APOLLO 18

[2011]

Another space horror to add to the mix of a pretty strong sub genre of horror. I've also wanted to see this for ages but hadn't had a chance. My boss at work ruined the ending for me anyway but as you watch it there's no real spoiler as it becomes abit obvious half way through..

Another 'found footage' movie where we are meant to believe it's real footage and yet the actors are clearly credited at the back -shurg- that and CGI. I'm kinda done with the whole found footage branch of horror but at least this wasn't riddled with annoying shaky cams like CLOVERFIELD who I still have to thank for the bought of motion sickness.

The plot is good old 1974 USA paranoia about the Russians, they send three men up together to put up these big tracking radar systems to monitor the Russians actions towards the USA. Typical stuff like that, they also have a lark about enjoying the moons oddly new found gravity..

So yes they are on the moon having a gay old time and putting these big we don't trust Russia things on the moon while one of the men is picking up samples. Now if there is something scary about to happen this movie pretty much zooms in on it and highlights it. All it was missing was a huge neon arrow going HEY..HEY YOU, LOOK! LOOOOOK THERE'S SOMETHING SCARY! DID YOU SEE IT? HEEEEY!!!!!

Which was annoying, I suppose it stops people missing the 'action' of a rock twitching of moving but still. The movie has a nice grainy camera effect which just adds to the effect of a found footage piece. The movie is slow going very slow paced and I felt I was losing interest alot along the way but in this slow moving speed we get alot of good character development that we don't often get in horror today.

We LIKE these guys and care about what happens to them, they are just mindless victim number 1 to 3 they have a back story and they have connections with each other that the audience can relate too.

So after half the movie has been slow and 'getting to know your cast and crew' almost we get some action. Footprints not of their own are found and they follow them to where a very fucked up and unfortunate Russian craft was, this confuses are men as the Russians hadn't been to the moon by then.

Further investigation finds that the Russian that came with the ship had died and now they freak out, somethings not right here and they can't figure out. They rush back to their base and call it in and it seems no one cares.

Alot of the communication between home on earth, the man in the middle and our two unlucky fuckers on the moon often fades in and out due to the giant radar boxes they stuck on the moon, least that's what we assume.

One of our men gets attacked and there is something in his space suit, he freaks out like mad and has to be dragged onto the ship, we see he's pretty fucked up and then a slightly grim poking around a mans cut shows a rock got into his skin.

Our main man Ben's reaction to our first conclusive site of the alien being? SMASH IT WITH A HAMMER! if we had more thinking like that in horror movies there would be less dead people. The guy who the rock thing decided to chill out in starts to get pretty sick and as day two on the moon starts we see it's getting worse and making him go crazy.

Crazy like the 'Crazies' kind of crazy.

They soon assume that the Russian watching boxes are more then likely not there for that but the people back home knew about the aliens and they were sent to watch them. The boxes are alien watching boxs.

The crazy guy gets worse and soon crazy eyes decides to vent his hate on the ship causing it to be well useless now. So Ben grabs his nuts buddy and off for a joy ride on the moon rover back to the Russian ship but before he can make it his mate gets pretty fucked up and he has to leave him outside assuming him dead.

He gets in the Russian ship and finds out it still works, he gets in touch with the Russians who then patch him into home base where he is told cold and flatly they knew about the aliens all along and he was contaminated, thus he was going to be left to die.

Since we like this guy, knowing his past and who he is, growing to like him we feel bad for him and hope he finds another way out. The middle man who is also friends with the two on the moon tries to patch in to the Russian craft and save his friend but back on earth they give him the same line, if he helps in anyway he'll also be left to die out in space.

Ignoring the cold hearted assfarts on earth he decides to try and save his mate, Ben, who is also suffering from moon rock alien infection but doesn't see it. Soon he's fired off into space but infected with crazy things don't go as planned.

They give us some shit at the end about lies on how they all died, but it was a nice touch.

I know peoples real issues with the movie were how the aliens were well.. rocks well come on. Animals on our planet have camouflage to hide, survive or hunt and on the moon their choices are limited to rocks, dust or an American flag? I liked they were rocks.

Story: 2/5

Gore: 2/5

Acting: 5/5

Shooting: 4/5

Scares: 1/5

Over all enjoyment: 3/5

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