Pretty Good

Awesome Movie

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

From the first minute this is just boring nonsense. It is another found footage film, similar to the ones where a group of friends go on a trip and something unexpected happens. Well, in this case they happen to go to the moon... Everything is cheap and cheesy, the member who is really brave and starts exploring the area risking his life, the distortion effects, the editing and I could go on and on.The moon set was good, it looked real. Sadly, they wasted it with a very bad and boring film.

****SPOILERS**** Unreported last manned space flight to the moon on Christmas day 1974 that didn't quite make it back has us believe that it run into interference with some kind of alien virus that contaminated the entire three man crew and was ditched by the very agency NASA that sent it there. It's not just the Apollo mission that was kept secret from the public but an earlier Soviet manned space probe to the lunar surface that ended in disaster with it's cosmonaut crewman dying from the same alien virus that eventually did in the three US astronauts.Shot in a choppy and slow motion semi black & white photography it's as torturous watching the movie as it is for the actors in it playing their parts. With the head man Captain Ben Anderson, Warren Christe, trying to keep his two man crew Commander Nate Walker, Lloyd Owens, and module pilot Col. John Gray,Ryan Robbins,from flipping out before he can get them back to earth with his boss Secretary of Defense Michael Kopsa scrubbing their secret mission in mid-flight. That in keeping the public from knowing what a complete disaster it was.***SPOILERS***It seemed that the reason for this space mission was to really find out what happened to the Soviet space module that secretly landed on the moon after the lat Apollo mission, Apollo 17, was launched two years earlier and if it was still in operation. The men of Apollo 18 had no idea what they were expected to accomplish until they came upon the destroyed Soviet space craft and soon realized they were on a suicide mission right from the start. That was not only to prove that there's someone else up there but sadly also like himself, the Soviet cosmonaut,they were to suffer the same fate that he did!

Apollo 18 (2011) Directed by Gonzalo Lopez Gallego, and written by Brian Miller, Is a clever concept, A mocumentary about the last unreported Lunar landing. Spoiler Alert ahead, I Intend to talk about the film, What I liked; It very much captured the technology of the period, the film ratio was pure period nostalgia. Did we detect Super 8 on some of the home movies? Nice attention to detail. All the footage at the start mimicked the images we recall, they were uncannily set up in the studio, so as to intimate that the original footage we recall, might have thus been staged as well, but I digress.No, there is a far more sinister plot about, The movie goes to great length to introduce us to the three Astronauts chosen for this top secret mission, Warren Christie, Lloyd Owen and Ryan Robbins play Ben, Nate and John. Good old, all American Team players. Ben and Nate would land on the Moon, and John would orbit in the return module. By the time we get to the first, "Wawazat?" The movie was already in decline.OK, there was some degree of originality in the nature of the threat. Here's that spoiler alert, Keyword; Moonrocks. A mineral,slash Biological organism that wants the moon for its own. For an alien race, it seemed to understand human biology, enough to invade and infect a person, Ben is infected, Nate won't abandon him. It's all a DOD cover up. And now we know why we don;t go to the Moon anymore.Worse yet, there may be many of these phony Rock impersonators running amok down here on Mother Earth. Downside of this movie; Standard Sci fi cliché's take one; Electronic surveillance cameras will go all static rather then reveal the monsters appearance.In truth, the monster here never fully reveals itself nor it's motive; Sometimes its just a pointy rock, other times it seems like a biological parasite, and to top off the confusion, It leaves rather odd looking footprints. So how does this film rate, Fair to average, a clever idea pushed further than they knew what to do with. Seven out of Ten "Moonrock" stones, I mean Stars.

I thoroughly enjoyed this movie, despite the negative reviews from many people. The new cinematic style of found footage film is one of -those- kinds of film that either you absolutely love it, and spend eons looking for more films in that style; or you loathe it and all films like it. The depth of the characters, whereas the build up previous to become attached to the characters doesn't show too much--it simply throws you into the action after a brief interlude. I admired the acting and footage style. The mounting of the desperation of Ben Anderson, as the terror of the unknown builds in slow simmer to an explosive finish, it really drew me in. If you find yourself looking for a good, short horror flick (especially if you love quality found footage flicks as I do), I definitely suggest that you invest the hour and fifteen minutes.