15 Years Ago, Apollo 18 Launched The Found Footage Horror Into Space

It took a surprisingly long time for found-footage horror to venture into space. In fact, it was a full 12 years on from The Blair Witch Project before Hollywood recognized that the isolated, largely unknown surface of the moon should, theoretically, be far more terrifying than the local woods. Unfortunately, Apollo 18 was unlikely to scare off any aspiring astronauts.

Released 15 years ago today, Gonzalo López-Gallego’s English-language debut would have caused a few more nightmares had it come out 15 years earlier. “We didn’t shoot anything,” Dimension Films producer Bob Weinstein insisted about the film, which claimed to be edited down from 84 hours of previously classified NASA footage. “We found it.” In a further bid to establish authenticity, the cast was credited by their character names, and a website, lunartruth.com, was set up to deepen the mythology. By 2011, though, audiences were no longer so susceptible to the viral marketing machine.

In its defense, Apollo 18 does look and sound the part: its grainy, blurry visuals and array of bleeps, bloops, and heavy breathing nail the aesthetics of the Space Race missions that left America glued to its screens. It boasts an interesting premise, too, imagining an alternate history where the last Apollo mission wasn't canceled, but covered up.

As shown in the opening home montage, the three heroes — all depicted as barbecue-loving All-Americans — believe they’re being rocketed up to the moon for patriotic reasons. “There's just a lot at stake here, you know?” Lieutenant Colonel Grey (Ryan Robbins) proudly claims, having been told they’re to install detectors that will warn of any Soviet threat. “We're talkin' nation versus nation, and the race is still on. There's lots to discover out there, man.”

He’s not wrong. Soon after they’ve landed, Captain Ben Anderson (Warren Christie) and Commander Nate Walker (Lloyd Owen) find footprints that guide them to a Soviet craft and a cosmonaut who’s met a violent end. Strangely, ground control doesn’t appear to believe they have a problem.

It’s here where Apollo 18 finally shifts into gear after an interminably long time spent scene-setting. All the equipment installing and sample gathering may be integral to the operation, but it doesn’t exactly make for gripping cinema. Even less so when presented without context and interspersed with the kind of inane, semi-improvised dialogue that tries but ultimately fails to humanize its blank slate leads. The most interesting conversation is about the pitfalls of spilling jalapeno juice on your genitals.

Their situation goes from bad to worse when their lander is damaged by some mysterious interference and a space-suited Walker finds he’s got an otherworldly spider-esque critter for company. Although he survives the ordeal, he’s left dazed, confused, and infected by a moon rock burrowed in his chest, the extraction of which, not for the first or last time, evokes Alien.

Of course, the pair soon find out that almost no one can hear you scream in space, while the bosses back home who can show little concern. It turns out NASA was already aware that the ultimate threat wasn’t from the Soviets, but the extraterrestrial creatures scuttling about the moon’s surface, and the organization is fully prepared to sacrifice the trio once things go awry.

Admittedly, Walker doesn’t help himself. Consumed by panic and paranoia, he destroys the many cameras that justify the found footage construct and the spacecraft itself over fears he’ll infect the human population should it ever head back to Earth. Anderson, meanwhile, is helpless to stop the pesky critters from dragging his colleague into a giant crater.

He does, however, make it to the Soviet craft, where he’s put in contact with the Department of Defense and told, in no uncertain terms, that he’ll never make it home. “We'll stay on this channel with you, but this decision is final,” comes the voice on the other line, unmoved by the desperate pleas for help. “You've done a great service for your country, son ... and for mankind.” It’s a gut-punch confirmation that they’ve been cruelly manipulated by the powers that be, and a rare occasion that Apollo 18 delivers a shock beyond jump scares.

Things get even bleaker when an infected Walker returns, only to be consumed by the alien forces for good, and Grey — who’s spent most of the film aboard the separate command module — is told not to help save his crewmate, or else he’ll be marooned, too. It’s all a moot point, anyway, as the now-infected Anderson crashes into his craft. And having kept the entire mission hush-hush, even from the astronauts’ families, NASA is able to pass off their demises as tragic training accidents.

It’s a desperately hopeless denouement, albeit one signposted throughout, that cleverly leans into all the conspiracy theories surrounding the very real moon landings. Yet this more eventful final third doesn’t make up for all the tedium that went before. “There’s a reason we’ve never gone back to the moon,” came the film’s pithy tagline. Despite grossing more than five times its meager $5 million budget, it’s perhaps little surprise that the found footage concept hasn’t, either.

Apollo 18 is on Tubi.