Summary: Apollo 18 is the latest movie to rely on found footage to tell its story. The plot will revolve around recently discovered video shot by the crew of an abandoned moon mission from the early 70s. NASA claims that the mission never took place, but this new discovery reveals the existence of alien life and explains why NASA has hidden the footage for all of these years.

Well Made For What It Was
Reviewed by Gavin Schmitt

Decades-old found footage from NASA's abandoned Apollo 18 mission, where two American astronauts were sent on a secret expedition, reveals the reason the U.S. has never returned to the moon. Up front I want to say I am not a fan of "found footage" movies or POV films, or anything like that where we are lead to believe it is a documentary shot with cheap cameras. While this tactic works for certain things, more often than not it is just annoying to watch. With that in mind, you might guess I had a low expectation for this film (which I did). I actually have to give them credit, though. The creators did some things right. In fact, many things. They started with a good idea and were able to visually present it. Faking the surface of the moon is not terribly difficult, but the detail of the suits and everything else could not be pulled off on a shoe-string budget. Yet, here we are with an unknown writer, director and cast making the story seem as real as possible. You also have to give them credit for showing the alien (or whatever) as little as possible. This helps cover up any budget concerns about making a good monster, but even more importantly -- in horror, less is very often more. A shadow here, a terrified look there... far more tense and scary than just showing what is behind the curtain. They made the right decision here. I do not know if I would go so far as to say I recommend this film. I mean, it still works off the "found footage" concept I dislike. But the fact is, for what it was, they presented the idea about as well as anyone could have. If nothing else, you have to give them credit for that and wait for the next film... that will be the "make or break" of the director's career. This one was just getting him past the first test.

Found Footage Film Should Be Lost Again
Reviewed by GregMO ROberts

Things didn’t look good for Apollo 18 even before it was screened by audiences and critics. The fictitious found footage film that showed us the lost tapes of a group of astronauts that land on the moon as part of the Apollo 18 mission had eight separate release dates announced before it finally settled on September 2, 2011 (the original release date was in February of 2010). When a film usually bounces around like a pinball with its release date, it usually signals a lack of faith in the studio. A bad film is likely to make more money if you can find a date to which it has the least amount of competition and, in this instance, September 2nd up against The Help and The Debt, seemed like the ideal dumping ground. Directed by Gonzalo López-Gallego, Apollo 18 is a science fiction horror film which tries to convince audiences that the Apollo 18 mission was not scrapped by NASA in 1973, but actually landed on the moon where the astronauts find evidence of extraterrestrial life. The idea itself and the style of a food-footage film (see: Cloverfield, see: The Last Exorcism) would seem ideal for a story that tries to exploit both our fascination with outer space and our conspiracy theories of former NASA expeditions. And adding an alien encounter into the fold only further whets the sci-fi/horror geek appetite. But instead of keeping us at the edge of our seats, Gonzalo López-Gallego does the near impossible – he makes space travel and an unfriendly alien encounter seem boring. Like most found footage films, you either buy into the premise early or you are left wondering why the hell The Blair Witch Project was such a box office sensation. Apollo 18 makes it hard to involve yourself early thanks to characters that are wooden and are as interesting as sheet of drywall. We didn’t buy into the forced look of the film in the early reels and therefore could not find ourselves interested in the fate of any of the astronauts as the film progressed. The quality of the film (they had to make it look like a found NASA tape circa 1973) made the screening even more unbearable and we couldn’t help feel sorry for any saps that paid full theatre admission prices to see such low grade quality. Luckily the film is only 86-minutes in length. Only about 8-minutes of that is in any way engaging, but we will at least credit them for not trying to stretch the film beyond the boundaries of a standard 90-minute feature film. The ending of Apollo 18 only further alienated us from the content and the only thing that immediately came to mind after the screening was not how bad the release was, but why it was released at all.