The Student News Site of Shawnee Mission Northwest

SMNW

The Student News Site of Shawnee Mission Northwest

SMNW

The Student News Site of Shawnee Mission Northwest

SMNW

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Apollo 18

A sci-fi horror flick detailing NASA’s “lost mission” to the moon, Apollo 18 was a mediocre mix of Paranormal Activity and Cloverfield. There’s really no other way to describe it.

In the film, there is a lot of shaky camerawork from angles that change about every 10 seconds. One second, you’re looking at the two astronauts sleeping inside the lander, then before you know it, you’re staring intently at a view of outside. You can’t look away because you’re waiting for what the filmmakers want you to see, and when it happens, it’s the smallest little movement that you barely notice, making it not even worth the effort spent looking so closely.

Certain parts of the movie made me jump, I’ll admit. The build-up to all of the “scary parts” is very cliche, but it still works. The silence somehow manages to get louder and louder and the background noise builds until finally something unexpected, yet expected at the same time, happens. It’s worked for other horror films, but it wasn’t anything award-winning.
I couldn’t decide what I thought of the acting. At times it seemed really natural, like a conversation that would really go on between two normal guys, but other times it seemed really staged and unrealistic. Something noteworthy, however, was how gut-wrenching some parts of the movie were on account of the acting. When a medical operation is necessary on one of the astronauts to remove something that definitely shouldn’t be in his abdomen, I had to look away to avoid something coming out of my abdomen, namely my breakfast. The actor’s feigned reaction was what made me cringe because it seemed so real.

On the upside, the effects were pretty cool. The idea for what the extraterrestrials looked like wasn’t really original, but what the filmmakers did do, they did well. They seemed life-like, except for the fact that they sprang from exploding rocks.
Apollo 18 overall could be considered a hit or a miss. It just depends on what works for you. At the parts that were so vivid that I wanted to vomit, it was working for me, but in many of the scenes I was left disappointed by the lack of anything interesting at all.

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Apollo 18