The impeccably real - and terrifying - moonscape
If you’ve searched for www.lunartruth.com like many of us have, it is a testimony to how realistically director Gonzalo Lopez-Gallego has managed to put together Apollo 18. In large part, Gallego achieves this through the home movie filming style strongly reminiscent of movies like the Blair Witch Project. The biggest challenge to our suspension of disbelief is the mere existence of a complex life form on the moon, although a devil’s advocate will point out that extremophiles do manage to exist in places above boiling point, for example, in conditions of extreme acidity or under extreme pressure such as at the bottom of ocean trenches, and they do suspect life on one of Jupiter’s moons, Europa. Regardless, Gallego makes no gaffs that yank us from our willful suspension of disbelief. We are led slowly towards the reality of the creatures in a well-paced unfolding of discovery and crisis. If you haven’t seen it yet, the setup is that NASA has sent two astronauts to the moon on a secret mission and has outfitted them with cameras that they set up around and inside their spacecraft in addition to having one with them at all times. On top of the filming, the rendering of the moonscape and other environmental features (like 1/6th the gravity) are impeccable.
The real villain of the movie, however, is the American government (and the Department of Defense) that has used these two astronauts as expendable test subjects to gather information about the deadly life form on the moon. Nixon lied plainly and directly to the entire American populace, we’re reminded, so why wouldn’t the government lie to us now? And, like the astronauts, we’re troubled by this question now more than ever with so many debacles, censorships, and conspiracies facing the western world – from a state of perpetual war and alarm to oil spills to a president that has increased military spending, reduced domestic spending and, while being commander-in-chief of multiple war theatres, wins the Nobel Peace prize. The list of absurdities is long, and Apollo 18 taps into our political disillusionment quietly, in the background, as most good dramas do while a much more tangible opponent fills the screen.
If all this needs one concrete symbol in the film, it is the uprooting and shredding of the American flag by the creatures.
On top of being culturally relevant, Apollo 18 is scary, well-acted science fiction that provides a fresh counterpoint to the big and heartless sci-fi films we so often end up enduring.
4.5 / 5
JF
criticalgrasp
My only thing is this: If they had such awesome video camera’s back in 1972 (which is when Apollo 18 was supposed to launch), why in the hell did it take them over 30 years to release decent hand-held camcorders to the rest of the world???
The 16mm Camera that was taken to the moon and filmed all the close action on the surface must have floated a long way back to earth to get back to the director of this film. Last i saw it was supposedly trapped in the space ship with Anderson being eaten alive by rock spiders, unless of course Apollo 19 bumped into it on its way to the moon and grabbed the bag containing the hours of film avoided the spiders and made it back to earth uninfected, complete Joke of a film
The footage was streamed to Earth, it explained it in the movie if you paid any attention.
i agree with you.
~ Marissa
hold on i can prove this is all true. a: the soviet landing craft and the united states pod collided (with all the film inside)when they collided they were launched out synchronus orbit therefore slingshotting them to earth.where the tape can be found. as earlier said the tape was found by russians even more possible because of the amount of time russia is in front of the moon becaue it is such a large country. b: it is a fact that theyre were russian “satelite” (excuse my spelling if its wrong) launches that were to large to be what they were aid to be. c: theyre were radio transmissions from an out of date capsule to a russian space/military installation in the past 9 months the transmission lasted 8 minutes before it was patched throught to a washingtn d.c dod building. i kno this because i have records of all transmissions in the past 9 months because i am a pilot for joint force ops in russia. d: the “satelite” that was lauched exactly two months before the fall of the soviet union and the wreckage was found may 9, 2011 in an area in the area of irkutsk, russia with materialfrom those of a soviet era landing pod and a current united states orbital and recovery and dispatch pod. there were also trace amounts of an unidentified material of foreign substance to that of a human. no bodies were found