Let me preface this by covering a few key points. First, I will be posting SPOILERS so don’t read past the SPOILER tag below if you don’t want SPOILERS. Second, yes I did know what I was walking into and had a fairly good time because I knew it would be bad. Third, don’t expect a video here. I originally considered making a “reaction” video review like so many other people do these days… but I really felt that this movie didn’t deserve the effort.
The short and spoiler free review of the film is as follows:
It started well enough with sufficiently realistic video effects. You could let yourself believe the videos had been recorded on 1973/4 film with 1973/4 cameras. It felt fairly well done and for a moment I was slightly impressed.
I say “a moment” because that is about all it was. The opening of the film feels tremendously rushed and I couldn’t help but notice this point as the mission is explained quickly with exposition and then slung into space and then the lunar module is on the moon. Character development was sparse at best and the effects suddenly weakened.
Then the mission on the moon took precedence and the atmosphere of the film completely broke down. The mission completes as you would expect from a movie like this and as I told KingCobra the other day, “there are too many ways they can mess this up.”
Bottom line, this movie is great riff fodder and I would consider making a rifftracks entry with some of my BWL Team members some day, but if you want a creepy movie or a cool sci fi… look elsewhere. This movie is a cheap rental at best and not really worth the cost of a theater seat unless you can organize a large group specifically for “riffing” in a week or two when the legitimate audience will be nearly completely gone.
To give you an idea of the quality of this movie, consider that the population of the showing I attended was relatively small to begin with. That’s on a Friday night at a brand new movie. Then consider that there were people that got up and left before the end of the movie including one couple which could be heard declaring “what a waste of money”.
Then consider that the remaining audience consisting of the “target” audience for such a film booed the film as they stood up to leave.
I had fun, but admittedly felt as though I had been sitting in my seat for too long. And keep in mind that I did know what to expect and was mentally riffing the movie throughout. Perhaps Master Pancake Theater will consider riffing this movie for next year’s QuakeCon or something. That would legitimately be the best way to watch this one.
It’s short, has some nice big plot holes, misses the opportunity to create mystery and atmosphere, loads up on exposition at certain key points rather then show us the events, feels contrived and poorly executed in general, and very much feels unfinished.
[ SPOILERS BEGIN HERE ]
The showing I attended was scheduled for 9:15 pm. So I arrived thirty minutes early.
Disappointed to find that hot dogs were individually priced at $4 despite the photo of two hot dogs, I ordered a small popcorn and a large coke. At the last moment I thought to add a boxed candy… Reese’s Pieces.
My reasoning was that I like said candy and I thought, ‘surely this movie will be bad and this candy will be a fitting addition to my own mental riffs. ET jokes and all that.”
My popcorn freshly buttered and salted and my ticket torn, I found out that the screen this film would be shown on was ALLLLL the way in the back.
‘Uh oh.’
Entering the room, I found a small group of patrons already seated. Oddly enough, I had expected more movie goers to be present.
With better then 20 minutes left until showtime, I ate my popcorn and watched the same advertisement slides cycle over and over on the screen.
Did you know that Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts have been in movies before? Why together even!
Oh, there’s Ryan Reynolds as Ryan Reynolds in “The Change Up: featuring Ryan Reynolds as Ryan Reynolds playing Mitch… the funny one… Ryan Reynolds.”
Hmm… Sprint wants me to be quiet. Not if the movie gets too bad and I find myself alone in here.
Finally, 9:15 rolled by. Then 9:16, 9:17, and 9:18. I sort of forgot that I keep my watch 3 minutes fast.
At last, the lights dimmed and the advertisements started. Most of the time, you can estimate 20 minutes worth of advertisements will play before the movie starts. I don’t know in this case, as I didn’t check, but it did feel more like 10 to 15 minutes instead.
The highlight was probably the teaser trailer for the Dark Knight Rises. The same one I’ve seen several times already. The one that lifts most of it’s footage from Batman Begins, a pinch of The Dark Knight, and adds just a sprinkle of new footage of Comissioner Gordon in the hospital talking to Batman off screen and possibly in Bruce Wayne form.
Then Bane walks up to Batman somewhere in the city before a jump cut kills them both with falling derbies in Bat-Symbol Plaza where all the buildings are arranged to make a giant Bat-Symbol in the skyline.
