Apollo 18 Movie Review

Recently discovered footage from the secret Apollo 18 mission to the moon reveals an unearthly threat for the three astronauts. Is this edited footage enough to entertain and scare audiences in the theaters?

Mild Spoilers

This is yet another one of those “supposed to be real” movies in the vein of Blair Witch Project, Cloverfield and Paranormal Activity. For the record, I enjoyed all of these mentioned movies and for the most part, bought into them. I think one of the most important requirements for these types of movies is for them to sell to the audience that they are actually watching real footage. In the case of Blair With Project and Paranormal Activity, I thought the acting, setting and technical presentation of the footage was done well (Paranormal basically just has one video camera so technically there is not much to screw up). Cloverfield had some acting issues, character action problems and some technical flaws but I still could accept it was real.

Apollo 18 is made up of footage from various video cameras situated throughout the space capsules, on the rover and set up on the moon surface. There is also at least one hand held film camera. The movie starts by explaining that this what is edited and on view. For the most part, this works.

Anyhow The footage shows us that this secret mission has a hidden agenda that ends up compromising the safety of the astronauts. The investigation of a Russian mission reveals the presence of something up on the surface of the moon. In a nothing original plot, the astronauts learn more about their real mission and eventually struggle to survive and attempt to get off the moon.

This movie is very short and thankfully so. I certainly bought into the movie and had very little trouble believing this could be real. Technically the sets, effects, costumes and so on all looked like real 1970's NASA. The idea is nothing original as a hidden lifeform attacks the crew, altering one of them and eventually endangering the Earth. This in of itself was not a highlight of this film, nor were the scares. Apart from one or two jump moments (due to loud sound effects and quick editing), there was little creepy or scary about this film. This was a disappointment because I wanted to be scared and wasn't.

The movie delivered minimally on all levels. It is an interesting view but I was more fascinated with the look and feel than the actual story.

One thing of note. If this was edited footage then how did the film footage make it back to Earth? The video footage feed would have been recorded on Earth but the film somehow needs to make it back.

Not a stellar movie and certainly not up to my expectations but it gets a passing grade.