“Apollo 18” Movie Trailer Review

“Apollo 18”

Movie Trailer Review

By our guest blogger, Joe Oliveto

While “The Blair Witch Project” wasn’t the first film to take the “found footage” approach to the horror film genre, it was the most popular at the time of its release. Flash-forward a few years, and we have “Paranormal Activity,” “Quarantine,” and now “Apollo 18,” a film which claims to consist of actual footage from a secret mission to the moon.

Sadly, we’re not sure that gimmick is going to work. All moviegoers know by now that these films aren’t real, that the people on screen are actors and that there is a real director behind the scenes. These movies are the cinematic equivalent of sitting around a campfire and telling ghost stories that we claim to be true, simply because it’s more frightening to think the events being related actually happened.

And that is one of the problems with “Apollo 18,” it seems. We knew that “The Blair Witch Project” wasn’t real, but it was fun to pretend that was the case, and everyone involved did a very good job of making it feel believable. “Apollo 18” may ask us to stretch our imaginations a little too much, and as a result, the effect of the film may not be as strong.

Still, we won’t write-off the movie just yet. The idea itself is scary enough; it seems to be a movie about astronauts being attacked by some sort of alien, and those types of movies have been successful from time to time. The nature of these “found footage” movies may also ratchet up the tension on this one, as they sometimes don’t allow the audience to see everything that is occurring on screen, forcing us to use our imaginations a little bit more.

So, honestly, it has potential. We just think the gimmick might not work on this one.

View the trailer below.  Thoughts?