Ah, it gets good about the time it ends.
Apollo 18 (2011)
Directed By: Gonzalo López-Gallego
The Prologue
If you haven’t noticed, those “lost footage” films are rather popular these days. So 2011′s Apollo 18 is another take on just that. However, this time around it’s a space theme with some footage that NASA didn’t want us to see (wink wink yank yank). But “someone” was able to find this footage, edit it together, and here we are! And I hope you don’t believe that, to spite me knowing that some people in the world apparently do. I myself like some space movies, I’m not the biggest sci-fi fan, but every now and again a film comes along that takes place in space that I really dig. Apollo 18 may not be one of those, but I will at least admit that it does have it’s moments..those moments just come near the end.
The Movie
Decades-old found footage from NASA’s abandoned Apollo 18 mission, where two American astronauts were sent on a secret expedition, reveals the reason the U.S. has never returned to the moon. Now of course this opens up a big can of worms and we watch as this mystery unravels before our eyes. So what really happened on that mission? Why was this footage just now found and shown to the world?? Well, we get the answers to those questions right here in this new horror/sci-fi/thriller!…Are you excited yet? It’s OK if you aren’t.
Well first and foremost, the way this thing is edited together looks authentic enough. But due to that style it takes some time to really get into what you are seeing. I’d say that for the first twenty or so minutes things are a little awkwardly edited together and it takes a lot away from this thing, including the ability to have any real kind of connection with the cast. Like pretty much every film that’s supposed to be lost footage, you’ll also notice that things start off really slow and build to the ending. It’s just unfortunate that when this thing really starts cooking it’s around the time the film is about to end.
To it’s credit, this movie at least has a good story going on. And while I won’t spoil just what is up there in space, I will admit it looks pretty cool for the most part. When that stuff finally pops up on screen is the time the movie stops being a bore and gets half way interesting. Not that many questions as to that things nature ever gets answered fully, but I supposed we would have never gotten that stuff answered anyway. It would have actually defeated the whole point of the movie wouldn’t it? I would have liked a lot more gore here, but I guess we can’t expect much more than what we get here in a PG-13 environment.
When you reach the ending of this thing, which comes around the time things start finally getting really good. You get the typical ending a film of this nature usually brings, just with a typical space and government twist on it. So all in all, it adds up to just about as average of a film as you can get these days. Not that it’s terrible or even bad, it’s just average. You may enjoy this movie as it’s going on (near the end), but you probably won’t remember much about it once you reach the ending. So, that being said, while it’s better than most you see in theaters now days, I’m not too sure it has a lot of re-watch value.
The Conclusion
Well, not awful but really not that memorable. That same sentence could pretty much describe about 90% of the PG-13 horror films I seen. If you really are into space you might get more out of this than others who aren’t that crazy about space does. So it’s a bit of a mixed bag overall. Probably just really good for a rent.
The Rating (6/10)
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