BEFORE: Speaking of films on my list that I just figured I would NEVER get to, I seem to have tapped into a whole vein of them. That almost makes up for having to watch "Monster Trucks" to get here. Almost, but not quite.
I've been on the morning shift twice already this week, because it's school orientation time and that means early am staff meetings and department meetings with students taking place at the theater. This is an arts college that doesn't really have an auditorium or ampitheater to hold a large number of students, so really, this is probably why the school bought the movie theater in the first place, about 20 years ago. Solid investment, and they often rent the theater out for film festivals and other events, so you have to figure that the theater is a money-maker for the school. So, umm, OK, then why are they cutting back our staff due to budget cuts? Just asking.
But being on the morning shift, for me, should mean going to bed early, getting a solid 6 to 8 hours and being up and ready to go at 5:00 am. Yeah, that's not going to happen - I've stayed up until the wee hours of the morning so much, especially during the pandemic, that I've found that I can't go back to a normal human schedule. "Vampire hours" seems like a more appropriate term for the way I live - so I'm looking for more jobs at movie theaters, concert venues, that sort of thing because I'm mostly nocturnal now.
Andrew Airlie carries over from "The Butterfly Effect 2"
THE PLOT: Decades-old found footage from NASA's abandoned Apollo 18 mission, where three American astronauts were sent on a secret expedition, reveals the reason the U.S. has never returned to the moon.
AFTER: I have not watched a lot of films from the "found footage" genre, I mean, the original "Blair Witch" and that's about it, I have not tackled the "Paranormal Activity" movies or anything like that. But I gather you're supposed to keep a close eye on the screen and not be distracted by your phone or the games on your phone or even the web-browser on your phone. I know, I know, that's just not the way we do things now. I had to deal with this year's incoming freshmen today, and well, I'm not hopeful - many had not picked up their student ID's yet, and exactly HOW did they think they would get into our building without the required school ID? Really, it's a mystery. Others were incapable of answering when I asked what their major was, and come on, don't say, "Well, I draw and I'm working on a web-comic and I really want to get my own zine at some point..." Dude, just say "Illustration" so I know which theater to send you to - just think of me as that Sorting Hat from the Harry Potter movies, just tell me if you're a Slytherin or a HufflePuff so we can move on. Other students had their headphones on and seemed incapable of hearing me, let alone answering the question. OK, it's college time, the real world is here and it wants to know which department's meeting you're here to attend! I may sound like an old person for saying this, but the younger generation is full of dumbasses, and I hope they draw better than they interact with other people. End of aside.
Officially, NASA's last Apollo mission was number 17 in 1972, it was the program's only night launch and the sixth landing on the moon. The mission had the first geologist to be part of a moon landing mission, and members of the crew spent 22 hours on the moon's surface, coming back with 243 lb. of samples, which seems like a lot - like, how did the rover take off with all that extra weight? It just seems like a lot of moon rocks, that's all - and this film points out that many of those moon rocks were given to foreign dignitaries. Nope, nothing seems amiss there, not at all - but it's part of the inspiration for tonight's film, which suggests that's it's possible that the 18th Apollo mission wasn't cancelled after all, but instead took place in 1974. Well, OK, but already we have our first NITPICK POINT (of many, I think) which is - could NASA launch a mission to the moon and have nobody find out about it? Like, there are people who gather at Cape Canaveral to watch launches, and if one took place there, even without notice, then somebody would be sure to see it, night-time star gazers at the very least. Did they launch from a secret rocket base in another country? The same reporters who broke Watergate would probably have been all over this, claiming some new post-Nixon conspiracy like Apollo-Gate.
But OK, let's roll with this for a moment, but remember I'm watching, and you've now ticked off my B.S. detector. The crew of Apollo 18 is told that they're on a secret mission for the U.S. Department of Defense to deliver a classified payload to the moon - common sense dictates that it's some kind of early warning detector for Soviet missile attacks, but does that really track? The moon is very far away from the earth, how can that be an early warning detector? Even the opposite side of the planet Earth is closer to where you are than the moon is. Wait, is that correct? The diameter of the earth is 7,926 miles, and the distance from the earth to the moon is about 238,855 miles, so yeah, I'm right. You could fit 30 other earths between the earth and the moon, so an early warning system makes no sense - by the time the detector on the moon told you about the missile attack, I imagine that warning would come too late.
