Apollo 18 (2011)★★★☆☆

The first time I saw this movie was in a theater on the big screen. After watching it at home tonight, for anyone thinking about seeing this I would strongly suggest finding some way to see it in a very dark room on the biggest screen you can find. The experience is definitely lessened otherwise.

This is yet another found footage film (and yet another “based on a true story” film). In what I assume was a way for this movie to differentiate itself from the millions of other found footage films that came out around the same time, the claim is that it’s found NASA footage.

According to the opening text, the footage – of a “classified until now” Apollo 18 mission – was “uploaded to lunartruth.com” in 2011 (the experience is further lessened when you realize no one’s paying for registration on that domain anymore). What follows is a mess of actual NASA moon landing footage, new footage shot to look like old footage, and not a lot of story.

It’s a neat concept, and certainly not a new concept, but this film doesn’t do much with it. There’s not enough character development for me to be invested in anyone in the crew (except maybe John), there’s not enough visibility to be really scared by the…things attacking the crew, and there are too many times where the movie seems to drag on and on (and on).

There are a few good scenes (like when Nate thinks something is in his helmet) and overall this is a very watchable film. It’s just not a spectacular film.