Apollo 18 (2011)

I've always been a space nut.  Since childhood I've been fascinated by rockets, space, and landing on the moon.  I've extensively researched the space program from Mercury through the space shuttle.  I've enjoyed museums and documentaries about space.  I love seeing pictures and film of earth from space.  And the Apollo missions are by far the greatest achievement of manned space flight.

Added to that is the fact that I love thrillers and scary movies.  I'm a sucker for this kind of film, seeing it as escapist entertainment that has at least the possibility of saying something profound.  The best monster movies are really statements about the condition of man, or even a political statement, in the guise of some giant lizard terrorizing Tokyo.

So it can clearly be understood, taking those two interests of mine, why I watched Apollo 18.  Space flight with monsters.  This is a winning formula, and has been since Ridley Scott directed Alien.

How was it, you ask?  Well, let me tell you.  Lousy.  It really is hard to think of even one element of this movie that could have been done worse.  The one thing that I might give any sort of gracious nod toward is that there were a few shots that did indeed look like old footage of Apollo missions.

But that's it.  The script was awful; it seemed like the stunted and anemic work of some high school aspiring writer who thought he had a great concept.  The acting was as bad as I have seen in the past 2-3 years; absolutely no line was delivered in anything approaching a believable way, and no opportunity was passed up to display an over-the-top emotion, or just plain the wrong emotion.  The direction was laughably amateur.  The editing was obnoxious.  The cinematography, meant to resemble found footage, was horrible, distracting, and painful.  The monsters, which resemble (are?) rocks for most of the movie, are never seen clearly and never explained or explored properly.  The effect that these things have on the astronauts is unclear and unexplained.  Nothing is explained, come to think of it.  There are plot holes that are big enough to sink a house.  Even at the end (which you won't mind if I spoil for you, will you?) we see that there is an accident that kills all the remaining astronauts, which only begs the question: if this is supposed to be "found footage" of a secret Apollo mission, who found the footage?  All the tape is out in deep space!

Enough of this abomination.  If you have the choice between this one and vacuuming the carpet, make sure that carpet is nice and clean.  If this is the in-flight movie on your next trip, take a parachute.  You get the idea.

Entertainment: 1/10
Artistic Value: 1/10
Technical Merit: 2/10

Overall: 1/10