Apollo 18 Directed by: Gonzalo Lopez-Gallago Starring: N/A Rating: NR Release Date: April 22, 2011
TRAILER SCORE: 2/10
MY THOUGHTS: Apollo 18 is the perfect exercise in tedium. I already don't do well with "stuck in one location" movies, but you've managed to find a way to make me hate them more. But see, it isn't just the sheer lunacy of a horror movie taking place on the moon. I mean, did we learn nothing from space-horror from Jason X? Sci-fi horror? Yes. Sheer space horror? It's a tough sell. Unfortunately, Apollo 18 doesn't seem to realize just how flimsy its own premise is. I mean, not to be that bitchy elitist when it comes to horror movies, but aren't we tired of found footage flicks yet? I know that I am. Furthermore, I'm not buying into the "realism" of the movie just because you refuse to identify your actors. In fact, for us film critic folks, that just makes our job more difficult, not more realistic. I went to five websites before I finally gave up on ever learning those guy's names. But it's not just this faux dedication to the "real events" that gets to me. Is your copy writer an eight year old? Or did you just watch every other found footage horror movie and realize that lines like "No evidence has ever been found... until now." They were pulling lines like that with the release of The Blair Witch Project. Much like sub-genre of horror, the copy is just as tired. Any hope I had for this movie was pretty much gone by the end of the trailer with the realization that no matter how this movie ends, both guys hafta end up dying in order for us to have "never heard" of Apollo 18. There's no suspense here and certainly no understanding that the audience has a certain level of intelligence. In the end, Apollo 18 isn't just abysmal looking, it's straight up offensively idiotic.