In space, no one can hear you scream. But in movie theaters, giggling at a silly science fiction movie like “Apollo 18″ is entirely possible.
The latest horror film using the “found footage” gimmick started with “The Blair Witch Project” is easily the worst of the lot. The tale of a doomed mission to the moon begins with promise, but that early spark is extinguished by a lumpy melange of horror tropes best left undiscovered.
The prologue tells us what we’re about to see was culled from 80-plus hours of footage recovered after the Apollo 18 craft left the earth’s orbit in 1974. Ooh, it’s real! That approach caught some of us off guard back in 1999 with “The Blair Witch Project,” but isn’t there a better way to set up these found footage features today?
We then get to meet the astronauts on the doomed mission. But darned if this critic can spare a syllable to describe either gentleman (for the record, they’re played by Lloyd Owen and Warren Christie). The found footage approach makes character development a challenge, and “Apollo 18″ barely bothers to try.
The space craft does indeed reach the moon, but once the American flag gets planted on the surface things start to go awry. They discover the Russians beat them to the moon, and that the Department of Defense has a pretty big stake in their activities.
Oh, and they better be careful about the mementos they choose to bring back home with them.
Spanish director Gonzalo Lopez-Gallego’s finest achievement here is recreating the look and feel of old film footage from the Disco era. It’s utterly convincing, from the grainy film stock to the constantly blurred and jumpy visuals that miraculously doesn’t leave viewers feeling woozy.
It’s mostly downhill from there, despite a premise that could have yielded a minor horror classic. We’ve got a manned trip to the moon, a NASA conspiracy reaching back into the 1970s and the claustrophobic set of a small space craft.
The film’s first 20 minutes nicely set things in motion. We see interview snippets of the astronauts, an attempt at humanizing them that nearly succeeds. And those first few days on the moon capture the isolation – and excitement – of their mission.
The threat they soon discover is too silly to describe, a menace begging to be spoiled so we can all laugh about it together.
The film’s epilogue is so perfunctory it could have been written by “2001’s” HAL, or any sci-fi geek with a passing knowledge of film lore.
“Apollo 18″ is one small step for man, and one giant leap (we hope) toward the end of the “found footage” genre.
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{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
I am amazed that NASA had to print an official report just to tell movie goers that this movie wasn’t real, and this wasn’t the reason they stopped missions to the moon. It seems that mockumentaries are on the rise these days. Good looking out with this review.
I am so sick of “Found Footage” horror. “Blair Witch” was brilliant and first. “Quarantine” worked. “Paranormal Activity” was fine.
The non-scary “Trollhunter” killed it for me with the stupid monsters that seemed like something out of a 10 year-old boys video game.
Please, filmmakers…stop using the same old gimmicks…come up with new ones for Pete’s sake!
What happened to the third astronaut?
Anyway as a kid I got everything I could get my hands on about spaceflight, especially the Apollo program. I even convinced my mom to let me go see Marooned…which after reading the above review seems to have been a much better movie.
The first time I saw the preview of this film, I kind of knew it wasn’t going to be very good. Oh, well money saved!
“Marooned” was excellent and hinted at the shuttle program yet-to-be. Check it out, Outlaw13. While dated, it is still pulse-pounding.
(More proof that character development is everything…Pay attention, Hollywood!…PLEASE!).
That should have read “Check it out AGAIN, Outlaw13.”
I loved all things from Mercury 7 and Gemini and Apollo as well. I felt proud to be an American. On one note, I am HAPPY the shuttle has been canned. It was obsolete upon delivery. Originally, there were NOT supposed to be “Bricks” all over the thing to protect upon re-entry…it was supposed to be filled with heat-sink technology and self-contained cooling tech, but this was deemed too expensive by the uber-intelligent congress and the presidency (true forward looking branches of government…NOT) who demanded the inferior and now clearly fatality-causing tech of the “bricks” (“tiles”) as the way to go.
What do NASA scientists know? They don’t have Ivy-League law skool degrees like our politicians do so they can’t be that smart!
Good point about the actors not being memorable. Many aspiring actors have gotten their big break by appearing in one of these “found footage” movies, but have any of them had much success since then? Heather Donohue got some decent roles after Blair Witch Project, but that’s about all I can think of.
Actually, Aidy, the poor sods at NASA are probably tired of the endless parade of loons who still question the real Apollo missions (i.e. lunar truthers).
Bureaucrats aren’t the most sympathetic lot but even they don’t deserve to have more fuel added to the conspiracy theorist fire via a schlocky horror film lest it engender a fresh set of ‘truths’ they have to deny time and again.