Customer Reviews

Apollo 18 (Blu-ray/DVD + Digital Copy)

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(28)
3 star:		(27)
2 star:		(30)
1 star:		(61)

 

 

"Found footage" horror films are a dime a dozen these days, having started to wear out their welcome, from "The Blair Witch Project" to "Cloverfield" to "Paranormal Activity", one can't help but feel that "Apollo 18" falls into the trap of trying to ride on the coattails of those who came before, and at a time where the genre seems to be wearing itself thin. Thankfully however, "Apollo 18" manages to distinguish itself enough to stand on it's own legs, and deliver a satisfying experience.

"Apollo 18" follows the tale of the final, top-secret mission to the moon. Assembled from top-secret footage taken during the mission itself, we follow the three astronauts as they head to the moon to put up several audio recorders, so the good old US of A can get an edge on those pesky commies in Russia. However, shortly after landing, they make a shocking discovery and realize that their mission has become incredibly dangerous.

There's a lot that can't be said about "Apollo 18" without giving away some nice surprises, but I can say this: "Apollo 18" has the advantage of multiple camera angles and intimacy going for it. Unlike similar films, the action here is filmed from multiple angles (mounted cameras in the spaceship, hand held, cameras on suits, etc.), so that we constantly have new things to look at, rather then shaky footage shot from a single camera. I also really enjoyed the sense of loneliness that the movie creates: We never leave the three astronauts, and as the film goes on, the tension and dread really build, and culminates in a very memorable climax.

For all that it gets right, there are a few areas where "Apollo 18" stumbles: For one thing, it's not all that scary. Creepy yes, and with a great atmosphere of dread, but there are few outright scares (though the scenes with a strobe light are REALLY well done). The main characters also are fairly generic (the all around nice guy, the chipper pilot, the determined commander), but because there are only three of them, we're still interested in what happens to them, so that can be forgiven.

All in all, "Apollo 18" manages to carve it's own unique identity in the found footage genre. Despite the lack of genuine terror, it's sense of isolation and dread goes a long way to creating a very effective atmosphere. While it probably won't win any awards or revolutionize the genre, "Apollo 18" is still a memorable, enjoyable film, and is easily recommended.

I watched this movie at the theater last night. I like science fiction movies and "found footage movies" a lot. This movie, given its alleged low budget, is really well made. It looks as if you were watching an authentic recording of a moon mission gone very wrong. As everyone at this point knows, these movie endings are never good for the characters involved, and anyone expecting otherwise should not even bother to watch them.
I give this movie five stars because I really inmersed myself in the plot. The dark, isiolated, barren moonscape is incredibly well made, as well as the spaceships visual details and sounds. The acting was excellent, and the moon creatures convincing.

Suppose, following the official final lunar mission of Apollo 17 in December 1972, that the once-aborted Apollo 18 mission had been taken over by the Pentagon and sent to the Moon on a highly secret mission? That's the premise behind the 2011 film APOLLO 18, a film that is not only a conspiracy tract, but also something of an outer-space shocker a la the 1979 blockbuster ALIEN.

The premise of this pseudo-documentary sci-fi enterprise is that, under a cloak of secrecy so great that apparently not even the same American media that uncovered the truth of Watergate knows about, the Department of Defense sent a three-man crew to the Moon on Apollo 18 in December 1974 on an errand that the crew clearly knew nothing about beforehand. Everything seems to go well at first; the two men (Warren Christie; Lloyd Owen) who land on the Moon in the lunar module "Liberty" make their landing as routine as anything we saw during the real Apollo program (with the exception, of course, of the Apollo 13 mission of 1970, which almost took a fatal turn). But once they get there, they discover what would appear to be an actual Russian lunar module a mere three miles from their landing site; and when they enter the module, they see the interior is in a shambles, with blood over the control panels, and a couple of very dead Russian cosmonauts. Even more, Own and Christie discover tracks made on the Moon's surface that are neither theirs nor those of the cosmonauts--indicating, of course, extra-terrestrial life (a premise that defies a lot of scientific credibility since, at least during the actual Apollo missions, no evidence of such a thing was ever found on the Moon's airless surface). But then the extra-terrestrial creatures, which look like mini-crabs, appear out of the lunar rocks, and then....

