he stumbled upon a passage in the book of Revelation, the image of a great Beast rising out of the sea, that sparked his imagination. In the commentaries, he found that the sea represented politics in some interpretations of the text, and he began building his story on that foundation.
Seltzer has told this story often, and I am inclined to believe him. However, from there, much of the theological-sounding lore of The Omen was created purely by Seltzer. Many of the ideas surrounding The Antichrist in the film appear to be drawn much more from the pop-eschatology sensation of the 1970s, The Late Great Planet Earth by Hal Lindsay, than any Biblical source.
Lindsay’s book was the bestselling nonfiction book of the 1970s and re-popularized views of the “last days” that had been dying along with fundamentalism for decades, namely Dispensationalism, Millennialism, and the Pre-Tribulation Rapture. In dispensationalism, history is broken into several epochs of time (or dispensations) that culminate in the return of Christ and his thousand-year (millennial) reign.
Before this return, a seven-year Tribulation will occur in which the Antichrist comes to power and persecutes all who oppose him, culminating in a battle between the forces of good and evil at the valley of Megiddo, usually called Armageddon. Of course, in this worldview, the true believers in Jesus will be lifted out, or raptured, before all this takes place. Since the publication and popularity of The Late Great Planet Earth, this has been the prominent belief in Evangelical and Fundamentalist Christian circles, though Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and mainline Protestant denominations largely reject it.
Lindsay also did something unique that had not been the case even in dispensationalist circles before him—he posited that the creation of the modern state of Israel in 1948 started the countdown to Armageddon. Fans of the film will immediately realize where Seltzer ran with this idea in the first line of the poem created for the movie: “When the Jews return to Zion…”
Damien Thorn and the Creation of Horror’s “Innocent Villain”
Seltzer’s next inspiration focused on the idea of the Antichrist as a child, what he would call the film’s “innocent villain.” In watching The Omen, it is readily apparent that Damien Thorn (Harvey Stephens) does not really do anything evil beyond a bit of normal kid mischief. Even the moment in which Damien knocks Kathy Thorn (Lee Remick) over a second-floor railing can be read as an accident orchestrated by Damien’s diabolically connected nanny, Mrs. Baylock (Billie Whitelaw). The film takes this idea of the innocent villain a step further by casting Gregory Peck, best known for playing arguably the greatest father in film history, Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), as Damien’s earthly father, an element that greatly satisfied Seltzer.
The New Testament itself says very little about the Antichrist and certainly nothing about his childhood. In fact, the word antichrist is used twice (1 John 2:18 and 2 John 7 for the curious) and refers to groups of people, not a particular person. There is also a passage in 2 Thessalonians 2:1-12 in which the writer (usually attributed to Paul) discusses “The Man of Lawlessness” who will “exalt himself over everything that is called God” and “proclaim himself to be God.”
Then there is the Beast of Revelation chapter 13 with “seven heads and ten horns” that Seltzer latched onto, which has been interpreted in a multitude of ways over the centuries. Powerful people throughout history, from Charlemagne, various Popes during the Protestant Reformation era, Napoleon and Hitler, to modern politicians, including Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, Vladimir Putin, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump, have all had the label placed on them by various circles. Even religious leaders like Billy Graham have not escaped being called the Antichrist.
Lindsay and modern dispensationalists are certain the Antichrist will be a 21st-century individual as they are equally certain that the Rapture, Tribulation, and return of Christ are imminent, likely within their lifetime. Many scholars and theologians, however, interpret these passages as symbolic representations of the Roman Empire and the first-century Caesars who persecuted, tortured, and murdered Christians and Jews who refused to submit to Imperial rule and worship them as gods. For example, that the Beast from the sea in Revelation has seven heads is symbolic of the famous seven mountains of Rome, with the 10 horns referring to rulers and magistrates of the Empire.
But this is all really of no matter to Seltzer and the story of The Omen. Instead of being concerned with any historical or theological accuracy, he instead built his own lore, which sends Robert Thorn and photographer Keith Jennings (David Warner) on a globetrotting investigation into the nature of the Antichrist and how to stop him. Some of this lore includes the child being born of a jackal, the reaction of animals, the protective cult that arises around Damien, the daggers of Megiddo, and maybe most interesting of all, the peculiar flaws in Jennings’s photographs that presage the ways certain individuals will die.
