Plot: What’s it about?
With the success of movies like “Paranormal Activity” there were bound to be knock offs. Granted, this movie is the exception to the rule, but in concept and theory it’s so simple. The movie could essentially be made with a home video camera, no name actors and hardly any production costs. Boom. There ya go – $100 million at the box office. Of course every aspiring filmmaker with a handycam (or, these days, a phone) is no doubt trying to make the next great movie. Part of what makes movies like this is that they feel more “real” if you will. With some big budget movie we can sometimes distance ourselves from the action on screen, but when it’s done with a “home movie” format, we tend to put ourselves in place of the camera. Sure it’s a hit or miss tactic, but with films like “The Blair Witch Project” and “Paranormal Activity” we see that it can be very effective.
“Apollo 18” takes place in 1974 and the filmmakers claim that over 80 hours of footage was loaded to a fictional web site. We meet the crew of Apollo 18 en route to the moon on a secret mission. This was back in the heyday of the Cold War and the crew’s mission was to place surveillance equipment to monitor the Russians. The crew consists of Capt. Benjamin Anderson (Warren Christie), Commander Nathan Walker (Lloyd Owen) and Lt. Col. John Grey (Ryan Robbins). Ben and Nate tackle the leg work while John observes from orbit. However it’s not long before they discover that something’s wrong. They find the remains of a Russian spacecraft and what’s left of a cosmonaut. Couple this with the fact that Nate has had something in his spacesuit that’s now in his body. Not good. Will the astronauts be able to make it back to Earth or will they even be able to make it off the moon?
The movie was pretty much universally panned by critics and though I don’t envision any repeat viewings for me, I will have to say that it wasn’t that bad. I have no doubt that we were doing things in space that the public will never know about, but I highly doubt that there are aliens on the moon in the form of rocks. The cast is small with only three speaking parts and as much as the filmmakers want us to buy what they’re selling, it was a hard sale. “Paranormal Activity” worked because it’s something we can all relate to – strange noises in our homes. “The Blair Witch Project” worked because we can all relate to being lost. There’s only a handful of us that can relate to being in space. I admire the filmmaker’s intentions, but this one seemed snake bit from the get go.
Video: How does it look?
While this movie is new to Blu-ray, the majority of the film is shown in a variety of aspect ratios. Most of the movie is in 1.33:1 with black bars on the sides, but then the image will flicker and expand to 1.78:1 and even occasionally to 1.66:1. I realize that they were trying to give us different vantage points as to what was happening and trying to preserve the “authenticity” of the film, but we all knew that it was a new movie. I think they should have just picked an aspect ratio and stayed with it. Still, the AVC HD image is intentionally grainy. The black levels in the exterior shots (on the moon) look very good and solid, though we get mixed results with the images inside the space capsule. This is a hard one to classify in regards to a score.
Audio: How does it sound?
The audio is a different story and the included DTS HD Master Audio soundtrack has several moments that made me jump. Dialogue is, for the most part, very clean and clear. The crew does communicate with the team on the ground and again it sounds intentionally distorted (trying to give us that 70’s feel to it), but the exchanges between the actors sounds perfectly natural. As in all horror movies, there are a few spots in which you know something will happen and it does – a loud shriek followed by a BOOM that gives you a little shot of adrenaline. There are a few moments when the surrounds kick in, but this soundtrack is mainly relegated to the front stage.
Supplements: What are the extras?
There aren’t a lot of supplements included, but the audio commentary is worth a listen. It’s not as bad as I’d have thought and I was actually fairly interested in some of the more technical aspects of the production. There are some deleted scenes and no less than four alternate endings – each focusing on a new way a certain character meets his end.