Basically a combination of various conspiracy-type sci-fi films (e.g. HANGAR 18, CAPRICORN ONE) , legitimate sci-fi (2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY; ALIEN), docudrama (APOLLO 13), and "found horror footage" (THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT), APOLLO 18 was largely financed by the very independent brothers Harvey and Bob Weinstein for what was an extremely paltry amount, $5 million. Given its attempts at BLAIR WITCH-style tactics (shaky cameras; grainy video; strobe lights) and working with technology that existed back in the mid-1970s, the makers of APOLLO 18 have sought to exploit that market of so-called "found film" footage that popped up after BLAIR WITCH's sudden and huge success in 1999. The finished product has many of the same flaws and high points of BLAIR WITCH; the acting by the three principal actors cannot be expected to be on the level of Tom Hanks, Kevin Bacon, or Bill Paxton in APOLLO 13. And it certainly has too many credibility gaps to either be as enlightening as "2001" or as scary as ALIEN, though, strangely, the brief moments when the lethal crab-like creatures do appear in person (mostly, they are implied) give off a shock factor not far removed from THE BIRDS or JAWS, which is far better than most horror films of recent vintage have managed to do.

Not surprisingly, both NASA and the Pentagon disavowed giving the makers of APOLLO 18 any help in its making, and it's just as well. This movie is no masterpiece by any reasonable definition of the term, even given a budget that, by today's sci-fi standards, is very low indeed. As an experiment in combining conspiracy theories, pseudo-documentary techniques, legitimate sci-fi, and horror, however, it does succeed in certain ways that very few others of its type ever dreamed of.

First off I have to say that the trailer is the best part of this movie.

************************************Major Spoiler Alert*********************************************************************

Here's why this movie was just plain bad

1. The monsters were basically moon rocks - that should be enough reason to give this movie one star

2. The monsters can not only live without oxygen but can go without food for a very long time - though it is questionable whether the creatures actually eat humans

3. Somehow the movie footage made it back to Earth even though at the end of the movie the two spacecrafts collide into each other. How did the footage get back to Earth?

4. A very bad rip off of The Blair Witch Project style horror movie sub genre.

5. A horror movie is suppose to scare you. I don't find moon rocks scary in the least, do you?

Bottom line, STAY FAR AWAY FROM THIS

Shaky camera , poor actors , and budget special effects.I don't think anyone is trying anymore to make good horror movies. Watch Moon if you want quality movie. One dollar from redbox deserves two stars

Apollo 18 delivers a nice low budget story. The look of the footage taken on the moon was very nicely handled. And it was no man-in-a-can picture...there's plenty of lunar landscape, a Lunar Rover, and more. Technically, very well done. The story itself was pretty intense. There was a single, nearly insurmountable problem: if the movie was constructed of "found footage" left behind by the guys on the last mission to the moon, who went to the moon to fetch the cameras? Even if there was a TV camera sending footage back to NASA on Earth in such a way no one else would pick it up, there would only be one feed....which fails to account for all the camera angles. (Most footage we have of the moon landings was taken by film cameras not TV cameras.) And for critical periods of the movie, they are out of touch with Earth anyway. That occured to me at the beginning, and the problem never went away, even when the credits rolled. If you can get past that, it's an excellent nail-biter.

Do you find yourself watching "The Blair Witch Project" over and over again, saying to yourself "man, I just can't get enough of this faux reality style of film making? But, why can't someone make a fake reality show in outer space?". Well, your wait is over! Apollo 18 has the all the acting talent and cinematic excellence of my uncle's home vacation videos coupled with the special effects grandeur of cable access TV.

Utilizing the increasingly popular "found footage" genre that combines elements of the thriller into a faux documentary presentation, "Apollo 18" takes an interesting story and serves up exactly what you might expect. That is both a compliment and a criticism. Neither particularly good or bad, this is a film with limited ambition or originality--but it still works rather effectively if you've got nothing better lined up for entertainment. I watched this with a friend, and when the movie ended--he turned to me and said "well, that was just what I thought it would be." It's not that either of us hated the film--far from it--we simply thought it lacked any real element of surprise. It's reasonably well made, the actors are appealing enough (if not explored in much depth), and the effects are solid. It just lacks impact from a plotting standpoint.

The film gives us a cursory introduction to the three astronauts who will be journeying to the moon on Apollo 18. In flight, they banter mildly--but things get more serious when they arrive at their destination. The two men who go to the surface start to experience unsettling hallucinogenic dreams. Were they exposed to a strange mineral? Or might there be some other life form wrecking havoc with their lucidity. Battling darkness, the unknown, and constant communication problems--the men soon realize that they may well be in jeopardy. Again, nothing comes as a particular surprise to the viewer so the execution of the plot is key. The actors do well in increasingly panicked performances, but there is little to distinguish this from countless other pictures. All plays out precisely as you know it will.

