• Dec 28
• APOLLO 18: DVD review
• Posted by Deljhp - 28/12/11 at 01:43 PM

Director: Gonzalo López-Gallego. Review: Chris Sawin.

Did you ever see that Ren & Stimpy episode "Space Madness"? I couldn't help but think of that as Apollo 18 started its slow burn and evolved into the horror film the trailers hinted at. The climax would be one of the men hallucinating that a bar of soap was an ice cream bar, took bites out of it, and flipped out when a fellow astronaut called him crazy. Then that same astronaut struggled with the urge to push a shiny, red button because he was oh so curious as to what it actually did. But alas those moments never came and Apollo 18 was a much more serious film.

It actually took me a couple times to actually get through Apollo 18. I became bored with it the first time, but made it through quite easily the second. It does take quite a while for things to actually get moving or at least get hectic. This is supposedly the explanation as to why we've never gone back to the moon. The movie does feel like a genuine documentary at times and is fairly believable at others, but gets a bit more over the top in the second half. The way everything is edited gets really irritating. It's as if Patrick Lussier was trying too hard to make everything creepy and it shows. Apollo 18 has to try and remind you it's a horror movie while coming off so frantic and sporadic. What happens to Nate (Lloyd Owen) is quite possibly the most interesting factor of the movie and while everything probably could have relied perfectly fine on his off-putting performance it's pretty much ruined by shaky head movements ripped straight out of Jacob's Ladder or even Silent Hill and a heavy use of quick cuts. If that lens flare effect in J.J. Abrams films bugged you, then prepare to go absolutely insane over how much weight is put into the effect in this...Continue reading review.

Apollo 18 official site