Apollo 18 (2011).

There have been a number of complaints made against the Found Footage film.  Off the top of my head, the most common ones tend to come down to a combination of formatting and plotting.  On the former side of things, you tend to hear complaints about the so-called "Shaky Camera Technique".  Thanks to the bumper crop proliferation that the sub-genre has undergone in these post-Blair Witch years, there's only too many examples for the reader to choose from if its a list of usual suspects you're looking for.  The lowest hanging fruit on this particular pinata tree might still belong to the film that started it all.  Even to this day, you hear either new or longtime viewers griping about how the camera work in Sanchez and Myrick's breakout project is guilty of a multitude of faults.  Boiled down to its essence, the basic claim is that the cinematography of a film like Blair Witch and the rest that followed in its train is lacking in a proper sense of visual artistry.  It is "unprofessional" in the purest sense of the term.  The problem with this common trope of complaint is that sooner or later it always begs one simple question.  What is the perfect cinematic image?  The minute you start down that road, you might just surprise yourself by asking a sort of inconvenient question.  One that's all the more frustrating for seeming to be forever joined at the hip to the idea of cinematic perfection.  How do you know what's hip today won't be passe tomorrow?

Let me give you an example of what I mean.  For the longest time, growing up, I kept hearing critics and audiences praising Orson Welles' Citizen Kane as the Greatest Movie Ever Made.  Fast forward a few years, and now we've got younger generations looking for all kind s of ways to dethrone that picture from off its perch.  The reason for that is simple enough.  There's nothing inherently wrong with the Kane film as it stands.  Even its one or two technical flaws are so minor that they count as terms of retro-nostalgic endearment, more than anything else.  At the same time, it's like none of the skills and artistic mastery can ever mean that much in an age which is on the look out for, maybe it's a mistake to claim we want something "new", in the strictest sense.  A better way to phrase it is that we've reached a level of familiarity with the routine of films like Kane and are now going about in search more of "novelty", rather than any quest for originality.  In the strictest sense, there's nothing all that surprising about any of this.  It's happened before, and probably won't be the last time this sort of thing occurs in the realms of the fandom.  Films like Citizen Kane are destined to see peaks and troughs over the course of their popular reputation.  It will never go away entirely.  It's just that sometimes the desire for the novel will outweigh admiration for the sort of skills that a picture like this puts on display.  What this tells me is that our desire for the perfect image is only skin deep, it's good writing that we truly want.

All of this is very subconscious to a great extent, existing on a level that most of us will never be aware of from our first breath to the last.  I think that's the reason why films like Kane and Blair Witch still manage to hold on, despite all the critical barbs that get hurled their way.  A lot of it has less to do with the quality of the image, and those that focus on the picture quality to the exclusion of all else will always turn themselves into a historical irony sooner or later the moment public taste moves on to something else.  That's a lesson guys like Orson Welles could have told them long ago.  That just leaves the more substantial question of story quality.  When it comes to this level of criticism, things get a bit more tricksy.  There's plenty to be said about bad writing, and the lessons to be learned from it.  The catch with a format like Found Footage Horror is that we're not talking about just the ordinary bells and whistles of plotting, but also potentially raising the question of formula.  Specifically, the biggest criticism of the Recovered Horror Story is that it is too constricted by the technical limitations it places itself under.  The idea of someone creating a cinematic document of their final moments in confrontation with some sort of horrific menace (whether natural, extra-terrestrial, or Supernatural) is the base common denominator for practically all the films associated with this narrative approach.

The implicit critique of the sub-genre is that by welding itself to such a format and formula, there is little room left for anything like originality and creativity to flourish in what is effectively seen as a self-created vacuum.  The problem with this line of thinking is that it ignores the bigger picture of the Gothic genre as a whole, thus confusing and therefore losing a proper grasp of the full meanings to be had between part and whole.  To start with, if it's a question of formulas, then turning elsewhere within the field of Frights to validate your criticism of Found Footage isn't going to do anyone much good.  The reason why is because most narratives tend to be formulaic to begin with.  This is an issue that confronts every single genre out there.  It's never something you can pin the blame on just by pointing to the Horror format as if it was the sole culprit.  Indeed, to take such a course of action does little more than to paint the potential critic as something of a snob harboring a sense of favoritism toward some other type of story that you happen to like more than the one that deals primarily in fear.  For one thing, even when we look at stories set outside the realm of Found Footage, we still run into what I'm going to call the problem of narrative familiarity.  Basically, it's the fact that all Horror stories rely on little more than the Bingo game style shuffling of a few simple plot beats.  A character is thrown into a terrifying situation, and they either overcome this challenge, or else they are defeated by it.  Not much else to it.