And in case you haven’t caught on I am wasting time here because the movie itself was so short and bland. Length isn’t a problem in a well crafted narrative, but this was in no way a well crafted narrative.
While waiting for the movie, the theater slowly filled to about 75% capacity. Not bad considering that this is Texas and Friday night at the start of the high-school football season.
The movie finally began with the introductive title card. In short, it said that Apollo 17 was the last official mission to the moon. In 2011 a website, lunartruth.com leaked the thematic found footage of the mission and the movie was edited together from that footage. [NOTE: I can’t seem to view lunartruth.com despite the site address being displayed prominently at the beginning and end of the movie. This means that it was either taken down or is registering with my ad-blocker as nothing but pure 100% advertisement.]
We are introduced to the cast of three astronauts via pre-mission interviews ripe with exposition. It seems the Apollo missions really were canceled after Apollo 17. But the DOD wants to put sensors on the moon to spy on the Russians and is funding Apollo 18.
The launch is a night time launch under the disguise of being a satellite launch.
Now, remember, I am a big believer in the “show don’t tell” school of story telling. Exposition as handled here is therefore excessive and rushed. To the point that it feels forced at times.
Even so, I sort of ignore that since they seem to be making this plausible in terms of “here’s some footage edited for time”. It more or less made sense, but the movie would have benefited from a better launch scene and less exposition up front.
Anyway, the astronauts do split up correctly with one remaining in orbit of the moon and the other two landing. I had worried about that point prior to the movie.
The landing was rushed of course. But worse, some of the effects shots felt incomplete. Some lunar surfaces as shown during the landing sequence felt like cheap CG. This could be because they applied filters to help stock or recreation footage match the movie, or because they used cheap CG. Either way, it looked odd to me.
In orbit we see a guy… floating around… and talking to the radio.
On the moon we see, the other two astronauts setting up camp for a two day mission… apparently. And the effects again start to break down as some of the camera footage inside the Lunar Module seems too clear. It felt digital and artificial.
We also get one of the better jump scares of the movie as it feels more real. Why? Because one of the astronauts fake sleeps and his partner starts to record this to prove that he snores. He basically says boo to the camera. That scene felt more real then any other. And naturally, it and almost every other [there are 3 or so] good jump scare is shown in the trailers for this movie.
In the course of all of these sequences, the action is broken up by still images and stuttering video to indicate some of the more damaged footage. As the astronauts begin setting up the first DOD sensor and collecting moon rock samples, these effects begin to become bothersome and a bit annoying.
We also get the first ‘paranormal activity’ moment. A rock moves. Of course, it was kind enough to stand in a spot light for us.
Seriously.
Okay, yes I know it was meant to be like so much documentary footage that shows items in the background by highlighting them, but this felt really out of place.
Our astronauts talk a bit. The astronaut in the command module talks and floats around. And nothing else really happens.
Sure there is this strange radio interference that seems to be popping up, but honestly these sounds aren’t as creepy as they are intended. I really had hoped to hear something similar to Jupiter’s sounds or the audio of the Northern Lights or other decidedly creepy “actual” sounds of various sorts. You can even drive out in the desert away from radio signals tuned in to random static on the AM band and pick up unique static and EM sounds that are creepy.
All of that in a quiet moment can be really spooky. Instead, we got a fair bit of noise with what basically sounded like a brief static signal and some flickering lights.
Cameras, they were given dozens apparently which didn’t help the believability in the slightest. Worse, much of the footage apparently was recorded on their end and appeared not to be transmitted to earth. Which left me wondering how the video would be recovered in the end.
Again mimicking the Paranormal Activity movies, we see cameras record moving rocks closer to the LM and the moon rover get’s knocked over.
We also have a scene in which one of the moon rock samples is found on the floor instead of in its storage bag. Yes, they have been collecting moon rock samples and one of the astronauts has even gone out of his way to say that one sample feels different from others somehow.
And by that point I started mentally repeating to myself, ‘please tell me they aren’t making the moon rocks the monster.’
Paranormal Activity has a decided advantage of an effectively invisible entity. Here, we see the alien life fairly early and in disappointing fashion. We’re told that they find these rocks near apparent impact craters on the moon.
So they apparently travel through space and collide with our moon to make a new life there free from atmospheres, liquid water, and any form of food other then cannibalism. Yea moon rocks!
Alien… moon rocks!
