2 gibbles out of 5
Director: Gonzalo López-Gallago
Despite the bad press, “Apollo 18” deserves notice for trying to bring something new to the found-footage genre, breaking some pacing trends to deliver an almost real sense of fear. Notice given? Okay. It’s still not a very good film, however, mistaking pacing accuracy for interest, and when it ends up giving into the demands of it’s genre anyway… well. You’re lucky you got 2 gibbles out of me.
So sometime before Apollo 17, Nasa apparently abandoned plans for Apollo18, 19 and 20 due to budget constraints. Then, in film world, footage regarding Apollo 18 was anonymously uploaded to a website, and here we are presented with an edited view of that footage. It’s a fine enough basis for a film, though we are skeptical viewers now and know that this is all fake, so the footage is presented without any further explanation beyond that. Furthermore, when the film ends, we get credits – including directors and actors. Maybe this is normal for these movies now, but it’s the first of its genre where I actively noticed their inclusion. It gives Apollo 18 a sort of red-headed stepchild appearance, an inability to fully commit to its found-footage guns without sheepishly admitting that it knows it’s all a silly movie.
The initial proceedings are quiet, and boring. They introduce us to the three astronauts, some interview footage that’s meant to set up the mystery around the flight without having some kind of direct exposition. This leads into ‘to the moon’ footage that successfully matches the tone of a lot of Nasa footage you’ve seen – random chatter, a sense of drifting, blips and bleeps. I say this was boring, but it’s the portion of the film that is the most bold, willing to go afloat with only a sense that something will eventually happen. The opening interviews to set up that “something” could’ve been executed more smoothly, more naturally, and the casting is off – while the aging of the film to make it look old blends it with the archival footage well enough (though the colors are sharper), only 1 member of the 3 astronauts has the sort of prim and proper look that seems to spring from that era, with one character looking downright modern. But: it’s still a respectable start.
And what they find on the moon is actually pretty cool. It’s as lacking in explanation as the general premise, but it’s nifty that a film of this type shows something directly.
These pluses still don’t imbalance the general clumsiness of the movie. It loses the sensible reason for the first-person camera like all these films do and just doesn’t know exactly what to do with its premise. The good elements I mention are good in theory but don’t fit together. And it just erupts into insensible paranoia that feels like the tacked on “only conclusion we can think of” that it is.
Apollo 18 is a very uncommitted film, which is a shame for the good ideas bubbling around in the mishmash.
A moment of self-reflection.
vaguely-offensive 