When you strip away all the artificial trappings that have accumulated over any and all narratives that can be spoken of as belonging to the Gothic category, then all you're left with is what might be called the standard folktale setup.  It is and remains one of the simplest methods of storytelling out there.  The fact that a series of premises which date all the way back to when our ancestors had to huddle around campfires at night can somehow still capture the attention of audiences today seems to attest more to the durability and adaptability to both the Fear genre as a whole, and its Found Footage subset.  In fact, this very same adaptability factor has been in play at various points throughout the filmic subgroup's history, even dating as far back to its antecedents in Gothic literature, believe it or not.  That counts as a whole unexplored field that's still something of a mystery to both fans, detractors, and even this writer, if I'm being honest.  I hope to work my way toward all of that in future entries somewhere down the line.  For now, I'd like to take a baby step in that general direction by taking a look at one specimen of the format that, while maybe not a huge ground breaker in and of itself, is still able to display a certain amount of creativity in terms of both its visual and narrative approach to what is by now a tried and true formula.

The Story. 

"July 20, 1969 - Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong is the first man to walk on the Moon.  In 1970, Apollo missions 18, 19, and 20 were cancelled due to budgetary concerns.  December 7, 1972, the final official lunar mission lands on the Moon.  In 2011, eighty four hours of classified footage is uploaded to www.LunarTruth.com.  This film is edited from that footage".

Conclusion: An Overlooked and Decent Late-Night Drive-In Flick.

For those looking for a better picture of what this movie's about, the basics of the plot go as follows.  It all concerns a trio of fictional American astronauts, Command Module Pilot and Lieutenant Col. John "Johnny" Grey (Ryan Robbins), Mission Commander Nathan Walker (Lloyd Owen), and Lunar Module Pilot, Captain Benjamin Anderson (Warren Christie).  Together, these three air force soldiers have been selected by NASA to man what is planned as the eighteenth flight mission to explore and chart the surface of Earth's closest celestial neighbor and satellite.  The one catch is that due to the specific nature of this endeavor, their mission will have to be kept under the strictest code of secrecy.  In practice, that means no one outside of Mission Control, CAPCOM, and the Department of Defense can ever know this entire launch is taking place.  What this means is that, assuming the mission is a success, no civilians (American or otherwise) will be hearing about their exploits until such time as the Government deems it safe to qualify as declassified.  Basically, the whole logic of the project is similar to that employed during World War II, where some combat objectives were considered so vital that Uncle Sam felt it necessary to create a cover story which would cloak the real mission objectives while the soldiers involved did something brave such as smuggle the plans of the Axis back to Allied turf.  The scenario that the crew of Module 18 find themselves tasked with is a lot less dire than these earlier efforts, and yet they are told by the higher ups that what makes this launch different from all the others is that it is viewed as a matter of urgent national security.

Once on the Moon, Commander Walker and Captain Anderson will be tasked with setting up a series of DOD broadcast satellite radio monitors.  In fact, the first hint of suspicion begins to creep in on the viewer right from the start once its implied that NASA and the Defense Department sound like they're valuing the functionality of a few pieces of Cold War equipment higher than the lives of their pilots.  The nominal explanation that Walker, Anderson, and Grey are given for why these high-fangled radio towers need to be placed in just the right spots somewhere on Terra Luna is because DOD believes it will help them to monitor missile launches.  Thus the need for secrecy and the scheduling of a nighttime launch to begin the mission and to send the crew out into the depths of space.  By this point, of course, the audience should be savvy enough to realize something about this whole setup carries the same kind of scent as New York's Fulton Fish Market on a hot day in the middle of Summer.  The math won't compute in an exact sum, and right away it sounds like we're in the midst of one of those classical Post-Watergate setups where you've got a low-key Sci-Fi Spy thriller on our hands.  One of those stories like Capricorn One or Outland, where the plot revolves around the slow-burn uncovering and exposure of Government corruption, with NASA and its personnel as mere pawns (both unwitting and otherwise) in a much larger game of deceit and trickery.  This kind of setup was a regular feature for films of an era that date to in and around the time the events of this movie is set.  And the vast majority of it was a response to the fallout of public trust in America's institutions in the aftermath of Nixon's fuckups.

