Review of Apollo 18 (2011) by Jacob G — 29 Dec 2013

Apollo 18 is a found footage "horror" movie about a secret mission to the moon that went wrong, and rock-spiders. After a bunch of boring shit in the beginning of this movie that is meant to make you care about the astronauts; the main characters get launched into space for even more boredom. The astronauts walk around on the moon for a bit while nothing happens, I got the feeling the movie was trying to make the audience feel the isolation of being on the Moon but all I could think was "something happen already." There were several close ups of vibrating rocks to build suspense, and then rocks that were collected mysteriously show up on the floor of the landing module. I can't think of anything that would be more boring, could it be the Easter bunny leaving rocks because there are no Cadbury eggs in space? Eventually these rocks turn out to be little spiders that attack the Astronauts. Then there is a plot that makes no sense: the government, knowing there was something wrong ahead of time, sent the Astronauts to the Moon after a cosmonaut was killed. The movie spends a lot of time showing the astronauts sleeping and one going crazy after being attacked by a rock-spider. Apparently rocks that turn into spiders are also physic or something to that effect. Finally, all the astronauts die in implied, non-gore, violence to keep the "found footage" PG-13.

Although this movie should have never been made, one thing could have saved it. Predators. If instead of Mind-controlling-mineral-arachnids as villains, Apollo 18 had at least one Predator on the Moon the movie would have been tremendous. The dead cosmonaut, instead of just having a hole in his helmet could have been tied to his landing module like a tribal prisoner. It would have been ten times more suspenseful if instead of close ups of rocks, there was a close up of three red dots on the astronaut's head right before it gets blown off. The other astronaut would try and run away only to get speared by an invisible Predator. With more killing, the movie would be justified having more characters so the audience wouldn't be stuck with the same two boring guys the whole time. In the Predator version of Apollo 18 the Government would have sent the astronaut team with weapons so there could at least be a fight scene, not just two idiots being scared of inanimate objects. In the end, the astronauts would all be killed and the Predator would take the human space craft back to earth setting up the sequel.

OVERALL RATING:

APOLLO 18 - 2/10.

APOLLO 18 With Predators - 10/10.