(2011) ***1/2
Why has man never returned to the moon? Apparently we have. In Apollo 18 we learn that NASA and the Department of Defense sent a secret manned mission to the moon in 1974 in order to install a device to spy on Russian communications. The men were outfitted with Kodachrome hand-held cameras in order to document the mission. They never made it back to Earth. A space conspiracy website called “The Lunar Truth” somehow obtained 84 hours of footage from this mission and edited it down to 90 minutes before uploading it onto their website. Apollo 18 is a found footage movie detailing the fate of the astronauts.
I love stories that take place in isolated settings and the surface of the moon is about as isolated as you can get. Apollo 18 is yet another “found footage” tale and a fairly effective one at that. The isolation of the moon combined with the claustrophobic interior of the space capsule heightens the tension once otherworldly dangers are encountered. Apollo 18 takes a while to get going and in the interim we watch the 3 astronauts go through the machinations of their job while exchanging stilted conversation about their lives back on Earth. The scares are mostly of the things-that-go-bump-in-the-night variety but they work well here. The final 10 minutes are especially tense/gripping. The found “footage” looks terrific and matches the look of real moon landing footage that we have seen all of our lives. I know that some of you do not enjoy found footage movies (I love them) but for those who do this one is fun.
