Apollo 18 and Screaming into the Void: A Movie Review

Director: Gonzalo López-Gallego.

Writers: Brian Miller (screenplay) and Cory Goodman.

Cast: Warren Christie, Ryan Robbins and Ali Liebert

When in space, no one wants to hear you scream. That cannot be any truer with Apollo 18, a reasonably effective movie thriller that presents a what-if scenario of NASA's "final" mission to the moon. Production-wise, the film reel effect is successful in conveying a dated product. And it also works in the favour of creating an engrossing product where, buried in the static and blips, there may be a terror in their midst.

Although watching the mission is a slow build, that’s done on purpose. A good portion of the footage audiences see is being transmitted back to mission control to record. But with radio transmissions not being instantaneous, can anyone imagine what waiting for a response from a communication from the Earth to the Moon and back must have been like? That delay is effectively portrayed with this product.

To respond back to the astronauts can be terrifying for mission control when they notice a monster in the background. But by the time it arrives to tear its victims apart, the warning is going to come too late.

Whether or not this movie is suspenseful is subject to debate. Some will be glued to the screen and others will simply yawn. Depending on the generation who loves viewing old footage, watching this movie is as exciting as watching Neil Armstrong making that first step onto that cold world. But at least he came back alive.

In what this movie explores, the characters of John Grey (Ryan Robbins, "Sanctuary"), Nathan Walker (Lloyd Owen, “Monarch of the Glen”) and Benjamin Anderson (Warren Christie, "Battlestar Galactica”) are not particularly all that interesting. Not enough time is spent developing their characters. To care for them requires more than establishing their relationships with their families. What about within NASA? As far as they and the government are concerned, they are simply tools. And why they are discarded is fairly self-explanatory.

With this genre of the found film format, the fact that the heroes will die is pretty much a given. As for how they are snuffed, this film is perhaps one of the more interesting products to come. Viewers are not treated to Hollywood style ghosts or aliens. With this film’s producers and director Gonzalo López-Gallego consulting with the Science and Entertainment Exchange (a program from the United States National Academy of Sciences to provide accuracy within any entertainment product) they have created a more plausible approach to what kind of alien life may be encountered.

The build-up to those final moments keeps the pace going with the same speed as the technology this film tries to imitate. It comes close, but only a few details like the fidelity of the transmissions—audio and video—come into question. Sometimes the product is too glitchy, and audio is too high quality. And just how the film moves is a fitting tribute to Ridley Scott’s Alien—especially as they wander around an extraterrestrial landscape. People have to be careful in what they decide to explore; within it can lurk any kind of danger.

Conspiracy theory notwithstanding, the special effects technology of today can easily fake a trip to the moon and no one can be the wiser. But there is another conspiracy with this film. Apparently, many moon rocks have been brought back and given to foreign dignitaries. Many of them have been lost or stolen. Apollo 18 feels like half a product given how it concludes. If a sequel is going to happen, the real terror is about to begin, and it’s can potentially be the beginning of a great conspiracy thriller.

Overall: 6.5 out of 10.

*DVD/Blu-Ray Release Date: December 27, 2011.

The film's official website:

The Apollo 18 Homepage



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