daniel cohen reviews the latest ‘lost footage’ horror film …
Plot: Apollo 17 was believed to be the last expedition to the moon. Three astronauts were commissioned for a classified mission known as Apollo 18. Through found footage, the horrifying discovery they made is revealed.
Booooooooooooooooriiiing. There are some decent ideas here, but not nearly enough to sustain an entire film. The movie tries to ride its gimmick of found footage/documentary film style the whole way through. Sorry, not buying it. It’s not as irritating as The Blair Witch Project, but it’s just so blatant and arrogant in trying to sell its style off as cool and interesting.
There at least seemed to be a genuine script, even though it only deals with three characters. Warren Christie, Llyod Owen, and Ryan Robbins are the actors. They are perfectly likable, but their back stories are just embarrassingly cliché. The movie opens up with one of the crew members enjoying a family BBQ with his wife and young son … wow, really? But that’s a minor complaint. The failure of this movie is that it’s simply not interesting.
When you look at other films of this ilk like Cloverfield or to some extent District 9, the directors do a good job of keeping you guessing. You really wanted to know what the Cloverfield monster looked like. You are genuinely interested in how the aliens lived their lives on Earth in District 9. In this, there’s no real mystery. It’s pretty clear what’s going on, but it’s directed in such a lackluster way that you just don’t care to find out more. And the ‘big thing’ to what this is all about doesn’t develop into anything of consequence. Once you realize what’s going on, there’s not much to it. You are pretty much like, ‘Yeah … figured that’s what was going to happen.’ And not only that, it just gets down right goofy at times, taking away from the ‘realistic’ tone they were shooting for.
The first 15-20 minutes is pure torture. Nothing happens! They literally launch, go on the moon, walk around for a little bit, go to bed, blah, blah, blah. It takes forever for something mildly interesting to happen. To be fair, there are a few nice jump scares that wake you up, but they last for about three seconds before going back to boring ‘I don’t care’ mode. Sorry to upset soccer fans, but this movie really is like watching a soccer game. A whole lot of nothing, but you might see a couple goals.
The one saving grace is that the ending is fairly intriguing in regards to how the fates of these characters come about. But it’s not nearly good enough for me to recommend it based solely on that. I have nothing else to say about this movie. If you really like space and learning about missions to the moon, go watch real documentaries on the subject. They will be far more interesting than this.
Rating: 4.5 out of 10 (Bad)