Pictures like Capricorn One are all about the Nation's coming to terms with the fact that sometimes, those placed in the highest office simply do not, and never can have the Citizens' best interests in mind.  Looking back now, it makes a certain amount of sense to claim that this is a situation that would have happened in one way or another.  Both the nature and events of what is now known as the Long Sixties made something of this nature a fait acompli at some future point in the timeline.  It was all just a question of which straw would be the right one to break the camel's back, in retrospect.  Nixon, through his own stupidity and paranoia, just turned out to be the one to pull back the curtain for all to see.  Coupled with this was a growing distrust and suspicion on the part of the American public about the not just the feasibility, but also the inherent value and altruism of programs like the Apollo Missions and their obvious use as a weapon in the Space Race.  The growing sentiment was that people had become tired of being lied to so much that even before Watergate knocked everything into a cocked hat, everyone could tell that putting men on the Moon was a lot less about scientific exploration and the natural curiosity that human beings have about our place in the Cosmos, and instead was always a lot more to do with whether not its possible to use that big gray ball as a place for weapons.  I for one happen to think that's not only a bad idea, there's just something inherently offensive about the notion.

It's like trying to plaster a bunch of insolent spray paint graffiti on one of the few natural wonders that nature, in all its inscrutability, has granted to us.  I suppose another way to out it is to say that the Moon is nature's version of the Mona Lisa.  Trying to use such an artwork for your own selfish ends is like trying to paint a mustache on what is otherwise as complete and perfect a portrait as anyone is ever likely to get.  Call me crazy, but that sounds like no way to treat a lady, especially not one with a smile like hers.  If all that sounds too Romantic for your liking, bear in mind that it was a sentiment very much like (and maybe even containing one or two fine shades) of this line of reasoning which ultimately lead America to turn its back on NASA and its Lunar exploits.  This is all a bit of history that forms something of a greater backdrop to director Gonzalo-Lopez-Gallego's film as a whole.  It wouldn't be possible to tell a story like this without it, as it is this history of the fallout in trust between NASA and the Nation which frames the way the film's characters both act and behave.  The three best books on this subject are NASA and the Age of Aquarius by Neil Maher, David Tribbe's No Requiem for the Space Age, and Where the Wasteland Ends by Theodore Roszak.  Together, this handful of source materials do a pretty thorough job at detailing the historical shifts in public sentiment that lead the end of NASA's Lunar exploration, with Roszak's book benefitting from being an eye-witness account from an actual era contemporary who got to watch and chronicle the sentiment at it unfolded in real time.

This, then, is a beginner's summation of the entire cultural and literate background that has gone on to inform Gallego's somewhat Found Footage opus.  What's interesting to note is that realizing that the movie draws upon all of this complex historic material is one of the things that makes it kind of fascinating to watch, if only because this tends not to be the sort of thing you go in expecting to see from most celluloid specimens in this subgenre.  Not that this is a bad thing.  There have been plenty of examples of even the most schlocky of premises that are still able to come equipped with a sometimes surprising amounts of thematic sophistication that makes for a bunch of worthy re-watch candidates for the dedicated student of cinema.  At the same time, the lack of this sophistication isn't always a deal breaker in and of itself, either.  Sometimes the basic Popcorn Flick approach can have a legitimate value all its own.  A good example of how this can play out in the Found Footage format is found in the 2010 mockumentary fantasy Troll Hunter, where the main premise is little more than to have fun creating an engaging and sometimes even funny riff on ancient Norse folklore.  What that film and a movie like Gallego's goes to prove is that each approach has to have its place at the table, and there can be times when trying to decide which approach is better does a disservice to all the parties concerned.  In that sense, the somewhat stunning realization that the director of Apollo 18 has crafted a film like this out of such a complex and varied historical background is just one of those strange bits of icing on the cake.