But OK, on with the mission - one crew member stays in the command module ("Freedom") while two land on the moon's South Pole in the lunar module ("Liberty") - they plant the detector on the moon (if that's what it is, again B.S.) and then take some rock samples back to their module. What could POSSIBLY go wrong? Well, they start hearing noises outside and the motion sensors keep going off. The next day, while setting up the device, they discover footprints that are NOT their own, and follow them to an abandoned Soviet lander, which has ominous blood stains inside. In a nearby crater, they find a dead cosmonaut and a broken space helmet. OK, the Russians made it to the moon, good to know, I guess they weren't as behind us in the space race as we were led to believe. But clearly something went wrong - the noises continue as the crew tries to sleep, and the next day they find that the U.S. flag that they had planted is gone.
It's impossible that another cosmonaut has survived on the moon, so who or what is behind all of this? To make matters worse, something has also flipped over the astronauts' Rover and damaged the foil on the module, so they can't re-launch and rendezvous with the command module. And that's about as far as I'm willing to go with a plot re-cap, because spoilers. But here at this point there are so many questions - what took the flag, what damaged the spacecraft, and what is making all that noise on an atmosphere-less moon? What is the real purpose of the device, and how in the hell are they going to get home? I'm quite sure Mission Control's not going to be much help, if they can't even answer questions about the Soviets making it to the moon.
I'll only say that's it's not long before panic sets in, followed by delusion and/or madness, as you might expect. Or what the astronauts are seeing is real, and that's kind of even worse. Of course conveniently the signal between the two modules is being jammed somehow, so they can't even make plans to make plans. Really it's the two astronauts on the moon against whatever else might be out there. Jesus, at that point even a ghost in a haunted house or a witch out in the woods seems like an easier scenario to deal with.
Did this happen? Of course not. (But maybe....). Could this happen? Same. (But maybe...) You know, maybe the moon has changed a lot over the years, it's been like 53 years since anyone's been back there, and honestly it feels like we did everything we could do there, the itch got scratched and there's really no reason to go back unless we're going to build a base there where we can launch a rocket at Mars or something. I personally don't see how gaining a 238,000 mile head start gets us to Mars, which is 34 MILLION miles away at closest possible range. But hey, there's less gravity on the moon so maybe launching from there is easier? It's not exactly rocket science, oh wait but it is.
Do I believe that the U.S. government would try to cover up space mission stuff if something went wrong? Honestly, that's the easiest part of this film to believe - however that doesn't mean that it's anything close to true. Next NITPICK POINT, this found footage film features so many different camera angles, inside and outside the module, really it's impossible, a NASA module would not have 170 different cameras recording inside it with another 10 or 12 covering angles outside on the moon's surface.
When I hear "Apollo 18" I think of the acclaimed 1992 album from the band They Might Be Giants that shares that title, which I'm listening to right now as I type this. Some of the songs featured on that album are, no lie: "Space Suit", "See the Constellation", and "Spider", which all seem kind of appropriate. The album also has a montage of song snippets called "Fingertips" which includes the following mini-songs: "Who Is that Standing at My Window?", "Who's Knocking on the Wall?", "Something Grabbed a Hold of My Hand", "I Heard a Sound", "Mysterious Whisper" and "I'm Having a Heart Attack". Again, no spoilers but at least some of those titles sound like they represent tonight's film.
Directed by Gonzalo Lopez-Gallego
Also starring Warren Christie (last seen in "This Means War"), Lloyd Owen (last seen in "Miss Potter"), Ryan Robbins (last seen in "Coffee & Kareem"), Michael Kopsa (last seen in "Come and Find Me"), Kurt Max Runte (last seen in "The Humanity Bureau"), Kim Wylie, Noah Wylie, Ali Liebert (last seen in "Wonder"), Erica Carroll, the voices of Jan Bos (last seen in "The Company You Keep"), Thomas Greenwood and archive footage of John F. Kennedy (last seen in "Rather")
RATING: 5 out of 10 family photos
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