Image provided by Screenrant.com, trailer courtesy of youtube.com

I never thought a director would cook up some pathetic conspiracy-theory about alien life on the Moon. The worst part of it is that they tried using a Paranormal Activity “Found Footage” style of cinematography.

My Rating - 

Director
Gonzalo López-Gallego

Cast
Warren Christie as Ben Anderson
Lloyd Owen as Nate Walker
Ryan Robbins as John Grey

Writer
Brian Miller

86 mins.

Rated PG-13 for some disturbing sequences, and language

Based on “found footage,” in December of 1973, two astronauts were sent on a top-secret mission to the moon. Supposedly funded by the Department of Defense, NASA naturally denied the mission existed, however it has been used as fuel for those searching for the reasons why we have never been back to the moon.

In no way, shape, or form does the 2011 film Apollo 18 enter the realm of believability. Based on  other “found footage” films like Paranormal Activity and The Blair Witch Project, we have to question how this footage was obtained. Nothing is revealed as to where 84 hours of supposedly unaltered footage originated.

While watching this silly excuse for a film, yet somewhat normal compared to modern horror flicks, I kept asked what the motive was for making it. Because some mysterious footage was found and uploaded to some random website or is this the real reason we haven’t ventured to the barren dust-bowl we call the Moon.

I immediately knew this footage was bogus and the film failed as the scenes panned from grainy black and white to crisp color. It seemed that the scenes were so sloppily thrown together and that the director, Gonzalo Lopez-Gallego, dreamt this sub-par idea while taking shots with his buddies.

His thought process may sound something like this: “we should take the garbage found footage genre some place it has never been…the moon. As if we don’t already have enough shaky camera films, lets combine it with another space films that seen to ravage the film industry.

The only aspect that I find myself respecting is that these Moon creatures were not excessively described or shown. The imagination is a much more powerful tool than some half-assed CGI entity.

But in the big picture, the plot is ridiculous. Things do not scare people unless they arrive your doorstep. The moon is such a shoddy place to have dangerous alien creatures at. If they miraculously came to Earth and started killing people, it may be scarier. But it’s not scary if they are found in a place that only a dozen people have ventured.

As I have stated in many horror reviews, relating to people is a great way to scare them. This is the reason many horror films start out with a glimpse into the character’s everyday life. Apollo 18 makes this tactic impossible. How can I relate an undeveloped astronaut on the moon discussing some techno-babble. I can’t. This a major reason this film failed in my eyes.