It just helps to lend a film like this a kind of added bonus layer of thematic interest that you weren't expecting, yet that also somehow manages to not detract from the overall experience.  What that experience amounts to, then, is a combination of elements thrown into a blender, and somehow managing to emerge as a schlocky yet digestible genre amalgamation.  If you go into this film blind, then it is possible for the viewer to start off on the roughly the same footing as the story's main cast.  Like the astronauts at the center of the drama, there are just enough clues and hints scattered around the film's brief opening moments to hint that even before we get to the Moon, not everything is on the straight and narrow with the nature of this mission.  Even the mission's leader, Commander Walker, voices a bit of skepticism as to why the Government needs more satellites up there when some have already been planted a while back.  However, Walker also makes clear that he comes from a family with a long line of military tradition in its make up, so while even if we the audience might be able to catch the brief hint of suspicion, the character just brushes it off as nothing, maybe even dismissing it as an uncharacteristic bit of weakness when charged with confronting the unknown vacuum of outer space. 

With this in mind, we then follow the crew along as they embark on their mission into orbit.  Of course, being the type of film that it is, it doesn't take too long for the action of the plot to shift gears on its protagonists, and propel them headlong out of the space-themed Cold War thriller they believe themselves to be in, and straight into the jaws of a waiting and hungry Creature Feature.  Now, it should be mentioned that this is one of those interesting sideline films.  I've no idea if it was ever anyone's passion project.  It got a very lukewarm reception from critics and audiences upon its release, and yet there seems to be this odd sense of staying power to the whole thing.  What I means is that if this truly counts as a bad film, then its also one that refuses to go away for some reason.  Now, you could make the claim that whatever form of cinematic immortality it might have achieved is due to falling into the "So Bad it's Good" category reserved for MST3K fair, such as MANOS or the films of Ed Wood.  However, I tend to think we're not dealing with those levels, or depths of anti-quality, for lack of a better term.  For one thing, while there are technical flaws to be had, the overall experience of this film is one that comes very close to capturing the historic ambience of what it was like to be an Apollo explorer confronting the unknown on the surface of another planet.  Indeed, despite some hiccups, something that even the films detractors can't help but admire is the film's depiction of NASA space travel.

In addition, even if you can't bring yourself to like this flick, the one mistake you can't make about it is to claim that it's anywhere near the level of unprofessional incompetence of a film like Plan 9 from Outer Space.  On a technical level, Apollo 18 is a film of tight camera angles that create a palpable atmosphere of dread and encroaching claustrophobia, combined with an artistic skill in a recreation of the look and feel of the Lunar surface as late 60s camera tech was able to capture it, that has little choice in the matter except to come off as admirable.  This alone should be a clue that while the film probably does have to quality as a late night B picture, it's also one that was made on a much higher budget.  It leads to a greater overall sense of production value that is able to differentiate it from most of the standard fair in the offing for these kinds of productions.  And take my word for it, I'm the kind of guy who goes out of his way to defend all those cheesy Sci-Fi pictures from the 50s and 60s.  Let's just say I know what I'm talking about when I claim to know what it's like to watch a good piece of schlock were the visuals are still nothing to look at.  Films like It: The Terror from Beyond Space are B pictures that deserve a place in the Sun.  However, all of that flick's visuals are dwarfed by just any single shot in this containing nothing more than a fictionalized mock-up of the Moon's South Pole from Gallego's effort.  The final added irony there is that none of these stunning visuals can amount to much without at least some good writing support.

It's in turning to the overall quality of the script that the real value of this picture can gaged.  What it reveals for me can be summed up with relative ease.  What the filmmakers have got here is a pretty good idea, and it works by and large.  Is there any room for improvement?  Yes, though I'd argue its to Gallego and his screenwriter Brian Miller's credit that they got most the good idea not just down on paper, but also up on the screen.  Basically, what you've got here is a modern day throwback to all of those Creature Features from the 50s and 60s, the kind of fun schlock that cable TV stations would show late at night for no other reason than to fill an empty time slot, and yet which proved to be the making of future directors like Joe Dante and John Carpenter.  It's really just the same kind of film as Terror from Beyond Space or Invasion of the Body Snatchers.  The only major difference is that this time the film's budget is a hell of a lot more impressive looking.  That said, if were going to talk about the aesthetic quality of the scenery, then I'm afraid I'll have to put this film on an equal shelf rating with the kind that Don Siegel creates in his 1950s paranoia classic.  That's a stylish bit of Sci-Fi noir that still holds its own with anything that Apollo 18's cinematographer Jose Montero can give us.  So it's useless to try and turn this into a pissing match over who has the better visuals when the story is what matters.

