Apollo 18
1 1/2 stars (out of four)
Rated: PG
Houston, we have a problem.
The virulent cinematic contagion known as “found-footage-itis,” spawned from the Blair Witch virus, has left Earth and is now infecting another body in the solar system: the moon.
Apollo 18 provides the sorry evidence. It has arrived in theatres without critical previews and after some five previous release dates were aborted, never a good sign.
Brazenly palming off a “what if?” scenario as fact, it posits the paranoid view that NASA launched a secret lunar mission in late 1974, two years after Apollo 17 supposedly wrapped America’s moon program.
The plan: to place listening devices that could spy on the Russians, make that the Soviet Union for you old-timers.
So far this isn’t entirely ridiculous, because the Cold War was still chilling in ’74, Watergate had just happened and the Internet hadn’t yet completely eliminated secrecy.
Apollo 18 purports to present top-secret grainy 1970s videotape and Kodachrome film that were only recently uncovered. Uh-huh.
Director Gonzalo Lopez-Gallego and rookie screenwriter Brian Miller set an admirably brisk pace at the outset. They barely introduce Apollo 18’s crew — mission commander Nathan Walker (Lloyd Owen), lunar module pilot Benjamin Anderson (Warren Christie) and command module pilot John Grey (Ryan Robbins) — before heading to the moon and kicking up dust.
As has already been revealed for many months in the trailer, Walker and Anderson encounter evidence of a secret Soviet mission that had preceded them — and also of a spidery creature that lives in the rocks.
The film withholds showing us too much of the creatures, which is a smart move, but it can’t solve the central dilemma of all horror pictures within a confined space: the “Spam in a can” phenomenon.
There’s literally no place to run when you’re inside a cramped lunar module and beasties are running amok.
Attempts to alleviate claustrophobia by having the astronauts moonwalk into deep, dark craters end up as the lunar equivalent of idiots who go into scary basements without turning the lights on or carrying a flashlight.
So is the having-it-both-ways dodge of having the spiders act first like a disease and then as marauding insects.
Boredom sets in long before the last muted shriek. And who cares about the astros? We never get to know them anyway.
Apollo 18 is one small step for Spam, one giant leap for mediocrity.
Peter Howell is a syndicated movie critic for the Toronto Star.