Apollo 18 Post-Release Discussion

Did a search and didn't find a post-release thread, so I figured I'd kick things off. Don't want to go on a full on rant, but major spoilers ahead:

Went to see this with 6 friends, and I actually think our combined reactions were a perfect barometer of how this movie will likely play. 3 of the guys were laughing 25 minutes in ("Russians...on the moon!?" got a a lot of guffaws), the other 2 were completely bored and I was desperately trying to give the movie the benefit of the doubt and play along, my tenuous suspension of disbelief held together by a handful of decent scares and some solid atmosphere that the movie does its best to squander.

The whole concept of moon rocks actually being these crab monsters is sort of cool, and the creatures themselves work well in a few quick shots (the rolling camera on the rover, the strobe light in the crater), but they look like crap when shown for any sort of extended period, and what's worse is their behavior, and very nature, doesn't seem to make any sense. They infect humans and make them go crazy by crawling inside them, but then they leave sometimes, but then they come back? And make the guy's face explode? Then the infected astronaut is dragged into a crater, only to show up later seemingly unchanged. Its a decent enough surprise, and it sets up the aforementioned strobe-light reveal, but logically it makes no sense. Why drag him down there? What's the point of these aliens? Why would they steal a flag, or a camera, or trash the spaceship? I thought the whacked out crewman angle might have potential, but it starts and ends so quickly that there's not really much suspense, and instead of a slow burn psychosis the director just has the guy spaz out in front of one of the cameras, going from 0 to lunatic in the span of about 15 minutes. And then there's the constant, "unsettling" alien noise/feedback, which the astronauts are told is coming from the receivers they planted on the moon (but which the aliens also emit themselves?). It's like the movie can't decide what sort of horror it wants to have, so they throw in these cliched tropes because hey, other movies have it. I think Scott Weinberg nailed it when he wrote "This is a potentially cool 'found footage' flick that is desperately in need of a lot more brains ... or a lot more silliness." And along those same lines, what exactly is the point of dumping these guys on the moon in the first place? Ostensibly the DoD wants footage of the creatures and (potential technological ignorance showing here), given that everything seems to be on film stranding the men there seems to defeat the whole purpose of the mission. I'll freely admit I might have missed something (and a midnight showing after a 12 hour workday probably isn't the best state for coherent viewing), but the whole thing just confused the hell out of me. The movie isn't helped by the fact that the faked footage approach, while novel (well, sort of novel), makes the whole thing feel like its moving at  a glacier pace, and the action extremely limited (walking around, talking, walking around, talking). I'm curious to see other people's reactions (and I'm sure I'll be able to articulate myself better after some sleep), but I have to say that while I applaud what the movie's attempting in theory, the execution just falls way, way short.

One final note: Fuck that text addendum at the end about the moon rocks disappearing. That's this movie in a nutshell, the suggestion of a threat with absolutely no rhyme or reason to give it legitimacy.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gabe T 

Thanks for dodging the bullet on this one. I thought the idea sounded potentially awesome, but the reviews do make it sound like a really underthought, cheapie movie. How often are they gonna do this "found footage" thing? How is this a genre? It's so weird to see audiences who would never DARE watch a documentary line up for these movies, which have tons of dead spaces, no stars, and are always super cheap.

The sad part is this is actually one of the better uses of the "found footage" thing as it switches between a variety of different camera types/sources, which is interesting but seems played more for novelty than as an integral part of the story-telling process. The biggest culprit is probably the motion-sensing cameras set up outside the ship, which are criminally underused.

Quote:

Originally Posted by felix 

So no Alien type monsters on the Moon in this one?

Sort of. At one point one of the little crab/rock critters crawls inside an astronaut's chest and seems to gain some sort of mind-control over him (or at least drive him nuts), but it's not really made clear how this works or what the purpose is (it doesn't seem to be reproduction, as there's dozens of the things already). Then there's the bigger crabs, but we never see them do anything other than mess up equipment off camera.