After giving it a lot of thought, I'd have to say that for me, it all goes back to the context that the filmmakers are drawing from, the one I kind of provided a brief and amateur beginner's summary of above.  For better or worse, Apollo 18 ends up as a film that sort of has no choice except to be, or become a reflection of the moment in time, or the main historical zeitgeist that it draws upon for its inspiration.  In other words, the film is, whether intentional or otherwise, something of an accidental yet irrevocable period piece.  By setting their story in the wake of NASA's ultimate failures with the Apollo project, Miller's script doesn't leave itself that much room to work around with.  Every detail of the film's plot must, in various ways, be tailored to the time period in which it is set.  In doing so, that means that the writer has to do his best to, not just get into the mindset of the times in which the narrative takes place, but also to arrive at the best possible objective vantage point which would allow him to craft a script that elevates the action up a notch or two.  In the case of a film like this, that means tapping into the mental framework of free-floating skepticism that was beginning to grip the Nation not just in terms of NASA, but also of the American Government as a whole.  A valid portrait of that national paranoia is what's called for here.  In order to accomplish this, it becomes easy enough to see that what Miller and Gallego should have done was to take the basic, distrustful mindset of the late 60s to early 70s, and find a way to embody it through the presentation of the narrative's main characters.

The reason for why I think this is the right way to go is because one of the key things to remember in a story like this is that even if the basic premise has been done before, any question of boredom due to familiarity can be balanced off by well developed writing for the main cast.  In other words, if you can allow the audience a chance to get to know and therefore like your protagonists, then no matter how familiar their ultimate fates might be, you'll still be left with figures you want to root for, even once it comes time for the actor wearing the rubber monster outfit to come on-stage and bring their stories to an end.  For a film like this, here is where a better implementation of the story's historic context could maybe have benefitted things, and brought the overall quality of the plot up a notch or two.  A good way to improve this picture would have been to create a better sense of underlying conflict between the two characters at the heart of this story.  In the opening scenes, we're given a number of personal details about the astronauts as they embark on their mission.  Commander Nate Walker comes off as the gung-ho patriot who is still willing to do whatever it takes in the service of his Country.  John, the space capsule pilot, is mostly shown as more of the dutiful sort.  Soft-spoken for the most part, and dedicated to ensuring the safety of his fellow crew mates.  Ben Anderson, meanwhile, starts out as the most hesitant and cautious sounding of the bunch.  He claims he's on this mission to make his family proud.

However, later on in the plot, as things begin to go sour, yet just before the shit really starts to hit the fan, he confesses to Nate that even while they were all in basic training for their assignment, he was already nursing a growing sense of skepticism that has just now been verified.  Hence Ben's allowing himself to just come out and say what he'd up till then been keeping to himself.  It's an interesting moment in the film, and one that's always sort of stood out to me, even after the credits role.  What I begin to see now is the reason for that is because its the one moment where the film signals to the perceptive viewer where and how the script should, or could have been elevated to the next level.  Not that this would have kept the final product from being good schlock, nor does anything else seem all that desirable for a project like this.  Instead, the ideas that could have made the film better would be to instead bring it up to a level that might be termed the Thinking Person's Schlock.  For what it's worth, such a thing does exist, and the work of filmmakers like Roger Corman are a testament to it.  With that said, the way the script for Apollo 18 could have reached those same heights would be to do no more than make one simple adjustment, and the best part is it wouldn't impact the special effects budgets.

What could have helped was to devote just a bit more space in the script to the development of the film's two main leads.  Take some time to add a bit more depth to characterizing Ben and Nate while they're up their on the Moon.  It wouldn't even have to be anything flashy.  Just a simple bit of information tossed out in passing during a quiet conversation scene.  In fact, there is even a perfect moment for this in the film, which is sadly wasted in the final product.  It comes in the aftermath of the LMP crew's first day on the Lunar surface, after they've planted the Flag, set up the broadcast equipment, and collected the obligatory rock samples.  It's a scene with just the two of them unwinding in the module after a hard day's work.  In the film as it exists, this moment is wasted on what turns out to be a very uninteresting joke.  However, there is a hint given that Nate's marriage has been suffering due to his commitment to the job as a soldier.  There's even the implication that it has led to a divorce between the Commander and his wife, or at least that such and outcome could be what lies in wait for him, should he ever return home.  That's is the one interesting moment of this scene as it exists in the final product, as it hints at an undisclosed side of Nate's character that frustratingly gets thrown away and never mentioned again afterwards.  A better way to go would have been to build on that point.

