As far as the world is aware the Apollo 17 mission was NASA's last voyage to the moon. But a top secret 18th lunar expedition has been kept secret from the public, until now.
Has the found footage format run its course? If Apollo 18 is anything to go by then the answer is probably yes (although the excellent Troll Hunter is a valid counterargument). This would-be sci-fi horror has an appealing conspiracy theory premise, why have we never gone back to the moon? But that's practically all it has in its favour as it very slowly descends into formulaic chills that are predictable rather than fear inducing.
It begins with authentic looking interviews of our intrepid astronauts – the majority of the film is a convincing recreation of what audiences expect moon mission footage to resemble – but then nothing really happens, for a long time. There's little in the way of character development or anything other than waiting for something to happen. The discovery of a rival nation's craft piques the interest but then it's back to the sort of stuff genre fans have seen time and time again. Apollo 18 is a dull unoriginal lunar horror with the found footage technique adding little. What was the point of that maybe audiences' parting thoughts.
