Micro review: Apollo 18

[AArdvark]

This is a fragmented post due to random thoughts colliding with each other. I just threw in a bunch of stuff and did a re-write on the fly. It's not a good enough movie to make any more effort.




I swear, there's nothing new under the sun. Every movie ever made after, say, 1990 is basically just a re-hash of some other movie done earlier. I bet it goes even further back but 1990 sounded like a nice round number to throw out there.

OK, let me throw out a couple titles to get everyone's mindset on the same page. ( I seem to do this a lot, so I guess it's fair to say that every movie review I do is like some other, earlier review)

Blair Witch Project
Alien
Paranormal Activity
Cloverfield

Basically, it's a mocumentary about the secret Apollo 18 moon mission that officially never happened. Oh, I should throw in Conspiracy Theory, but not so much.
Here's the premise: the movie is assembled from the footage recovered from the mission.* That part they did OK. It really looks like it was done with 1974 movie film and primitive black and white videotape. The bad part is that most of the footage is hand held camera shots with really jerky movements, it could have almost been a ting-tings music video (heh).
I have to add here that a lot of the movie is dark. It's a horror movie on the moon, after all. I found it annoying. Maybe it would have been more effective in the theater, I dunno. All I do know is that there's a problem with the sound in a vacuum issue. That alone kept me from getting into it more. There were all these noises that probably made it a scarier movie but could never happened if they were really on the moon.
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Now, let's see how it stacks up with the essential sci-fi / horror movie plot points:

]Guys go into strange, dark place all alone....check.

]Communications are mysteriously cut off.....check

]Guys go exploring and find old dead body......check

]Bad things happen to one guy, thusly making him a bad guy........check

]Paranoia rift happens between the good guy / bad guy......check

]Bad guy tries to kill good guy................check

]big reveal scene at the end..............check

]Good guy gets away long enough to find out it's all a cover up by the government......check.


Pretty original, huh.
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----------here there be spoilers------------


The U.S. finds out that the Soviets have landed a manned moon mission recently but the cosmonaut(s) have met with a mysterious and untidy end. I'm not clear on the number of dead Russians, so let's say three. Naturally the U.S. sends a mission to investigate, but they don't tell the astronauts.
They tell the guys that it's a National Security/ Department of Defense ultra hush thing. Something to do with ICBM missile tracking. It's a space race / cold war thing. (This point is laughable with them being on THE MOON! (240,000 miles away) The supposed tracking things , all two of them, are the size of dorm refrigerators. Must be some pretty good batteries cause there weren't any solar panels on 'em.
This all happens at the lunar south pole, btw. The astronauts find the dead Russians and....surprise! An alien life form.
These little spider-looking things can look and feel exactly like rocks. Must be silicon based. The rest you can already guess, except that nobody lives in the end. There's no cat either

additional plot hole.

*it's never explained how the reels of film and videotape, if any, got back to the Earth. The good guy does pack up a bunch of footage in a bag, but he's filming himself packing up the film, so how does that film get back...... Nevermind, it's not important and it's giving me a headache..



THE
TWO MOON ROCKS OUT
OF FIVE MOON ROCKS
AARDVARK