This alternate version could have gone as follows.  Nate comes a bit more clean about the difficulties he's been having with his home life as a result of his dedication to the job.  As he explains to Ben, it's just always been like that in his family, for as long as he can remember, even when he was just a boy.  The script could then elaborate on this plot point a bit further.  Have Nate admit that he's never really known what it was like to have or live in a stable home, because his own father's commitment to the Military meant that he was always being moved from one location to another, based on where their superiors ordered them to be stationed.  As a result, he's grown up to be something of a modern American nomad, and hence an ironic contrast.  In trying to be a patriot like his dad (indeed, perhaps in trying to subconsciously chase after a father who was never entirely there for his son, except in his capacity as an army solider) Nate has almost made himself in a man with very little ties to his own Country.  This is something that would all have to be delivered in a subtle way, as the subtext of what should be made to sound like otherwise mundane dialogue; just a bunch working stiffs comparing notes, in other words.  This brief candid moment can then be followed up by Ben dropping a bit of a bomb.

Let the main character admit that he's been thinking of quitting the service once he gets home from this mission.  Again, there should perhaps be a certain amount of subtlety in the way this is written into the dialogue, however the gist of Ben' information should paint the portrait of someone who, once upon a time, might have had a train of thought similar to Nate's.  The difference in Ben's case is that he was a Huey pilot during the Vietnam War.  As a result, it means he got to see plenty of evidence of just how hollow a lot of the ideals that Nate espouses really are.  He got to see men throwing their lives away for a conflict that he soon realized was unwinnable.  He came to understand that the Government seemed either blind or uncaring about these facts.  How it easy it was for the seemingly unbreakable chain of command to fall apart in a situation that no one seems have prepared for, or know how to deal with.  The implication of Ben's dialogue should therefore be that his time in Vietnam has more or less forced him to experience (up close and unflinching) his way into the same shift in public opinion that most Americans of that time had of suspicion towards their own Government.  Hence Ben's growing sense of disillusionment with his life as a soldier, and a concomitant desire to get away and start things anew.

A better way to sum up the gist of Ben's character is from the lines of an old Bob Dylan song.  He's the kind of guy who "grew up a boy scout, till he went to Vietnam.  Where found out the hard that nobody gives a damn".  The dramatic benefit of framing the stories of the two leads in this light is that it allows the film to carry the historical background its drawing upon into the the plot's main action along with everything else.  In doing so, it both creates and attaches a greater sense of artistic weight to the characters, by showing in what ways they are the products of their respective backgrounds, and how each background, in turn, has been determined by the course of 20th century American history, and how that has impacted their current predicament, where they are now.  Indeed, one final bit of Tragic pathos can be granted to the character of Ben by having him imply in some fashion that the only reason he signed onto this Moon mission was because if he was going to sever ties with his own military past, then he would at least liked to have done so in a way that wouldn't cause his family to resent him for it.  His thinking could have been that in going to the Moon, he could have maybe accomplished one good deed as a soldier that both he and his family (his son, in particular) could be proud. of.  Once his suspicions began to kick in, rather than voicing dissent, he thought this situation was still salvageable.

In other words, even if he couldn't be proud of the mission due to it reducing him to little more than just another prop in a bit of intergalactic Cold War propaganda, then at least maybe he could buck the system by having or finding one moment for himself where he could have some sort of accomplishment that would mean something to him and his wife and kid on a personal level.  Something that he could be proud of for his own sake, and that couldn't be tarnished by having to dance to the Government's tune.  The Tragic irony comes along once the main plot decides to kick in, and the characters all discover too late that they have been little more than human lab rats this whole time.  The best part about such an approach to me is that it allows not only for a greater sense of depth to both the story and its characters.  If handled in the right way, it could also serve as a great method of deploying the proper note of paranoia which, even in the finished product, is more or less the correct atmosphere for a story like this.  At the same time, it's also possible to claim that even while all of these suggestions might have made for a stronger story overall, the film that we got can still be considered as being of enough of a quality to classify all I've just said as little more than a bunch of nitpicks.  In the last resort, when I call this film a fun and cheesy throwback to the Drive-In B pictures of yore, that's really all it is in the purest sense of the term.  This sense of being a throwback to the Golden Age of 50s Sci-Fi is enhanced in ironic ways.