Don't expect complicated explanations or any type of developed mythology--everything must just be accepted at face value. Clocking in at just under ninety minutes, the movie is easy enough to watch with a minimum of commitment. I certainly enjoyed aspects of the film, but it's nothing that I'd go out of my way to watch again. But if you like the genre, you might give this a try. But be warned. If you've seen the trailer or the advertisements, you absolutely know what to expect--so don't set your sights much higher! KGHarris, 12/11.

I have been reviewing on Amazon for 13 years, have posted almost 1600 reviews, including those for several hundred movies, am a former Top 50 reviewer (under the original ranking system, not the new one, which rates you higher the more positive votes you get, and so discourages more objective and especially justifiably negative reviews), and this is one of the few times I've ever given anything a one-star review.

First of all, I admit to being easily entertained when it comes to movies and am not that critical of them usually, and if a movie has ANYTHING going for it at all I usually rate it three stars. To earn a two-star or one-star rating from me a movie really has to be almost incredibly bad with practically no redeeming qualities at all.

Unfortunately I have to admit that this movie manages that in spades. If the movie was actually worth watching, the shaky, jerky, amateurish camera work a la the "Blair Witch Project" and other similar "found footage" movies might have been forgivable, but in this case just manages to make the increasingly implausible and nonsensical plot and story line even more annoying to watch.

<<Spoiler alert!!!>>

Three astronauts are sent to the moon on a dangerous secret mission without being told by the DOD what they're up against. This makes no sense at all. We know this since the deputy director of defense admits they understood the situation and what happened to the Russian astronauts before the American astronauts arrived.

As time goes on (at least the movie does a decent job of building up the suspense, I'll give it that much) the threat is eventually revealed to be a bizarre new life form that looks like ordinary moon rocks--except that they can suddenly sprout legs, climb into your space suit, and eat your face. Horrors.

When the you-know-what hits the proverbial fan (hard to do in an airless environment but this movie manages even that) the director tells the two remaining astronauts that they've been contaminated and that they can't be recovered. Really? Maybe they should have told them the Russian astronauts had encountered a deadly threat so that they could have taken steps to protect themselves in the first place.

The desolate Lunar landscape is rendered realistically, though, as well as the interior scenes of the landing module. At least that much came off well. But the movie takes a long time to ramp up and once it gets going--basically in the last 30 minutes--it's almost over. Fortunately.

As an homage to the sci-fi and horror genre of the 50s and 60s with its cheesy monsters, bad acting, silly plots, and hokey special effects, this movie might be forgivable, but even "Plan 9 from Outer Space" manages to be entertaining in its bumbling sort of way, which this movie is not. If you're looking for "Plan 10 1/2 from Outer Space" then this movie might be for you. Otherwise commit it to the depths of space from whence hopefully it will never return--or at least, like Haley's Comet--only once every 76 years. ;-(

The plot for this tedious film is simple enough: Apollo 17 is the last reported mission to the moon, but Apollo 18 actually happened clandestinely, under a Department of Defense emblazoned conspiracy umbrella. The movie displays the "found footage."

First and foremost, I hated the filming techniques. I get what they were attempting, but I wanted to hurt someone when it was finished. Far too much choppy, shaky, grainy footage that jumped around like the camera was in a 10-foot blender. The discontinuity between cuts reminded me of a security camera at the mall. While it added an authentic feel to everything, it also distracted significantly. The action is never seen. The movement is cursory. Then there's the great reveal that barely happened. Implausible or not, the antagonist of a film needs to eventually be revealed and placed on display. Otherwise the buildup is all for naught. Imagine Jaws where all you see is the fin the entire movie. At a certain point we need to see more than subliminal evil.

The positives of this film are minimal. The actors played the All-American, big man on campus role pretty well. For NASA cream of the crop they were believable. Sets were cramped, claustrophobic, and space-age, exactly what a space neophyte expects. It's clear that the hall pass given by NASA was liberally used to cull source material for realistic set pieces and ideas. A few jump scares are thrown in, but the timing may as well have been on a zoetrope they were so predictable. Beyond that, there isn't much to like.

The morose ending not only fills conspiracy theorists tin foil caps, but leaves a massive plot-hole that needs a backhoe to cover up. Once you watch the film - if you want to waste money - you'll be asking why Apollo 18 ever occurred. I'm not only talking about the mission in the film, but the film itself.