APOLLO 18

Apollo 18 presents itself as lost footage (yep, another one of those movies) of a mission to the moon which never returned. The premise is that after the cancellation of the Apollo program, the Department of Defence send a secret mission to the moon under the guise of a satellite launch. Apparently 30 years later 40+ hours of footage was uploaded to a website and this film is an edited presentation of that. These "lost footage" movies really grade on me. Their very nature lessens their effect because the viewer is well aware that they're watching something fake, so why bother passing it off as real? Apollo 18 has its effective moments. Most of it is cliched but a few startling moments and disturbing images give it an intensity that is welcome. **spoiler alert** Unfortunately its concept of a parasitical alien organism is straight out of Ridley Scott's Alien, thus rendering the movie devoid of all originality. Much of the footage from inside the luna module also looks dodgy, like two actors sitting in a poorly envisioned recreation. Most disappointing of all is the amount of filmmaking talent behind the movie... Timur Nuruakhitovich (Night Watch, Day Watch, Wanted) ... Patrick Lussier (My Bloody Valentine, Drive Angry) ... and Ron Schmidt (Black Snake Moan, The Seeker)... they all have creative input and could have influenced a much better movie. If it were a proper film narrative (not lost footage) then I would have bought into it. It could have been genuinely scary.

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