The chief aspect of Gallego's film that relates it back to an era of films like The Thing From Another World, and It Came from Outer Space is how it's possible to claim there is just the thinnest, yet genuine connecting thread between this modern day Found Footage flick and an obscure short story by the guy who made none other than the Narnia Chronicles, believe it or not.  A while back I stumbled upon this very obscure pulp magazine short story written by C.S. Lewis of all people.  I found the whole experience so intriguing that I had to share it as a review with others.  The sole reason for bringing that work, "Forms of Things Unknown", into the conversation on an equally obscure schlock film is because of the surprising way it helps us finalize the context of the movie under discussion here.  The single bit of tangential thread these otherwise unrelated narratives share together is the way in which they are both conditioned by the same specific context at a particular point in history.  Again, this goes back to that growing sense of postwar skepticism in the Government in general, and of the Space Race that was fueling the creation of NASA and the Apollo program in particular.  It's the constant background note that determines not just the plot, but also the overall tone of Gallego's picture.  Brining Lewis into the discussion actually serves to highlight the actual antiquity of the movie's context.  It's a shared theme that's also present in Lewis's short story, and so both works partake in the same Cold War zeitgeist.

I suppose it's this ability of Gallego to somehow recapture that unsettling note that rests somewhere in an uneasy space between the kind of popcorn sense of Entertainment that was typical of the 50s Drive-In, and the kind schizoid, free-floating paranoia that was one of the flip-side hallmarks of an era when everyone's greatest fear was that someone could send the entire world into a nuclear holocaust at the flip of a switch, or push of a button (ask your great-grandparents about this, then see what happens and how you feel about it when/if you decide to compare notes).  In that sense, while it is very much as mistake to claim that Apollo 18 and a written work like "Forms of Things Unknown" amount to "the same story" told in different formats, it might not be too off-base to claim that both works share a number of genetic materials in their makeup.  Both come from a place of below the surface fear and anxiety, not so much in terms of either the concept, or even the very essential fact-hood of space itself.  Instead, the Terror in both the film and short stems more from a realist suspicion of the motives that man might have for wanting to send himself into the vast unknown of the starry expanse.  Yes, it's true that the astronauts at the heart of Lewis and Gallego's works are forced to confront the unknown in the form of terrifying monsters.  However, one final piece of shared artistry that exists between these two efforts is how the thematic way in which that Horror at the center of each plot is portrayed.  In the best Gothic sense, the monsters are also mirrors.

Their function in "Forms" and Apollo isn't just to wait in the dark for their cue, so they can jump out of the shadows every now or again and go Boo!  Instead, one of the reasons I'll have to give at least a decent passing grade to Gallego's efforts on this bit of schlock is because he seems to have remembered one of the few hard and crucial facts about the genre he's working in.  This is the maxim that what makes all of the best monstrous or ghostly beings of the Horror format work so well is that they have this symbolic richness to them.  The reason we still remember characters like Dracula or the Frankenstein Monster years after their moment in the spotlight has come and gone is because even when they're gathering dust, there's still this note of archetypal potency to the very idea of these imaginary haunts that allows us to relate them to any number of real life concerns.  It's why a make-believe creature like Pennywise the Dancing Clown is such a brilliant symbol for the entire dark side of the American psyche.  The good Horror story, the one that will last forever in some form of fan enthusiasm or another, is one that is able to take our real life fears, and place them on the kind of secondary world stage that allows us a chance to see if we can exorcise them.  What Apollo 18 seems to share in common with a work like Frankenstein is that much like Mary Shelley's pioneer Gothic novel, its about the price tag of hubris, or the follies of believing that you can just bend the nature of reality to you own liking.

