The movie isn't that grueling of a experience — hell, it's only an hour and 16 minutes of your time before the end credits (all 10 minutes of them) arrive. The problem is that I imagine it's like having sex and never being able to reach orgasm: at first fun, then frustrating, and ending angrily with no payoff.
Being a found-footage flick, "Apollo 18" sets forth the premise that NASA and the U.S. Department of the Defense secretly sent three men to the moon in December 1974 on a mission to install anti-missile technology to keep tabs on the Soviets.
But what if — as the astronauts discover 20 minutes into the movie — a cosmonaut already were there? He's dead, Jim, but from what? The culprit — spoiler alert! — is moon rocks that reveal themselves as spider-like creatures. This idea has legs to be super-cool; too bad director Gonzalo López-Gallego allows us only a few split-second glimpses. This is a case where your imagination is not more frightening than what you can see. Show us the damn space spiders!
The Blu-ray includes four alternate endings, one of which is clearly superior to what the film's nearly nonexistent audience saw. Either way, you'd still feel cheated.
This is why we stopped going to the moon? This is why people will stop going to horror movies. —Rod Lott
