Conversely, Fred Topel of CraveOnline gave the film a positive review, saying that the film "will shock you to your core" and that the last 10 minutes "are the most exciting of any summer movie, and without motion capture effects."[23]
apollo 18 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," reads the movie's official tagline.
Painfully boring, visually unappealing, tonally dull and remarkably low on tension, Apollo 18 is a space horror movie done in the found-footage style that misses its landing site by quite some margin. Heck, it never took off. A space horror movie almost seems intriguing enough just for the combination of genres alone and with a half-good premise that showed potential it's somewhat surprising that Apollo 18 manages to be so uninspired and run-of-the-mill. It tries, it uses the genre tropes and religiously follows the guide on how to make a found-footage film but ultimately to a fault, ending up as derivative drivel.
I did find a cool new tablet game called Robot Unicorn Attack 2 which I played for about an hour as this movie was running. I still need a few more levels until I can take my Robot Unicorn to the Ice World. Now THAT sounds exciting. Can't wait.
I thought this was the 4th sequel to the Tom Hanks classic movie, Apollo 13.....turns out I was wrong. Actually I rented this movie many months ago and one of my sons watched it before me and told me it was a horrible movie.
Ever since the Blair Witch Project debuted back in 1999, found-footage films have been a major source of income for movie studios due to an extremely low budgets and remarkably high returns. For example, Paranormal Activity 2 cost $3 million to make and raked in $177 million worldwide. While larger productions may make a significantly higher net-income for a studio (Transformers: Dark of the Moon), they also carry a greater risk of financial failure (Green Lantern). As a result, low cost found-footage productions, with unknown actors, small crews, and low production values are a no-brainer for movie executives.
As a result, it should come as no surprise that after exploring supernatural subjects such as witches and demons, it was only a matter of time before Hollywood added aliens to the genre with Apollo 18. However, has the found-footage movie genre finally discovered a frontier that it cannot conquer (i.e. make money from) or does Apollo 18 open up a whole new potential franchise?
Cory Goodman (who also penned Priest) had a hand in the script and the dialogue - and subsequent performances are adequate. However, found footage movies aren't about believable acting or relatable character interactions - they're about captivating tension and cathartic scares. There's no doubt that on paper, the Apollo 18 story sounds like a sure-fire success at the box office - however on the screen, the film fails at nearly every single element that made prior found-footage stories enjoyable.
As a result, it's nearly impossible to recommend Apollo 18 to anyone but the most staunch found-footage genre fans - as the film fails nearly every requirement of a tense and enjoyable time at the theater. If nothing else, the movie stands as a stark example that not every premise is ripe for the found-footage treatment. That said, it's hard to imagine Apollo 18 will not be a money-maker for the studio - even though the film cost nearly twice as much as Paranormal Activity 2 (a "whopping" $5 million) - meaning, despite being one of the sloppiest films of 2011, we'll probably be seeing an Apollo 19.
American-Canadian science fiction horror film Apollo 18, released in 2011, offered viewers an array of deleted scenes and alternate endings when it came out on Blu-Ray. The movie, which is an alternate history story with a found-footage style, was written by Brian Miller, directed by Gonzalo López-Gallego, and produced by Timur Bekmambetov and Michele Wolkoff.
Visually, the movie looks great, era-appropriate, and detailed in its design. Production designer Andrew Neskoromny (Dawn of the Dead, Pacific Rim) and costume designers Kate Main (The Hole, The Tomorrow People), Cynthia Ann Summers (The Butterfly Effect 2, Feed the Gods), and Beverly Wowchuk (Babylon 5: The Lost Tales, Seven Days) do phenomenal jobs at creating an authentic lunar lander and landscape on a low budget. Paired with editing by Patrick Lussier (director of My Bloody Valentine and Trick) and sound design by Harry Cohen (Kill Bill, Aquaman), Apollo 18 is a remarkable recreation of the technology of the 70s, keeping the visuals in accordance with the setting.
The prologue text at the beginning of the movie states that the documented footage of the secret Apollo 18 mission was uploaded to the website "www.lunartruth.com". When the movie was in theaters, if you typed that address into your browser, it would redirect you to "apollo18movie.net", which was the movie's official website. Both sites have since been shut down.
(at around 18 mins) After the first resting period the astronauts are listening to 'Cheap Day Return' by British rock band Jethro Tull. Tull's third album 'Benefit' contains the track 'For Michael Collins, Jeffrey and Me', a song which refers to Apollo 11's command module pilot Mike Collins. In the song vocalist Ian Anderson sings about the feelings of the command module pilot, being left alone above while others get to walk on the moon, something which is also referred to during the movie.
An earlier version of the movie had giant moon rock monsters in it. Although they do not feature explicitly in the final cut, some brief glimpses of much larger rock spider creatures can be seen as the lunar rover carrying Captain Anderson (Warren Christie) and Lieutenant Walker (Lloyd Owen) flips over; and just before Walker is killed, a large shadow approaches him, and his body is quickly dragged away afterwards, suggesting a much larger creature.
(at around 1h 14 mins) At the end of the movie the cover story is that one of the astronauts died in a training mission over Tallahassee, Florida. In fact, astronaut Clifton Williams was killed in a plane crash near Tallahassee while flying a T-38 jet trainer in 1967 (this movie takes place in 1974).
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Apollo 18 is another one of those movies that presents itself as reality in the vein of The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity. I've never seen the point of this genre. It's just a gimmick that I've always found to be distracting. We know it's a movie, why pretend it's something else? Filming Apollo 18 in a more traditional manner would certainly have given the filmmakers more freedom to tell a cohesive and possibly more entertaining story.
One of my problems with the "culled from actual footage" presentation is the way that every single important event in the movie gets caught on film, including one point where an astronaut happens to drop a camera in the perfect spot so that we have a birds-eye view of an important scene at the climax and then remembers to stop and grab that same camera even though he's running for his life at that point.
Despite some decent suspense near the beginning of the movie, the end result is rather silly. I don't know if they had filmed it like a regular movie if it would have made it any better, but surely it couldn't have hurt.
The cast of just three men all do a decent job with the script they were given. Warren Christie has real star potential with the necessary looks and talent to be leading man material. Lloyd Owen likewise proves himself up to the role. The problems with the movie certainly have nothing to do with the onscreen talent and in fact they make it better than it would have been in the hands of lesser actors.
The plot holes Scott mentioned are all the worse because the movie tries to pass itself off as fact. I agree that the entire set-up of the mission makes little sense. And since the veracity of the entire story hinges on just why these men were sent to the moon it ruins the movie.
It will definitely appeal to the more paranoid and delusional among us. Those that will easily believe our government would be willing to unnecessarily throw away the lives of two astronauts for very little gain will probably enjoy the movie more. It is set in 1974 in the immediate wake of the Watergate scandal which gets mentioned as a way of justifying the decisions made by the DOD.
I can always gauge a film by how much I talk about it on the car ride home with whomever I saw the movie with. As we drove through traffic my son pointed out that Warren Christie could play the lead in a movie based on the video game Mass Effect. He later showed me the game case, and there is a resemblance. I have no idea what the game is about but I know it would likely be a better film than one where some astronauts go to the moon and get crabs. 2ff7e9595c
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