The space film has an original premise with relatively decent acting, yet its intensity is overpowered by the ridiculousness of its plot.
Those looking for jumps, shrieks, and a lunar horror show, look no further. Apollo 18, is a Blair Witch-reminiscent film that showed early promise with its solid trailer and its new take on the outer space movie.
The premise is definitely original: a first person narration of a top secret NASA mission to the moon in the early 1970s. With the bad lighting and wavering screen shots, it certainly feels like a home video. Despite the cheaply manufactured intensity, the weak plot of the film made it too difficult for the audience to suspend disbelief.
The film opens with shots of two astronauts Nate (Lloyd Owen) and Ben (Warren Christie) at home spending time with their families. They receive a phone call, summoning them to NASA headquarters for a secret mission. They are given little information, as it is confidential, and the astronauts take off in a nighttime shuttle launch. Their mission: to go to the moon.
The trip through space is quick. It gives us just enough time for a bit of character development, as we see that the relationship between the three astronauts is good and the mood is jovial (John, played by Ryan Robbins, is stuck hovering around the moon for most of the film). Before long, Lloyd Owen and Warren Christie get into the lunar capsule and touch down on the Moon’s South Pole. They set up cameras, rove around, and collect samples. But their mission takes on an unprecedented twist when astronauts Lloyd and Warren discover footprints near a crater.
After some exploring, they find a Russian lunar capsule, largely ransacked and topped off with smears of blood throughout the inside. When they find a dead Russian astronaut in a dramatic flash of light, they come to discover they’re not alone on the Moon. The tension builds as their equipment gets moved while they are sleeping, and there are eerie noises interfering with their radio.
The film delves deeper into the psychology of the two astronauts at this point. The style of the filming puts you in the place of the astronauts experiencing the mission—the heavy breathing and the anxiety feel almost contagious as they produce jumps with the first-person camera. As the action starts heating up, the lighting and the noises begin to take hold on your psychology. For better or for worse, you will probably find yourself holding your breath and jumping sky-high throughout parts of the movie.
For me, this was where the movie was able to succeed—in its ability to transmit anxiety to the audience that mirrored the astronauts’ experience. Still, I found the second half of the film startlingly unimpressive. The cheesy plotline attempted to straddle too many genres and topics, and fell flat. Where there was potential for intrigue invoked by government conspiracy and the space race, or a solid sci-fi horror film, it came across as little more than artificial intensity compensating for a very weak plot.
Lloyd Owen’s solid acting performance was the highlight of the film, as he does incredibly well with the script’s limited plot and character development. Warren Christie does a fair job as well, although his role becomes a bit cliché as he replays a tape of his proud son pretending to be an astronaut just like him. And because the stars were still able to shine in outer space, I give this film 2 out of 5 Patches.
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