If one were to figure out a time when the hot new concept of the “found footage” horror film officially went from inspired to tedious, Apollo 18 is a good place to begin. How so? It takes the generic concept of mankind’s first encounter with aliens not being a good one and gives it a new spin with the “found footage” concept.
Astronauts Walker, Anderson and Grey (Lloyd Owen, Warren Christie, Ryan Robbins) are sent on a secret mission from NASA to the moon to do some exploration. Going to the moon for what seems to be a routine mission, things get hairy when they encounter aliens who aren’t exactly the friendly type. The film follows them as they discover that they weren’t the first to encounter them, either, and the continuing drama puts their lives in danger. As they continue to discover what’s happening around them, and what they’re dealing with, the three have to figure a way to make it back home alive and without these creatures coming with them.
The problem is that the film doesn’t do anything either the format or the genre it’s trying to inhabit. This is a horror film with sci-fi elements, shunted into this new format to provide a new look at it, but it really doesn’t do anything new or original with it. It follows the typical formula for the genre and ends in the same way every one of the “found footage” films has. At 88 minutes it’s a rush to get to the finish and you can almost time when each main event of the film is going to happen because of it. And that same running length is one of the film’s greatest weaknesses.
The film’s running length, short even for a horror film, doesn’t allow for the film to really develop into something that has any sort of emotional depth. In order for the film to get underway quickly, and to get to the moon, Gonzalo Lopez-Gallego has to rush through the crucial character building steps. This is a film with a significantly longer, better paced time running through its 2nd and 3rd acts and a remarkably short opening act. We don’t get any real time to know the astronauts and their motivations for going into space. Set in 1974, at the end of the biggest era for space exploration and manned missions to the moon, the whole motivations for being in the Apollo program and being amongst the rare handful of men to actually have left the Earth’s surface gives plenty of tremendous motivating factors that aren’t explored.
We get basic, cursory information but nothing deep or exciting enough to make us care about the actors. They’re boiled down to the same types of roles as you would in a slasher film, the equivalent to teenagers looking to have sex and do drugs, which is a shame. With an opening act of some length, instead of a rushed attempt at getting the astronauts to the scene of the crime as quickly as possible, the events happening to them would mean that much more.
Instead we’re given a film that’s essentially a Dead Teenager film, just in space and with a handheld camera.
Director: Gonzalo Lopez-Gallego
Notable Cast: Lloyd Owen, Warren Christie, Ryan Robbins
Writer(s): Brian Miller