Much like the scientific overreacher or spacefarer of Shelley and Lewis's text, the crew of the 18th Lunar mission venture out beyond the bounds of normality, and find themselves ultimately punished by Horrors that act as effective mirrors for the monstrous qualities that they, in one form or another, mimic and reflect back to the protagonists.  It's what makes the fates of the Mad Doctor and the unfortunate NASA pilots so brutal.  A lot of what makes their fates so gruesome is not any simple gore factor to be had, but rather the knowing sense that the nature of their fates is one that matches their own flaws as human beings.  Their own faults are being allowed to catch up with them on a sometimes cosmic level.  Now, if I've made all this sound too heavy to be entertaining, then rest assured, this is far from the case.  Make no mistake, when I call this film a piece of entertaining schlock, I am doing no more than giving an accurate description of the contents to found within the runtime of this whole story.  If anything, the complexity and sophistication of the historical and conceptual background that Gallego and Miller draw from in order to craft their tale means that we have sort of an anomaly within the sub-genre of Found Footage.  What we've got on our hands is one of the few specimens that rewards a desire for re-watching, because the more you study up on the ideologies of the NASA program, and how the mindset of the American public soon came to turn against it all, then it just creates this interesting mystique to the whole picture that perhaps accounts for one of the reasons its stuck around, instead of fading away.

If this should be the ultimate explanation for the apparent longevity, and even memorability of what is otherwise a modern day Drive-In flick, then I suppose this makes it a simple case of more power to the picture in the years ahead.  It's an easy well-wish to give to a simple little late night TV entry like this, because that means we're with one of those little films that could, under the right set of circumstances, anyway.  So far, I guess that means the cards keep turning up aces.  If it proves anything, then it's the simple maxim that sometimes schlock doesn't just have its place in the grand scheme of things, it can also sometimes justify its ways to audiences with the subtle hints of sophistication lurking in back of the cheap sets and second-rate production values.  With this in mind, the one thing that still needs to be stressed before leaving off is to reiterate that none of this makes for a dull and tedious waste of time.  Gallego and Miller haven't made the mistake of giving their audience an master's thesis along the lines of Ingmar Bergman in space.  Gallego and Miller are, ironically enough, way too down to Earth for any of that.  This, in turn, might explain the way that the complexity of the film's themes are able to mesh well with the schlocky premise of encountering monsters on the surface of another world.  While the monsters at the heart of this feature won't break new ground, they do work not just on the thematic level of Nature punishing those who would try to defile it, but even more important are able to deliver a genuine sense of fear and dread similar to that of Night of the Living Dead.  Where the terror stems from the knowledge that something dangerous is stalking just right outside the only door of safety left.

That's a good benchmark for the kind of effect that story is going for overall, and it does a neat job of granting both the reader and the viewer an working idea of just what kind of movie they're getting into.  It's one with a lot of cultural knowledge under the belt, yet it wears this all lightly.  It sticks to its task of trying to get a rise out of its audience, without dumbing things down.  There's a sense of genuine chills mixed in with some clever self-referential humor.  The best example of this latter element that stands out in my mind is the fact that the filmmakers must have known what they were doing when they cast an actor who bears an uncanny resemblance to a grown-up Henry Thomas, the former child star at the heart of Steven Spielberg's E.T.  In fact, the nature of this joke is so subtle, that it's clear the director wanted it to sneak up on his audience.  I mean, when you stop and think of how logical the idea is of Elliott growing up to be an astronaut just so he can explore the stars in the hopes meeting up with an old friend from the formative years of his childhood, then the choice of casting someone who bears an uncanny resemblance to how Thomas looks now strikes as too on-the-nose not to be a considered effort on the director's part.  Gallego had to have known that sooner or later someone in the aisles would think, "Ya know what's funny", it's like this whole is a meant to be some kind of joke about E.T".

Odds are even that was some aspect of the thinking going on behind-the-scenes, and just like its debt to Romero mentioned above is a good example of the type of Horror this picture is going for, so does the Henry Thomas reference highlight this film's clever sense of humor which it uses to balance out and elevate the heavier material its dealing with.  When all of these ingredients are put together on the screen, it seems as if the final results we are left with are best summed up by YouTube Horror critic Ryan Hollinger.  "It's a very simple, straightforward Found Footage Horror that might not blow you away.  (Yet, sic) it certainly has a unique historical charm, and some mature undertones that capture the essence of what makes this sub-genre so spooky to begin with (web)".