I'm stepping into the world of found footage horror with this next review. Produced by Russian director Timur Bekmambetov and directed by Spanish director Gonzalo Lopez-Gallego (King Of The Hill), this is an ambitious yet deeply flawed sci-fi horror film that attempts to answer the question; why did we never go back to the moon?, check out my review and see what I thought of it...
Science fiction and horror go well together if the story is right. When you look back at some of the best films in this genre cross over category you find films like Alien, The Thing, Event Horizon, all pretty interesting and well made films, in fact the first and second in the films I mentioned above are now considered modern classics, so we can see that this cross over works. When it doesn't work we're left with guff like The Fourth Kind and this unfortunate film, Apollo 18.
Now Apollo 18 isn't anywhere near as bad as the fourth kind but does employ the tactic of bullshit to promote and sell it's film, What this one does that the other one didn't is completely botch the fact that there is no way in hell that the footage that is supposed to be 'real' could be uploaded to the internet after the final moment of the film. It's one of the biggest flaws of the film and one of the major factors in making Apollo 18 a missed opportunity. This film rocked a $5mil budget and while there is a ton of atmosphere on display in the film (ironic as there is no atmosphere on the moon) the film makers never really went the whole hog on the promise of scares. There are some of course as this is meant to be a horror film but when you think about how effective the Blair Witch Project was on it's meagre budget of $15mil you would expect a little more boo for your buck.
The premise is very ambitious as it follows two astronauts sent by the department of defence to the moon on a secret mission to install some satellite transmitters on the lunar surface, but there's something else, something not of human origin on the moon and it's dangerous. When I say it uses bullshit to sell it's premise, I mean in regards to the promotion of this film, all posters and adverts had the tag line 'there was a reason we never went back to the moon', now i'm not going to get into conspiracy theories (in my opinion, we never went there in 1969), but why haven't we been back to the moon? Surely it can't be budget reasons, there is an entire spherical rock close enough to our planet and we don't even want to explore it? Come on people. Any way, this film sets out to answer that question of why we haven't returned....Rock Lobsters. Seriously folks, fucking rock lobsters. If this was made in the 60s or the 70s it would have been the Russians, not rock fucking lobsters, and they would have had an underground moon base where they were building a massive particle gun aimed at the U.S, but these days everything has to be alien or supernatural. In the case of this film, these rock lobsters are able to infect you, causing you to almost turn psychotic which has been done a few times, a bit like The Crazies in Space. But the film never ever explains this infection which is a pretty big plot hole if you ask me.
Another very annoying thing about the film is how it is shot. At first it seemed like a neat gimmick, Let's shoot everything with hand held 16mm cameras and the onboard cameras of the lunar module. Bitch please, every five minutes or so the film would switch from 4x3 aspect ratio to 16:9 aspect ration which became very annoying and lasted the entire film, until the end where it looks like they've decided to have a static camera with a shitty 16mm lens covering it to make it look 'old'. I can understand why the film maker decided to do it like this because it does fall into the whole 'found footage' sub-sub-sub genre of film making as this is supposed to look like it was shot by the two astronauts, but it did become very very annoying and at points was almost un-watchable, and I saw this on blu-ray which is supposed to be the highest definition picture we have for home video. It seemed a little silly to release it on blu-ray as this format did zero for the picture quality. But this way of filming things hand held and documentary like is starting to get annoying and a little bit tired. It's a way of making a film with fuck all originality, budget and time and anyone with a camera these days seems to be churning these out. Let's just hope that the recent film Chronicle does something more for this sub-sub-sub genre.
Now like I stated above, and i'm going to spoil this for you so don't get mad, but the events of the final 10 minutes or so really does fuck up the rest of the film and the opening titles that appear. The film is edited together by footage found and uploaded to the net. Now at the end, the lunar module crashes into the spacecraft that it is waiting to dock with, destroying everything and presumably spewing debris into space, including all the tapes with the footage. Now how did this 'uploader' get hold of this footage to 'upload it'? That is the biggest flaw of the film and renders it as completely dumb storytelling. Just think about it for a moment and make up your mind if you want to see it or not.
I will give this film one thing though, the production design, moon surface and costume design are spot on, The interiors of the Lunar Module looks retro and cramped like you'd expect, the layout of the spacecraft looks good and the moon's surface looks good too. Then there's the space suits modelled after the ones used by NASA during the 60s and 70s and the costumes that the three astronauts wear back on earth are spot on, so the actual design look of the film are good it's just a shame the execution is bad. Another thing this film has going for it are the performances from the three main actors who do pretty well considering the plot, but this could be down to a well thought out script of dialogue that seems to have been thoroughly researched by writer Brian Miller, the technical jargon is good as is the air of tension between the two lunar surface actors. But again it's the flawed plotting that really kills this film.
Overall if you're looking for a shit your pants scary sci-fi horror, you're looking in the wrong place, go back and watch Ridley Scott's Alien or Event Horizon. Apollo 18 is mildly jump inducing scary if anything. If you can get hold of it for free then by all means throw it on but beware the filming style can get a bit jarring. It's not a recommendation by any stretch of the imagination but you could do worse just don't expect anything you haven't already seen. I'm going to give this 2 stars for production design and it's ambitious concept.
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