Halloween the Film Watchening Part 3: (#5) Apollo 18
Apollo 18, thought by history to have been cancelled, actually went off! In secret! Funded exclusively by the DoD! And they found something! Something terrifying! And it's all "found footage"!
Or whatever.
So, it's not a bad premise, and the actors are reasonably decent. Of the main characters, the only one I recognized was that dude who plays the hyperkinetic on Alphas.
The problem is the pacing of the actual scenes is atrocious, and just like Chernobyl Diaries it's made worse by the director/script's desire to cast the tone as "realistic" in keeping with the found footage conceit. It's not bad overall, the setup is only 20 minutes before things start getting weird, but those 20 minutes somehow feel interminable. Possibly something to with most of it being 3 guys in a small roomrocket saying nothing interesting at all.
Once you get past that part, the film does a decent job of establishing how creepy a situation they're in is...and then does very little with it. There's just not much payoff on the tension that they set up, and it's a shame because the shots they do show of the actual aliens are pretty freakin' creepy. They're camouflaged most of the time and you don't realize they're there, and then when they actually show, it's pretty notable! It's just that a lot of time is wasted getting there, and by the end of the film, it's hard to ignore that even as the creepiness/horror factor comes into its own.
I haven't seen Gravity yet (hoping to catch it in the theaters before it goes out!), but just the trailer for it really makes the case that sometimes the "found footage" (in this case "classified") conceit does actually rob visuals of their power, and I can't help wondering if Apollo 18 would have been a much stronger film if they hadn't tried to adhere to that as strongly as they did, but just tried to make a cinematic space horror film.