I really can’t be bothered to set the scene for this movie review. It’s terrible, one of the worst films I have ever seen on release (and I saw Cheaper By The Dozen 2). I’m going to spoil the whole movie in this review, but trust me when I say it really isn’t worth your time.
In an age where we have more scientific and mechanical power at our fingertips than ever before, you’d think we as a species would be flitting back and forth to the Moon to pick up space-Dominos by now. Unfortunately we’re too broke to do so, and our great human race has been reduced to releasing rubbish sci-fi/horror films instead. Apollo 18 is, in essence, about two blokes walking around on the surface of the Moon for a little bit, then going for a sleep. Occasionally the camera decides the rip-roaring scientific study-action is getting too exciting, and very obviously makes a rock move or plays a spooky insect noise over the footage. That’s it, really. Utterly predictable from start to finish, the character building is hackneyed – tough US pilots, the family man, the one doing it for the opportunity, it’s nothing you couldn’t write yourself in ten minutes.
The first act is tediously slow, full of psuedo-realistic mission launching. Lots of “do you copies” aside, it takes a good twenty minutes before it even reveals itself as a horror film. After THAT, it’s another twenty minutes consisting of little more than a rock falling over every now and again. The first okay moment of the film comes around now, with the US astronauts discovering an abandoned USSR lunar lander. This is followed by an interesting, if entirely predictable sequence in which the Americans discover a dead Russian in a pitch black crater with the aid of a torch that functions like the flash on a camera. Halfway through the film and still no hint at what the hidden threat is. “Hey!” You say, “Blair Witch and Cloverfield did the same thing, and they were alright!”. That is all well and good, but the difference between those movies and this one is that from the start of Blair Witch and Cloverfield it was obvious that the hidden threat was a genuine, hostile one. Apollo 18′s hidden menaces are, for the first 45 minutes, little more than rocks that like to roll off a shelf every now and then. Oh no, hold me, I can’t stand the tension.
From here, the movie attempts to inject some drama with one of the astronauts getting in a fight with a headcrab from Half-Life that’s inside his suit. It unfolds that the poor guy has gotten an infection. Symptoms include red-eye and acting like a schizoid dick when you try and help them. Even though you guessed it half an hour ago, the astronauts realise that the US Government know more than they are letting on, and that they have to GTFO on their own. Just to demonstrate how predictable this movie is, try to guess what happens when they try to go home in their lunar lander. Go on, take your time. Decided on the most probable outcome? If you said that the lunar lander breaks and they attempt to use the Russian lander, then well done! You’re way smarter than the makers of Apollo 18 give you credit for! If you didn’t figure it out, go away, I don’t want you reading my review.
Cue frantic dash to the Russian lander before the O2 runs out. Infected astronaut is now displaying dickhead symptoms to a level akin to the ‘zombies’ from 28 Days Later, yet his colleague gives him the hammer. This guy is an astronaut who has a top degree in engineering, physics or maths, and he gave the schizoid a hammer? It took all the strength I had not to walk out of the cinema at that point. Captain Schizo gets dragged down a crater by some nasties, and the exact same fucking camera-flash sequence from earlier is copy-pasted. Lazy, inadequate and once again predictable, the movie is by now damaged beyond repair.
Be sure to buy Apollo 18 on Blu-ray to catch the amazing HD camera work!
With Captain Schizo presumed dead, Captain Stupid pegs it to the Russian ship, where the US Government flick him one final finger and leave him for dead. In pops Stupid’s mate orbiting the moon in their rocket and offers to save him. Then, in one of the most stupid sequences ever to grace cinema screens, Captain Schizo appears out of nowhere, hammer in hand, and attempts to smash the window of the lunar lander in for no other reason than for FUCK YOU. Now, I don’t know how clued-up you are about physics, but objects weigh a quarter as much on the moon as they do on earth. All tension of “will-he-won’t-he smash the window” vanish when you realise that trying to break a spaceship window with a hammer on the moon is as futile as running the London marathon with nothing but your elbows. The space crabs then appear en-masse inside Schizo’s helmet for no reason and permanently KO him. All seems fine, and Captain Stupid lifts off. The camera pans up to his face, and shows you, once again, what you guessed would happen a dozen seconds ago – Captain Stupid is infected.
The final two minutes of the film are as big an anticlimax as I had now been led to expect. The Russian lander heads towards the ship, space crabs appear inside it, and Stupid is murderised by them, losing control of the ship and wiping out his poor innocent mate in the rocket in the proces. Cut to black, thank god I can leave. I am completely in favour of starting a petition ordering NASA to use the money saved by cutting their space program to renumerate each and every person who paid their money to see this boring, predictable dogshit. Hmph.
