Apollo 18

It’s been long since more than half of a film pissed me off, but after a couple of days I felt like watching it again. Apollo 18 is found-footage horror set on the moon, where the astronauts find a mysterious evil. The previous sentence hides the best and worst things of this film. The found-footage format tries to be properly convincing, and it goes so far that at times the image is very poor quality, grainy, intermittent; you can’t see anything. On the one hand, this pissed me off massively, but on the other, in connection with the lunar landscape and the interiors of the spaceship, it feels very authentic and original. The film has a very thick horror sci-fi atmosphere and it truly feels as if something bad happened to real astronauts on the moon. And then the mysterious evil… when it shows up the first time, something like “seriously?!” flashed through my head, but after a bit, the cringe horror monster becomes a pretty scary horror monster… that “thing” earned my respect (I’m intentionally not telling what it is). In the end, thumbs up, but to tell the truth, while I watched it I fancied giving it two stars, now I’m going for four. It grew on me. (2011.11.05)

SPOILER ALERT!!! Apollo 18 is an incredible strain on the audience's logical tolerance reflex. To keep down all those unflattering notions of Americans netting butterfly debris with a camera in orbit in order to generate this footage, the fact that the second half of the film was definitively now being filmed by some leggy rock walking unseen by the main characters, a space parasite pulling a camera on a tripod in front of the lunar module so that the little pebbles have something to play with and the viewer knows jack shit. Plus, if someone's going to focus on realistically revitalizing 70s filming tech, they might as well do something to make those post-synchros not sound so damn clean, because that ruins the whole illusion. Apollo 18 mainly has three positives – a fantastic setting that pushes haunted isolation to the maximum level possible. Because what can you do in a miniature module with two people somewhere on the fucking moon. The constant switching between formats, which is really the only thing that keeps your attention. And a first half where you trust that the movie won’t be anywhere near as stupid as it ends up being and will unfold a dramatic space race conspiracy. Unfortunately, the walking rocks that make noises like when you reboot a tamagotchi definitely take the cake. Good thing they didn't make it to our planet. PS: the film contains a badass action scene (btw shot with three cameras... ahem) where an astronaut jumps out of a lunar rover while driving. Watch out! (2012.05.13)

Great idea and very good processing - unfortunately, between the style and what we watch, there is an insufficient gap of observational coldness. It manages to create a certain impression of realism, but not any involvement of the viewer in the story. However, this may be the intention - the film pretends to be a consistent mockumentary, but it was supposed to be even more consistent and avoid various clichés in the plot and in the image. A few more degrees of frost, and it would be an excellent voyeur experiment with such a popular genre, in which the onlooker would clinically enjoy a cruel lunar experiment. This is how something arose on the edge between observation and the effort to engage, which on the one hand lacks ultimate authenticity (e.g., the very fact that we watch the recording is logically impossible), while on the other hand it has precise timing and gradation that is so essential for the genre. Apollo 18 resigns to its own rich potential and loiters in the golden middle path. (2011.12.26)

This is more than a well crafted interesting idea that reminded me of the atmosphere of the stories of A. C. Clark. With the exception of Cloverfield, I haven't really seen any recent sci-fi or horror films made in the "We found this tape and this is happening on it" style, and that's probably why Apollo 18 impressed me so much. The technical execution is flawless, the actors seamless, the finale nicely built up, and the runtime just right. (2012.08.27)