‘Apollo 18’ Milks Genre for Maximum Suspense

When a new mainstream blockbuster isn’t screened for critics, it’s usually a sure sign that the studio has no confidence in the film’s merit. Apollo 18 has all the earmarks of being the sort of mediocre time-waster relegated to the quality dumping ground of early September.

One can imagine the filmmakers reciting their pitch for the producers at Dimension Films. “It’s Paranormal Activity in space!” 

And yet, Apollo 18 is one of the most pleasant surprises in recent months: a genuinely effective thriller that’s unlike anything audiences have seen before. Instead of copying the styles of past shaky-cam shockers, Spanish director Gonzalo López-Gallego (in his English-language debut) puts his own indelible spin on the increasingly fascinating subgenre of “faux found footage.”

Though the film falls just short of nightmarish, it succeeds in keeping viewers on the edge of their seats for the vast majority of its 88-minute run. 

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Warren Christie and Lloyd Owen are terrific as two the astronauts sent by NASA on the fateful 1974 mission that led to the cancellation of future expeditions to the moon. It’s amusing how NASA has felt compelled to make official statements about the lack of truthfulness in this film, since the end credits remove any shadow of a doubt that Apollo 18 is indeed a work of fiction. But that doesn’t make the experience any less riveting.

There are more genuine jumps and jitters in the film than any thriller since Insidious, and despite its fairly inexplicable PG-13 rating, Apollo 18 is infinitely more intense than last week’s hokey R-rated dud, Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark.

Unlike Paranormal Activity, which allowed events to unfold in extended stationary shots, this frenzied film is cut to a rhythm more palatable for the attention deficit disorder generation. López-Gallego and his magnificent editor, Patrick Lussier (Scream), utilize dozens of different angles culled from an alleged 84 hours of recently found footage.

Needless to say, the actual act of finding this particular footage would’ve been an Olympian act worthy of another film altogether, but I digress.

The inherently eerie nature of actual footage taken during the moon expeditions, with its muffled sound and grainy glimpses at a seemingly desolate expanse, is skillfully exploited by the filmmakers. While Paranormal Activity quickened the pulse with its simple yet unsettling use of time code, Apollo 18 makes the nerves fray with every crackle of interference and sudden distortion of the image.

It took a good 15 minutes for me to settle into the rhythm of Lussier’s montages comprised of jarringly juxtaposed film stock and frame rates. It initially seemed like the filmmakers had made the same mistake as Paranormal Activity 2, which diluted its suspense with an excess of edits.

Yet it’s precisely the use of edits in this film that make it so consistently unnerving. What’s marvelous about the “found footage” subgenre is how it consistently challenges filmmakers to find truly ingenious ways of scaring viewers without resorting to cheap shortcuts.

A film like this is marketable solely on the basis of its scare-factor, and López-Gallego is more than up to the challenge.

One of the spookiest scenes is viewed from the perspective of an astronaut as he attempts to illuminate a cave with the flashbulb on his camera. This results in brief flashes of his surroundings that build to a startling payoff. What makes the scene so scary is the extended periods of darkness between flashes that play on the audience’s mounting fears.

Even though visual stylist Timur Bekmambetov (Night Watch) served as the film’s co-producer, Apollo 18 is surprisingly restrained in its use of digital effects. López-Gallego wisely resists the urge to have viewers get too well acquainted with the horrors that may or may not be lurking on the lunar surface.

Sound effects editor Kris Fenske appears to have had a ball dreaming up new ways to jolt the viewer, yet there’s so much hissing and groaning and booming on the ship that it begins to resemble a haunted house.

Like Cloverfield, Apollo 18 had a team of effects artists at its command, and it isn’t until the last half hour that their fingerprints start to become visible. 

The climactic set piece owes more to Danny Boyle’s eerie sci-fi slasher Sunshine than it does to Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez’s The Blair Witch Project, which is the grandfather of the “found footage” subgenre and still the very best of its kind. No film since Blair Witch has been able to match the power of its final shot, which still haunts me till this day.

Yet like its forbears, Apollo 18 taps into the primal fear of not being able to trust one’s own partner in an isolated location at a time of extreme crisis. This premise will always have a timeless appeal, whether the locale is a claustrophobic spaceship, a darkened bedroom or a tent out in the woods. 

Apollo 18 opened Sept. 2 at the AMC Showplace Village Crossing 18 and Regal Gardens 1-6 in Skokie. The PG-13 movie opened at No. 3 behind The Help and The Debt, earning $8.7 million in weekend ticket sales, according to Box Office Mojo.

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