Film Friday: Apollo 18 (2011)

I’m of two minds about Apollo 18. On the one hand, I’m glad I saw it. But on the other, I cannot recommend it and I never want to see it again. Why? Well, it has a solid story, ruined by its presentation. It had excellent effects, squandered by its presentation. It was simultaneously too long and too short, both because of its presentation. Put simply, this was a potentially excellent film ruined by a misused gimmick.

** spoiler alert **

The Plot

The last manned moon mission was Apollo 17 in December 1972. Or was it? In December 1974, the Department of Defense secretly launches three NASA astronauts to the moon aboard Apollo 18. Their ostensible reason for going is to install an ICBM detector on the moon to warn the US in the event of a Russian missile launch. But when they get to the moon, they discover a mystery in the form of an abandoned Russian moon-lander and a dead cosmonaut. Then things get worse.

Why This Film Could Have Been Excellent, But Wasn’t

When I first heard about this film, I was excited. After all, the plot description above is pretty stellar. It promises intrigue, mystery, action, science fiction and has tons of potential for terror. Imagine the horror of not being able to see or hear things approach, of not being able to breath outside of the suit or the capsule, of communications blackouts, and of the horrific unknown. Add in a trailer which appeared to show a dead astronaut walking around on the moon and this became one of the few films last year that I genuinely wanted to see.

Then it got released to universal derision. My hopes were dampened. Then I heard it was yet another “found footage” film and my hopes died. But it gets worse. Not only is this a found footage film, but they completely mishandled the already awful concept.

The concept of “found footage” films (e.g. Blair Witch and Paranormal Activity) is premised on the idea that someone has cobbled together a movie from film found at the scene of a mysterious tragedy, film taken by some amateur to whom the tragedy befell. This is actually a brilliant concept for several reasons. For one thing, it allows you to make movies cheaply because low quality film and cameras can be used. It also reduces the cost of special effects because any time something is too expensive to produce, the director just has the “amateur” photographer pan away from the action or drop the camera or something like that. Similarly, this approach gives great leeway in editing by allowing longer-than-normal shots with no cuts because audiences excuse the lack of multiple angles and Hollywood-style editing. It also allows jump cuts to skip over boring parts of the film because the director can simply pretend the amateur turned the camera off during that period or that the film was destroyed. This allows directors to skip from highlight to highlight while simultaneously allowing the director greater latitude in letting individual scenes develop.

But found footage films can be annoying for these same reasons: low quality images, the shaky cam effect, annoying jump cuts, and a tendency to over-tease the audience by revealing too little. All of these problems are present in Apollo 18 along with a new and truly annoying problem: aggressive, seizure-inducing edits.

Unlike most found footage films which rely on one camera, Apollo 18 involves at least five cameras which run simultaneously. Thus, it is legitimate to show scenes from multiple angles, which means more Hollywood-style editing can be employed -- this is usually not possible in found footage films.

Unfortunately, the director/editor took this way too far. Rather than doing something clever with the angles or some subtle manipulation, they pound your brain into submission with a never-ending stream of constant cuts, often settling on angles for less than a couple seconds. Even worse, to justify this constant hopping from camera to camera, each edit is preceded by fake interference to suggest the rest of that particular footage in that camera was destroyed. But this nausea-inducing style of constant quick cuts prevents you from ever seeing anything (like the special effects) and it starts to eat up considerable amounts of film time with nothing but annoying static.

Worse yet, the director/editor used these constant cuts as a way to hide a lack of story by trimming the dialog to short bursts of words. Thus, you will encounter large parts of the film which seem like a fever dream where the dialog only gives the impression of what is going on: “hold truths— [static/new angle] self-evident— [static/new angle] created equal— [static/new angle] perfect union.” Even the longer expositive scenes begin right as something is happening and end seemingly randomly before you have gotten all the necessary information to understand the scene: “That’s correct Bill, and the murderer is—” In many ways, the dialog is so disjointed it’s often like skipping ahead randomly in a film and only stopping for a few seconds at a time. What this does is take a story that seems compelling and make it meaningless. Indeed, the elements for a good story seem to be present, but they never show it to you, they only suggest it.

This approach also makes the film feel simultaneously too long and too short. At 85 minutes, the film is very short and it feels lightweight. It feels rushed and it feels like they took the easy route over and over again by cutting away every time you would normally expect something substantive -- not to mention a big chunk of time is lost to static. Yet, at the same time, this film feels far too long because the constant static and jumpcuts wear you down and make it impossible to get into the story -- because the story moves forward in random bursts. Thus, the story drags and feels laborious.

All and all, this could have been a tense and superb film. It had tremendous potential. The concept is solid, though not original. The premise, the setting, the effects, the ambiance are all top notch. The potential for mystery and horror are obvious throughout. Even something more deeply philosophical could have been done, e.g. what if they found something Biblical? But to pull that off, the film needed to be shot in a traditional manner where these things could have been exploited, or at least the found footage approach needed to be done more cleverly and less obtrusively, by for example, revealing the footage through a briefing where the pace could be controlled better and the mysteries better maintained.

But that didn’t happen and that’s too bad. This is a good film ruined by a gimmick.