Apollo 18

When I originally saw the previews for this movie, I was kind of excited.  A found footage movie of a lost Apollo mission that went horribly awry.  From the looks of the preview, it looked like there was a monster loose on the moon.  I had a hope that it was some sort of Moon-Yeti.

I was sorely mistaken.  Both in my excitement and in my hopes of seeing a Moon-Yeti of any sort.

 We follow three American astronauts on a top secret mission to the moon.  The goal was to place sensors that would alert the United States of any missile attacks from Russia.  Their trip is disguised as a satellite launch.  Once there, they start seeing odd things, and they realize that they are not alone.

The movie starts out amazingly slow.  But so did Quarantine.  And, since they’re the same style of movie (and Quarantine is amazing), I gave it the benefit of the doubt.  Fifteen minutes in, I was still on board.  “They’re setting something up.  We’re getting to know the characters.  It’ll pick up soon, and we’ll be invested in the characters.”  By the time the 30 minute mark rolled around with little in the way of anything interesting happening, I began to lose hope.  Then 45 minutes with nothing.  Once an hour hit, I had given up all hope and fast-forwarded to the end of the movie, just to see if anything interesting happened.

It didn’t.

There were moments where it appeared as though something interesting was going to happen.  The discovery of a dead Russian cosmonaut and his abandoned ship.  Their own equipment getting destroyed.  A crab-like creature that appears to be crawling inside a helmet.  But every time something even borderline interesting started to happen, it almost immediately subsided.  The movie would start building towards something, then nothing would happen for the next 5 minutes.  Build build build…nothing.  It kept on like that for the majority of the movie.

It was a good idea.  What’s more claustrophobic than the vast expanse of space?  A found footage movie only amps up that feeling of claustrophobia and panic.  This could have been a great movie.  Perhaps my expectations were a bit too high, but I think I would have hated it even if my expectations were low.  It was just a boring, slow-moving movie with no pay-off. 

 

This could have been good.  It really, really wasn’t.  Seeing as how I had just watched a terrific found footage movie not that long before this one (Trollhunter…which will be my next post), I knew how good a movie like this could be.  Which only highlighted just how bad this movie was.    

Rating: 1/5