All these aspects are where the paranoid thrillers come in, as films like Blow Up (1966), Z (1969), The Conversation (1974), The Parallax View (1974), 3 Days of the Condor (1975), and All the President’s Men (1976) were all the rage at the time. Especially in the wake of the Watergate scandal, the idea of journalists (like Jennings) as ordinary heroes who could bring down the powerful, nefarious forces in the world was exactly what audiences craved. And what greater hidden evil force was there than the Devil? This is also why the device of the daggers of Megiddo is so important to a movie like this. If Damien is indeed the Antichrist, there must be a way to stop him, though in the Biblical text, the only power capable of destroying the Devil is God Himself.
The Mark of the Beast, 666, and the Film’s Most Famous Religious Symbolism
The piece of lore created for the movie with the most solid Biblical grounding is the Mark of the Beast. Revelation describes a mark on the forehead or hand of those who worship the Beast and his image. Again, this is symbolic language differentiating those who belong to the power of the Roman Empire and those who belong to Christ, who have the Mark of the Lamb. In Seltzer’s hands, the mark is very literal, a birthmark that is borne by not only the Antichrist but all his followers, meaning they are marked from before birth as belonging to Satan, and there is no escaping it. This is all rather distressing to the priest Father Brennan (Patrick Troughton), who betrays his mark by warning Thorn about Damien and pays the price by memorably being impaled by a spire that falls from a church steeple after being struck by lightning.
Why is the mark three sixes? Again, this is drawn from a passage in Revelation that states that the Beast can be identified by calculating his number. In Biblical scholarship, this is believed to be the sum of the name of a man transferred into Hebrew numerology, a practice in which each Hebrew letter also represents a number. Using this method, the number of the name Caesar Nero, which many believe to be the most logical choice, is six hundred sixty-six. In the film and elsewhere, this number is changed to three individual sixes. According to the film, this represents the Diabolical Trinity (a designation also unique to the film) made up of Satan, the Antichrist, and the False Prophet. That Damien carries this unique birthmark under his hair convinces Robert that the child is the Antichrist, and it’s up to him to destroy him.
Part of what makes The Omen great is its ambiguity. Damien could be the Antichrist, or he could be at the center of a series of coincidences. Director Richard Donner stated in interviews that he believed Robert Thorn had gone insane by the end of the film, which, to Donner, is the only explanation for why Thorn would attempt to kill an innocent child. However, that enigmatic smile in the final shot suggests that Damien does embody a spirit of great evil. The sequels, however, all but erase this ambiguity.
In audiences, The Omen sparked a renewed interest in the concept of the Antichrist and the dispensationalist interpretation of the end times that continues to echo throughout the last five decades. Around the time of the film’s release, even Elvis Presley was photographed brandishing a paperback copy of Seltzer’s novelization. Dispensationalist authors like Hal Lindsay, Tim LaHaye, and John Hagee have made millions publishing books and giving lectures about the Antichrist and the end of the world.
The Legacy of The Omen, 50 Years Later
Though A Thief in the Night (1972) preceded The Omen in initial release, it gained quite a resurgence (along with the ability to create three sequels) in the wake of the popularity of The Omen and went on to scar the psyches of Evangelical children for decades. Hal Lindsay was also able to release a film version of The Late Great Planet Earth in 1978, complete with narration and a brief onscreen appearance from Orson Welles.
In the 1990s, the Left Behind series became a cultural phenomenon, spawning twelve books in the core series, a YA spinoff series, video games, and a movie series (2000-2005) starring Kirk Cameron. A bigger studio adaptation of the first book was released in 2014, starring Nicolas Cage. 20th Century Fox and The Omen got in on the renewed “end-of-the-world” vigor by releasing a remake of the original film on June 6, 2006. The franchise was revived once again in 2024 with The First Omen, which explores ideas of the Antichrist and the motivations of those in power in our current religious, social, and political context.
But despite all the sequels, spinoffs, rip-offs, remakes, and “end times” money grabs of the last 50 years, the original version of The Omen remains untouchable. Its greatest strength is that it seeks, first and foremost, to entertain. And it does so admirably.
After half a century, its influence can be felt in horror, the culture at large, and even in various faith circles. It is a testament to the power of story and film that, consciously or unconsciously, fans of The Omen and those who have never seen it alike are, to this very day, marked by the Beast.
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