Pseudo-documentaries with horror aspects have become relatively commonplace since the surprise hit The Blair Witch Project back in 1999, and with good reason: it is seemingly easy to create “lost footage” which, when suddenly, conveniently found, tells some very harrowing tales.  The biggest problem with Gonzalo Lopez-Gallego’s movie is the premise that such “lost footage” has been found at all, since it was taken on the Moon, and in orbit around it, and we have not been back to those areas since.  How could anybody have ever found this footage?

The second biggest weakness of the film is that of the menace on the Moon, which is never fully developed visually.  Granted, part of the fun is trying to guess just what is going on, and what is responsible for the mayhem that occurs, but I dislike movies that fail to deliver on the visual promise of the premise.  Way back in the 1950’s, audiences were treated to all sorts of monsters running rampant, both on Earth and wherever our cinematic space travelers visited.  And sooner or later, those monsters were seen quite clearly in all their creepy, crawly, alien glory.  Sometimes, perhaps often, the results were laughable (the silly slavering closeup of 1957’s The Black Scorpion always comes to mind), but the fact remains that those movies remain beloved by fans who love those movies.  The rock monsters of Apollo 18 should have had their day in the sun.

The other thing that bothered me is the photography, which ranges from incredibly difficult to see anything to quite clear.  Different cameras in use seem to account for the differences, but there should have been more consistency.  And there were a couple of times when I wondered just how things were being recorded.

Even with these problems I felt the film was creepy in the right places, was quite convincing with its lunar landscapes, did a decent job with its astronaut characters and ended with an appropriate bang (another reason there should have been no “lost footage” to find).  Apollo 18 is an intriguing exercise in sci-fi horror that is never as scary as it should have been.  The premise is sound; the execution was just a little too soft to be satisfying.  Nice try, though.  ✰ ✰ ½.  30 Sept. 2011.