It’s hard to really put my finger on what I did not like about this film. On the surface it seems promising as a horror movie with a Red Planet sci-fi vibe thrown into the mix, but so often what sounds great in theory ultimately fails in execution. Apollo 18 is one such case. One of the
problems with this movie is that the cast is fairly non-descript. While we get a bit of a backstory on each,
the astronauts (played by Warren Christie, Lloyd Owen, and Ryan Robbins) are essentially
interchangeable parts. This is
especially problematic in a horror movie, because it builds its suspense on the
assumption that you care about the respective fates of the protagonists.
Without ruining the plot of the movie (I’ll leave that to
the movie itself), the antagonist (or the source of all the lunar chicanery) is
not particularly interesting or terrifying for that matter. This leaves you with a film about astronauts you do not care about, facing a menace that does not scare you. The scariest part about the film is that they
managed 86 minutes of running time out of this set up.
It truly was difficult for me to watch this film – this
coming from someone who has great appreciate for both the horror and sci-fi
genres. It was so difficult in fact that I quit watching
before the closing credits. I left it to
the fine people who contribute to Wikipedia to let me know how things wrapped up. I found the plot played better in
plain text than it did as a visual piece.
As a kid my parents used to preach to me not to start something that I
would not finish. So I pass this advice
on to you. Don’t watch it. Ever.
If however “found-footage” really floats your boat, be on the lookout
for Chronicle. It is generating some
positive buzz.
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