Review of Apollo 18 (2011) by Harry W — 07 Jul 2014

Although not a big fan of the found-footage genre of horror film, as Apollo 18 was set on the moon I figured it would be more interesting.

Capitalising on the recent success of Paranormal Activity, Apollo 18 has an interesting premise about a secret space mission. Unfortunately Gonzalo Lopez-Gallego proves to have an inability to handle himself in directing a horror film and ends up creating a film which is nothing but boring.

Apollo 18 has problems because despite its innovative setting, the atmosphere of the film never really feels that genuine. Despite the fact that it uses clever low budget techniques to craft a production design which feels mostly legitimate and cinematography techniques that reflect the real way NASA kept an eye out for its astronauts, it is hard to believe that the characters are on the moon. The camera in the film is very shaky and it is never really that stable, therefore it is not a good viewing experience. It does not add to the atmosphere at all and just makes the film tedious to watch. Also, when the actors move around, there is nothing to suggest that the gravity has changed. I mean they run across the moon while completely ignoring the fact that the change in gravity would affect the qualities of their movements. While inside the spacecraft they end up doing the same thing, so director Gonzalo Lopez-Gallego reveals that he does not understand simple science when direction Apollo 18. I'm sure there are many other scientific flaws in the film that I was unable to pick up on, but that is the most obvious that really anyone should be able to see. So Apollo 18 does not pay any favours to itself by seeming genuinely false in its actual meaning. It is already a cheap looking film, but the fact that Gonzalo Lopez-Gallego was unable to back it up with any sense of realism whatsoever is what renders it a poor quality feature.

The writing in Apollo 18 attempt to bring in themes of Government conspiracy and plays it off since it takes place in 1974, around the time of the counterculture movement when corrupt authorities were becoming more clear to humanity, particularly after the Watergate Scandal. It just doesn't work though. All in all, the problem with Apollo 18 is that it is a few decades too late. This could have been a great film years ago, but by the point of 2011 moon landing conspiracy theories are a thing of the past. So the cultural relevance of the film is really not that great, and it does not make the premise of the film any better. Apollo 18 really is just a thinly scripted film and ends up running a boring path for 90 minutes which makes it seem a lot longer than it actually is.

Apollo 18 is a problem because the director set his ambitions way too low. In contrast to the low budget TV movies that air on SYFY every week, at least they go for something and usually result in reaching a level of over the top cheap fun in the process. But the problem with Apollo 18 is the fact that it does not aim all that high at all. It seems like Gonzalo Lopez-Gallego was just experimenting with a genre and a low budget as a means of making money, and considering that the film ended up making back more than 5 times its budget, it succeeded. It does not however succeed at entertaining viewers, so it is not a film worth paying money to see. It is one of those movies which will eventually end up playing on TV and entertaining viewers who come in halfway through and become confused as to if the film is real or not. Aside from that it has really minimal redeeming qualities to it. Apollo 18 is simply an example of wasted potential, and it ends up being a slow and repetitive film which drills weak writing and a lack of plot dynamics into the viewers' head until the end of the long 90 minute running time. It is not a film worth putting yourself through, and while it is not likely to be a film that you have a specific disdain for, there is little to honestly suggest that it will end up being one you enjoy. It is poorly written, cheap looking, tainted by clumsy direction and lacking in originality, so it has essentially no redeeming efforts to justify its creation at all.

Warren Christie gave a decent leading performance. He has to carry the heft of a weak script and indifferent direction the whole time, but he comes out shining on the other side mostly. His performance is not all that amazing, but considering the low bar of entertainment value set up by the rest of the film, he is one of the significantly better aspects of Apollo 18 because he manages to make a sympathetic character and almost makes the artificial nature of the script feel genuine. He is essentially the only positive aspect of Apollo 18 and manages to keep things sympathetic to a certain extent during some of the more dramatic scenes. His character is more important on the basis of the general idea of him, as he is an astronaut sent into space only to be betrayed by his own country and left for dead. He conveys the horror of that gesture in the final scenes of the film, so Warren Christie's effort is not all that bad.

But despite a decent performance from Warren Christie, Apollo 18 falls flat under direction from Gonzalo Lopez-Gallego because he ends up giving the film a cheap look, a weak story, an atmosphere which is bereft of any suspense or thrills, a poor script and nothing else but echoes of better horror films in the found footage genre such as the recently successful Paranormal Activity or the infinitely superior example The Blair Witch Project.