The astronauts find space boot prints that are not there own. Following them, they find a Russian craft. It is empty and damaged on the inside. There is blood from a first aid treament and no sign of any cosmonauts.
This leads to further space tracking into a crater that they say never sees the light of the sun. That sounded sort of strange to me. But then again, some of the science gets a little fuzzy at times.
For instance, during a sleeping scene one of the space helmets falls from a shelf onto an astronaut and appears to do so with normal earth gravity. Everything inside the LM seems to happen at normal earth gravity for some reason. But now I’m nitpicking.
Walking around in the dark crater after being told not too, one of the astronauts uses a flash pulse to see what is around him. He says that the soil is different somehow and stumbles across a jump scare of the dead cosmonaut. For a time, we are teased with the idea that the other cosmonaut may still be alive or somehow undead.
Unfortunately, this is dismissed quickly and we are flatly told that there was only one cosmonaut. Honestly, Russian space zombies would be an awesome movie. Why didn’t they do this?
Meanwhile, the astronaut in the command module talks to the radio… and floats… and goes to the far side of the moon so he can’t talk to anyone at all. So he floats… and talks to the camera. He even goes so far as to talk about how beautiful the far side of the moon is and not show us the view. And he tells us that he feels like someone on the far side is looking back at him sometimes.
But enough of that, back to the astronauts on the moon. After the American flag disappears and the rover is tossed around, one of the astronauts decides to go outside to try to fix the damaged [conveniently enough] radio equipment. He suddenly says something is in his suit and we get an unnaturally clear view of his face from the LM window so we can see a space spider thing crawling on his face.
He space panics and space knocks himself out or something and dislocates his oxygen hose. This is the commander by the way. A commander that didn’t notice a space spider thing the size of his own hand inside his space suit and that panics and space knocks himself out, space etc.
His partner goes outside and rescues him and they talk about the space spider thing but he now denies any knowledge of the event. The commander is shown to be bleeding and has a cut above one of his ribs. The other astronaut says there is something under the skin and cuts out one of his space rock samples.
Which seems to space explode in a jump scare. Although, to be fair, they sort of indicate that it actually just transformed and jumped out of view. Though that doesn’t make much sense because the astronauts just ignore it after that and say something about it contaminating the entire LM.
But if it exploded, why did it do so? It’s one of those plot holes popping up.
Anyway, the commander is apparently space infected and slowly develops space pink eye and palladium poisoning like Iron Man did in Iron Man 2. After this, he starts to loose his mind and even warns the other astronaut that he will go mad the way the cosmonaut apparently did.
Despite this, his partner refuses to let the commander leave the LM. This goes well.
So the oxygen is running out and the commander is getting worse, even space staring at his partner while he sleeps and a space spider thing moves across the camera that is watching him. He then space freaks out and starts smashing cameras and the like.
Meanwhile the astronaut in the command module is still floating. He starts talking to the radio again, now trying to talk to the LM. NASA also has started trying to talk to the LM and notes that they cannot hear the LM but the LM can hear NASA.
Apparently the space spider things only disabled the microphones or something. But of course, mission control has been silent for some time and cannot really offer any information except in the occasional exposition dump.
The astronauts leave the LM and we are told that they will be taking the tapes with them. The commander again warns that he should be left behind. And again this advice is ignored and he has another space freak out during the drive on the lunar rover. The rover subsequently crashes into a crater.
During this scene, there are flashing moments where you get a glimpse of bolder sized space rock spider things and we begin to see that they actually sort of resemble crabs.
That’s right.
…
The moon has space crabs.
…
The commander disappears and the other astronaut wakes up alone. He finds and follows the commander’s tracks to another big crater and promptly begins spouting cliched lines about not leaving the commander and making it safely back home.
The commander stands by the edge of the crater and turns his back to it so he can be space dragged into the darkness by an unseen threat… which we have already been shown is space rock spider crab things. So it’s kind of a weak attempt at a jump scare and an even weaker excuse for his partner to wander into the crater using his flash pulse for flashing lighting effects.
As the remaining astronaut moves along, we see the space rocks opening to reveal their space crab form. Yet we never again see the bolder sized variety.
After a pitifully long period of the astronaut walking around the crater with more and more space crabs swarming around him, he gives up and runs for his life.
He nearly runs out of air, but the tension is non-existent. I just wanted the bolder sized space crabs to attack him. But that didn’t space happen.
