SFF Chronicles News
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6th September 2011 10:37 AM
Darren Allan
Apollo 18 is a Paranormal Activity/Blair Witch style “recovered camera footage” horror film regarding a secret mission to the moon.
It postulates that the last official manned mission to the moon, Apollo 17 in 1972, was followed by one final sortie which NASA denies ever existed.
And what that mission discovered was the real reason we’ve never been back to the moon in nearly four decades. Cue creepy music…
It’s certainly an interesting premise, but according to critics and the reaction from cinema-goers alike, it isn’t a well made flick. In fact, it’s allegedly very poor – we’re talking a Metacritic average of 21%, and 19% on Rotten Tomatoes. Ouch.
Critics seem to suggest that it isn’t very scary either, and horror aficionados would more likely be snoozing rather than screaming.
Box office figures in the opening weekend over in the US weren’t impressive either, with Apollo 18 only managing $8.7 million, coming in third behind The Debt and The Help.
True, Apollo 18 was a very low budget film only costing around $5 million to make, so the takings don’t seem bad in that light. But it has been very widely screened, which will have cost money – and also makes the light receipts seem more disappointing.
The film was released in the UK this Friday, but we think we’ll wait for the DVD. We must admit, we’re not tired of the lost footage premise yet, so we’ll give it a watch but with low expectations.
Darren Allan
Apollo 18 is a Paranormal Activity/Blair Witch style “recovered camera footage” horror film regarding a secret mission to the moon.
It postulates that the last official manned mission to the moon, Apollo 17 in 1972, was followed by one final sortie which NASA denies ever existed.
And what that mission discovered was the real reason we’ve never been back to the moon in nearly four decades. Cue creepy music…
It’s certainly an interesting premise, but according to critics and the reaction from cinema-goers alike, it isn’t a well made flick. In fact, it’s allegedly very poor – we’re talking a Metacritic average of 21%, and 19% on Rotten Tomatoes. Ouch.
Critics seem to suggest that it isn’t very scary either, and horror aficionados would more likely be snoozing rather than screaming.
Box office figures in the opening weekend over in the US weren’t impressive either, with Apollo 18 only managing $8.7 million, coming in third behind The Debt and The Help.
True, Apollo 18 was a very low budget film only costing around $5 million to make, so the takings don’t seem bad in that light. But it has been very widely screened, which will have cost money – and also makes the light receipts seem more disappointing.
The film was released in the UK this Friday, but we think we’ll wait for the DVD. We must admit, we’re not tired of the lost footage premise yet, so we’ll give it a watch but with low expectations.
