Well it has been a
while since I last wrote on here, sorry about that I’ve been quite busy of late
travelling around (search for “A colonialist abroad” if you would like to read
those adventures) and busy at work and unfortunately this has left me little time
to write, but I am back now and hope to get some more posts out more
frequently.
Let’s get started
shall we.
We begin with the 2011
sci-fi horror film “Apollo 18”. I am going to start as I mean to go on, this
film was bad, I mean seriously bad. I would like to leave it at that and relive
it no longer but my integrity, self-esteem and the love of my friends means I
must continue.
Now I really didn’t
like this because I found it initially pretentious, claiming the film is made
up of real footage painstakingly re-constructed by some people living in dark
cellars (no doubt terrified the CIA, FBI, MI6, MI5, NSA, KGB and Fed ex are all
looking for them). The problem with claiming real footage; is that the film creates the expectation that what
we will see is going to be as realistic and down to earth as possible something
rarely achieve - especially in the horror genre.
Obviously this is because the genre itself tends to move towards more fictional
element such as supernatural killers etc. Even with that fact in mind when
watching a science fiction film you do not want to be told that what you are
about to see is real, it detracts from the experience as that thought sticks in
the mind of the viewer and everything that happens that could not possibly real
(and there is a lot in this movie) becomes a negative experience with the
audience shouting at the screen in frustration at the lies the film has told
them. This is the first minutes of the movie, remember. Even worse than the
pretentions of “realism” the entire film seems to borrow heavily from the film “The
fourth kind” the god awful Mila Jovovich movie mentioned in a previous post,
this is something I did not take kindly to.
Now for some juicy
details about the films problems. Initially the plot is ridiculous, I can
suspend my disbelief enough to believe there are rock like crab aliens on the
moon, fine however why did this creature not attack the previous 17 missions to
the moon? Other questions raised include why on earth (or the moon ha ha) was
there only one Russian cosmonaut? That is not possible, there would have to be
at least two if one had gotten injured or sick or needed the loo while an
important call had to be made.
More problems came in
the simple way the horror was created. There was little suspense, no tension
and absolutely no subtlety. The three most important aspects of the horror
genre were completely avoided, without those key aspects all you get, as I have
said, is pretentious thriller, and calling it a thriller is generous. Instead
of the three keys, what I call the three undead musketeers of horror (snigger)
you had an overt film so excited to show what was happening on screen that it
actually circled it like they do to number plates in police shows, swiftly
followed by zoom in on the little movement. Pieces that if left untouched in a
still shot of the absolute quiet of the lunar background would become
terrifying. Small movements would seem like large tectonic shifts by comparison
and create an actual atmosphere rather than a show and tell exhibition.
Beyond the sheer lack
of knowledge displayed in creating a horror picture, the film lacked any
creative talent in creating characters. There were three men on the moon and one
in the station orbiting the moon; all four were non-entities, simple, dull and
uncreatively written. They come across as people who are just there; they’re in
no way relatable not really people just a bunch of guys with no real
motivation. Maybe it is a case that astronauts are not really easy to relate to
for a layman and those astronauts and other space farers will be able to
understand their decisions, actions and motives. But that does not excuse the
film, the writers should have tried to make their protagonists as close to the
average Joe Bloggs in the street as possible, this way the fate of the men becomes
tragic. Instead their deaths and falls from grace became routine, boring.
These problems while
detracting from the film are not its largest. The problem that irritates and
angers me most is that this film had real potential. The premise and setting
were as fresh; the ideas behind the men involved weren’t terrible just poorly
played with. The strings were attached here they just weren’t tight enough; too
much was left flapping in the wind. In truth this film was a disappointment for
me, I had anticipated its arrival and instead was met with disappointment at
every hurdle; initially delayed in the UK and finally met by a film that barely
justified the £5 fee.
Now these things are all
easily explicable, the production of this was plagued with problems,
directorial changes being the worst and most apparent. Along with actors
pulling out and putting backing in, all of this delayed production. I would say
that the delays made the crew lose momentum, get bored as such creating a
boring experience. Which is the real issue I took, I was bored, and I had seen
it all before and was not impressed.
Really all I can say
was that it was boring; the pacing was off by so much that it was hard to
maintain interest being fast where it should be slow and slow where it should
be fast. There was no build, things happened but they felt like simple things,
not events in a seamless flow. The film never had any gravity (LOL) and just
passed by like a guy in a passing car. (HHHHHHHHHHHEEEEEEELLLLLLLLLLLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO).
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