Short Take: An all around solid effort on a cool premise, but couldn't reach the point of excellence it was trying to

Director: Gonzalo López-Gallego

Screenwriter: Brian Miller

Cast: Warren Christie, Ryan Robbins, Lloyd Owen

Length: 1h 17m

Synopsis: In 1973 astronauts Ben Anderson (Christie), John Grey (Robbins), and Nathan Walker (Owen) are asked to lead the originally canceled Apollo 18 lunar expedition in order to place missile-detecting equipment on the moon in defense against the Soviet Union. Unlike the other Apollo missions, however, this one is Top Secret. Not even the astronauts’ families know where they’re going, but what’s worse is that they never return. Fast-forward to present day: 84 hours of video footage which captured what went on during the mission somehow made its way onto the internet, and the film we see is a spliced together version of all of it all. The fate of the astronauts, we see, was a horrifying one. Aside from finding themselves stranded, they faced creatures that give new meaning to the term extra-terrestrial. For those wondering why we haven’t been back to the moon, Apollo 18 provides the answer.

Analysis: Like such films as The Blair Witch Project, The Last Exorcism, Paranormal Activity, and the infamous Cannibal Holocaust, Apollo 18 is another one of those “found footage” films that is meant to stimulate our gamesome imaginations. The question such films look for us to ask ourselves is “Could this conceivably have happened?” Well, truth be told such a ploy has lost what element of fun it used to have. Cannibal Holocaust convinced enough people it was authentic that rumors spread about the director being arrested until he could prove his cast members were alive and well. The Blair Witch Project’s marketing campaign was so successful that a number of television personalities and professional journalists were convinced at some point that the film wasn’t actually a work of fiction. These two films had, to their credit, a very realistic feel to them thanks to their stylish directing and on screen performances (Side Note: As much as many would refuse to admit, the best acting performances are not always “realistic.” What is properly naturalistic acting occasionally appears fake because no one projects themselves as being “real” all of the time). The same cannot be said of Apollo 18.

While the cinematography and direction are quite impressive in how they give the film an authentic 1960s look and feel, and the acting is passable, there are two major faults holding the film back. The first of those is the portrayal of the alien creatures. Being literal, the problem is that we see them. What The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity got right was that in order to make their phantasmic antagonists seem more real – or, rather, to keep them from seeming less real – they were kept off screen and in the shadows. Aliens, in this regard, can be considered very similar. Upon seeing them we cease to think of them as the mysterious “other” and involuntarily recognize them as being simply “alien.” Some will no doubt find these particular aliens sufficiently frightening, but for others the dropoff in mystique will mean a dropoff in fascination, and this usually means feeling less scared. The second fault is that the camera breaks the genre’s rules. In all the other related films listed above the camera is at all times either operated by a person or fixed somewhere so that it can be tended to later. In other words, there’s always someone in control of the recording, and what they film is all we can see. This is not the case with Apollo 18. The movie starts off abiding by the rule of the “constant cameraman,” but once the drama of the story gets more intense the more often this rule is broken. By the final act the rule is almost completely ignored, and the camera reverts to more conventional angles and movements. The transition may be more the fault of the basis of the story than director López-Gallego, but it contradicts the “found footage” appeal that the film is going for.

Apollo 13 was a picnic compared to this

As an entry into the “found footage” subgenre, Apollo 18 does a lot of things right: the protagonists are likable, they face danger in an isolated location, their plight is sympathetic, etc.. What it seems to lack, though, is a viable principal fear to hang its hat on. Every successful horror movie capitalizes on several types of fears, but there is always one primary fear that it tries to exploit the most in order to make its biggest impression. It’s the fear that the film’s social commentary is based on. The fears Apollo 18 incorporates include the fear of disease, claustrophobia, the fear of insanity, and what I call the “fish out of water” fear (from being in an uninhabitable place). All of these fears are exploited on a scale of moderately well to decently well. Its primary fear, on the other hand, is that of government conspiracy, which is exploited only moderately well – at best. And not only that, I would question how relevant this fear is. I get that it’s customary for a story about aliens to somehow involve a government coverup, but as far as I can tell there isn’t an overwhelming suspicion of conspiracy held by the American populous toward the federal government nowadays. There will of course always be conspiracy theorists, but the last big thing they had to talk about was 9/11; not exactly a timely subject aside from its recent 10 year anniversary. What I strongly suspect is that this primary fear was chosen because of logic and practicality. After all, how does footage of the supposed Apollo 18 mission stay secret for so long without a conspiracy? (And how did the footage make it back to Earth anyways?) There needed to be a reason why we didn’t know about it until now, and a government conspiracy is the most plausible reason. It’s that simple. Without such a conceivable reason the playful proposition of the film being “real” becomes completely unfounded and pointless, and the whole thing becomes straight fiction. That being said, the fear of conspiracy couldn’t have been the only option for the primary fear. That decision just doesn’t make much sense.  There are in fact a number of things to like about Apollo 18, as it feels that its makers definitely put their best foot forward. But a hollow primary fear and inconsistent direction keep it from being as successful a horror movie as it maybe could have been.

Rating: 7.0

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