Apollo 18 review

Finally got around to watch this movie, I generally like the horror in space movies but this movie had received mixed reviews and I kind of lost interest for a long while. Anyway, the movie is about a secret 18th Apollo mission to the moon. A team of 3 astronauts are picked to deliver some kind of military hardware to the moon which will be used to spy on the Soviet's.
Two of them land on the surface of the moon for a 2 day mission while their buddy remains in orbit and handles communication and stuff. Things build up slowly with a slightly weird atmosphere and things not adding up, soon they discover footsteps outside their module and even find an abandoned Soviet moon landing module not far away. Not really knowing what’s going on, communication with earth is lost and they are attacked by some strange moon dwelling aliens.

The movie is one of those "lost footage" movies and the statement before it starts is that what we get to see is cut together from 80 hours of footage. The astronauts and their moon landing module are all rigged with cameras so there is a natural explanation on why we see what we see - and to be fair the effects are pretty damn good in this department. The footage actually looks appropriately old and worn as you would expect from video cameras from back then. There are very few locations in this movie but the moon looks like the moon should look and really feels cold, dark and empty.

While not being a revolution in storytelling the movie carries itself rather well. Up until the end where it just fails. This movie is barely 75 minutes long, the credits are almost 10 minutes and added to the runtime. As such it is almost a 2 act movie, with "buildup half" and "crazy stuff happening half" with no real closure or deeper explanation of anything. The moon dwelling creatures are rather interesting and the overall movie is not bad but it needs to be said that the ending leaves you disappointed and kind of scratching your head. Because the ending is such that the entire "found footage" premise completely fails and becomes a huge plothole. The text at the end is just so lame and further undermines the entire plot of the movie and idea of the moon dwelling creatures.

Movie can be summed up as half assed execution of a good idea.