The astronaut enters the Russian LK and tries to radio for help. Only to finally be patched to the DOD by the Russians.
Wait… during the cold war?
Were the Russians in on this or did they not care that we were placing sensors to spy on them on the moon? Oh… wait… that’s right… the astronauts speculated that the DOD knew the moon had space crabs and were using the supposed sensors to attract them to the astronauts and block the astronauts radio signals.
That makes perfect sense.
Especially since the film makes it perfectly clear that the deaths of these astronauts prevented us from ever returning to the moon. Basically, the DOD either developed a conscience or completely lost interest in the space crabs. I don’t know. It’s kind of a plot hole or space sequel baiting or something.
Anyway, the astronaut sits alone in his Russian LK and listens to a tape recording of his wife and son. And he does this for a fairly lengthy time until the command module makes contact and the two remaining astronauts plan an escape including piloting the LK and entering orbit near each other and then space walking.
I thought this was leading up to something.
But it didn’t.
The launch of the LK begins and the commander knocks on the space door. Where he came from is not clear. But a psychic connection with the space crabs is implied throughout the movie.
He insists that he be let in, but his partner refuses saying that he is infected. Obviously, he was infected before when his partner promised he would get home. However the DOD said he was infected so that makes it worse… somehow.
The commander takes it well and starts trying to break in through the window which somehow holds him off. We then get another close up of his face as the space crabs have turned into space spider things again and are scurrying around inside the commander’s helmet.
Seriously. Dozens of the things all over the man’s face without him reacting or even causing the fabric parts of his space suit to move or anything. Finally they break out through his face plate and splatter blood on the window.
Yea!
Wait…
How did they get in the suit without puncturing it?
Whatever… the LK starts flying toward the command module. Inside the command module the third astronaut is floating and now talking to the DOD representative. He is told that the other two astronauts are infected and that he will be cut off from re-entry data if he doesn’t abort his rescue attempt.
That third astronaut then goes space crazy and starts talking to himself and the other astronaut about how they will go home.
Returning to the astronaut in the LK we are shown that he too has space pink eye and possibly palladium poisoning like Iron Man in Iron Man 2. And there are several moon rocks floating around him.
And they are actually space crabs which attack him.
On the command module, the DOD representative can still be heard trying to reason with crazy astronaut #3. And we hear crazy astronaut #2 screaming on the radio and some loud noises. Crazy astronaut #3 is still telling the radio that they will be okay.
He then tells dead crazy astronaut #2 to slow down that he is ascending too quickly. And we see that the LK has apparently turned into a space cardboard cutout. At least, that’s what it looked like to me. The ending of this movie easily looked the least finished.
And so the space cardboard cutout of the LK crashes into the command module and kills everyone except the space crabs most likely. We aren’t told how the videos were recovered. I had thought that perhaps an after the credits sequence might show another mission performing a space walk to collect the tapes, but I didn’t wait for the credits to end.
You could argue that the tapes they referred to were computer tapes. And you could assume that everything that was recorded on the cameras had been directly transmitted to NASA, but such was never explained and there are periods at which this would likely not be possible.
We are briefly given a space summary of the cover up story for the deaths of each of the three astronauts and reminded to visit lunartruth.com. We are also told that lots and lots of moon rocks were brought back to earth by the many Apollo missions and that many, many moon rocks were given to dignitaries. And of those, thousands were stolen or simply disappeared.
Which of course means…
The moon gave us space crabs.
There is then a lengthy pause while everyone in the theater stands up and several people boo. Then the credits start to roll.
I walked outside thinking about how I had enjoyed the riff-ripe nature of the movie, but how so many other patrons had been disappointed. And then I noticed the time.
10:45 pm.
Yes, the movie claims to be 1 hour and 26 minutes in length. Obviously, the long pauses were accompanied by really long credits or something. I’m pretty sure that the movie didn’t start until after 9:30 pm.
Anyway, I consider this a bad movie that could be funny with the right riffing. Otherwise it’s just boring and incomplete. It had much potential, but they found just about every way possible to fowl this film.
I would recommend only seeing it if you want to riff it. Otherwise, wait for the rental and then riff it. As a scary movie or a drama or a science fiction or whatever, this movie fails. But with good riffing it succeeds as a comedy about space crabs and space pink eye.
