Apollo 18 (2011) Review

I'd just like to say before I start this review that the entire time while I was watching this movie, THE ENTIRE TIME, all I could think about was that "if two guys were on the moon and one killed the other with a rock would that be fucked up or what" meme. It may have ruined the immersion of the movie for me, but whatever, I love that meme to death. It's a real thinker. Just imagine. Two guys on the moon and one kills the other with a rock. Would that be fucked up or what? Like seriously. Anyway, this is Apollo 18.

SPOILER ALERT! IN SPACE! WITH ALIENS!

HOLY CRAP IT"S ANOTHER FOUND FOOTAGE MOVIE WHEN WILL THE MADNESS END

So basically, these two dudes go into space and they land on the moon and plant some machines to try and mess with whatever it is the Russians are doing on the moon because the US found out that Russians went to the moon and did some stuff on it. Then some aliens come out and that's about it. No, really. That's the whole movie. Really boring, right? Ehhhh, only a little bit. 

The aliens in this movie aren't your traditional "little green men", nor are they terrifying abominations with sickle arms and tentacle mouths. They are little itty bitty buggy type things that disguise themselves as moon rocks to get close to their prey. That's.....actually kinda clever. Props, writers. 

So, how this movie goes is that the two astronauts collect what they think are moon rocks the first day, and some of those rocks turn out to be aliens. They find a dead Russian cosmonaut in a crater and a Russian moon lander and then later one of the astronauts (we'll call him Jim) sees a little spider thing crawling inside of his helmet and when they get back to their lander, everything's fine. 

A bit later on, Jim starts experiencing paranoia and starts to go crazy in the lander and when the other astronaut (we'll call him John) examines him, he cuts a moon rock out of Jim's arm. BUT IT WASN'T A MOON ROCK IT WAS ACTUALLY ONE OF THE PARASITIC ALIENS THAT LOOK LIKE MOON ROCKS OOOOOHHHHHH SPOOPS! 

Anywho, Jim and John finally figure out that the aliens are little bugs that look like moon rocks and they're whats causing Jim to go nuts. They try to escape in their pod but surprise surprise, it's broken. They then try to go to the Russian pod, but Jim gets pulled into a crater by an alien. John makes it to the Russian pod and manages to take off right as a fully-alien-controlled Jim is about to break into the ship. Oh yeah, Jim's head explodes here too and it's pretty neato. 

John radios to the closest manned station, but they think that he's infected with moon bugs as well, so they say that they can't let him on. At this point, everything goes bad. Since this is a found footage movie, we have to find some way of killing off the main character. Sooooooo let's have the gravity shut off and then have that reveal that there were moon rock bugs on the ship the whole time and they'll float up into the air and all swarm onto John at once, resulting in nobody being able to control the pod and it crashing into the space station, killing everyone on board as well. Cut to pre-mission footage of Jim having a barbecue with his earth family and that's a wrap folks! 

 

Alright, so what did I think of Blair Witch In Space-errrr Apollo 18? Honestly, the found footage really made this movie incredibly boring. I think if it was shot like a traditional movie instead of the found footage, then it would have been a much more enjoyable film. The acting is okay, nothing spectacular and also nothing to awful. It does suffer a bit from shaky cam syndrome, but that's to be expected considering it's a found footage film. Honestly, this movie had a lot of potential to be a thrilling, suspenseful movie. It just didn't have the right delivery or pacing for it. Everything felt a bit rushed, which I blame the lack of plot for. The astronauts literally finish their mission in the first 20 minutes and are about to go home when all of the alien stuff starts happening. This could have easily been a short film with a mild alien chase scene as the climax and it would have worked a lot better. Some of the effects are neat and I really liked the overall design and concept of the aliens. However, style points only go so far and it's not enough to save this movie from being the snoozefest that it is. I give Apollo 18 4 guys being killed on the moon with a rock out of 10. It's worth at least one watch for the cool aliens, but you'll likely immediately forget about it afterwards.