I went to the movies last night, and watched Apollo 18.
Man, that movie sucked.
Seriously, the whole purpose of the "found footage" genre is verimisilitude (and also a really cheap budget), so by setting the movie on the freaking moon and featuring obviously CGI space crabs, the movie defeated its own purpose. In movies like Paranormal Activity and The Blair Witch Project, part of the fun was the "realism." In fact, the The Blair Witch Project featured absolutely no special effects and the most expensive prop not pulling double duty filming the movie or being worn by the cast was a bloody handkerchief. And it was still was a much scarier movie. Cloverfield gets a pass for its CGI monster, because there was never any illusion that this happened for real; a Godzilla wannabe running around New York obviously never happened.
To a certain extent, the found footage mode of horror is one of the oldest forms of the horror genre; some of the first Gothic short stories (and therefore some of the first short stories, period) were written as supposedly found "fragments" of longer works hiding in old, abandoned castles and abbeys and such.
Edgar Allan Poe's "Ms. Found in a Bottle" was originally meant as a parody of the form, but failed as a parody because it worked so well as what it was parodying, though the joke in the title, once pointed out, is still a bit funny. Even as venerable a monster as Dracula originally appeared in a "found footage" novel; the novel begins with Jonathan Harker's diary entry reminding himself to find a new recipe for chicken and complaining about late trains.
More recent examples of the genre include Michael Crichton's Eaters of the Dead, which used an actual Arabian explorer's journal as a starting point, though Ibn Fadlan never actually encountered Neanderthal remnants. In other words, the form, though not as new as everyone thinks, is very workable. Apollo 18 just flubbed it.
The other problem with the movie was an incredibly lame monsters. Spoiler alert, but killer moon rocks. Really. Sure, they turn into crabs, making this the first movie to have its entire story told by a trailer for a Transformers sequel earlier the same year. The attack of the killer moon rocks are destined to appear beside the bunny rabbits of The Night of the Lepus and the washing machine of The Mangler on Cracked.com ripoff sites "Worst Monster Movies Ever" lists for decades.
All in all, should have seen Shark Night 3D. At least I wouldn't have gone in knowing it sucked; Apollo 18 had potential, but I'm going to have to not recommend it.
I went to the movies last night, and watched Apollo 18.
Man, that movie sucked.
Seriously, the whole purpose of the "found footage" genre is verimisilitude (and also a really cheap budget), so by setting the movie on the freaking moon and featuring obviously CGI space crabs, the movie defeated its own purpose. In movies like Paranormal Activity and The Blair Witch Project, part of the fun was the "realism." In fact, the The Blair Witch Project featured absolutely no special effects and the most expensive prop not pulling double duty filming the movie or being worn by the cast was a bloody handkerchief. And it was still was a much scarier movie. Cloverfield gets a pass for its CGI monster, because there was never any illusion that this happened for real; a Godzilla wannabe running around New York obviously never happened.
To a certain extent, the found footage mode of horror is one of the oldest forms of the horror genre; some of the first Gothic short stories (and therefore some of the first short stories, period) were written as supposedly found "fragments" of longer works hiding in old, abandoned castles and abbeys and such.
Edgar Allan Poe's "Ms. Found in a Bottle" was originally meant as a parody of the form, but failed as a parody because it worked so well as what it was parodying, though the joke in the title, once pointed out, is still a bit funny. Even as venerable a monster as Dracula originally appeared in a "found footage" novel; the novel begins with Jonathan Harker's diary entry reminding himself to find a new recipe for chicken and complaining about late trains.
More recent examples of the genre include Michael Crichton's Eaters of the Dead, which used an actual Arabian explorer's journal as a starting point, though Ibn Fadlan never actually encountered Neanderthal remnants. In other words, the form, though not as new as everyone thinks, is very workable. Apollo 18 just flubbed it.
The other problem with the movie was an incredibly lame monsters. Spoiler alert, but killer moon rocks. Really. Sure, they turn into crabs, making this the first movie to have its entire story told by a trailer for a Transformers sequel earlier the same year. The attack of the killer moon rocks are destined to appear beside the bunny rabbits of The Night of the Lepus and the washing machine of The Mangler on Cracked.com ripoff sites "Worst Monster Movies Ever" lists for decades.
All in all, should have seen Shark Night 3D. At least I wouldn't have gone in knowing it sucked; Apollo 18 had potential, but I'm going to have to not recommend it.