DVD Reviews

Apollo 18

• Rating:
• Director: Gonzalo Lopez-Gallego
• Starring: Lloyd Owen
• Details: US / 88mins (12A).

We've been inundated with Found Footage movies of late and Apollo 18 has to very wary that what it's doing is no longer fresh and that the subgenre has been mined for stories. The plot of this Sci-Fi horror might be wary but it isn't prepared to do anything about it.
The history books will show that the last moon landing was 1972's Apollo 17, but two years later there was a final mission... funded not by NASA but by the Department of Defence. Sounds ominous? It should. Once they land, the two astronauts - Walker (Owen) and Anderson (Christie) - hear strange sounds coming from outside and there is a blood-splattered abandoned Russian module not far away. They suspect that they aren't alone but before they can do anything about it, communication with Houston and with third astronaut (Robins), orbiting the moon, has been cut off...
Lopez-Gallego understands that authenticity is paramount if Apollo 18 is to work and strives hard to make it as real as possible. It has to look like a documentary from the 70s and with its grainy footage and lens flares it does. The moon itself looks real enough too. We also get interviews with the three astronauts, the launch and the landing but Lopez-Gallego, to his credit, knows that this can be tiresome and speeds through these as fast as he can to get to the money scenes. With cameras set up in and around the module and fixed their suits at the behest of the Department of Defence, Apollo 18 avoids the Found Footage cliché of 'why don't they put the camera down?' It also utilises the 'less is more' technique to add mystery, as we never get a good look at what's happening. So far so good.
Then it suddenly gets a little daft, jettisons the realism and turns into a seemingly endless series of 'why don't they put the camera down?' scenes. At only 88 minutes, the story can't sustain the running time and there is a lot of waiting around for something to happen - it would make a tidy short film but not a feature length. The big reveal isn't as big or astonishing as one would hope either. It may be a Sci-Fi horror but the 12A rating is bang on - it doesn't get any way scary when there was ample room to.
Interesting up to a point, Apollo 18 is ultimately forgettable.

Review by Gavin Burke