By Matthew Clyburn

As the newest entry into the “found footage” niche of the scary movie market, Apollo 18 starts off feeling pretty familiar.

After the United States decides to scrap the Apollo program due to budgetary constraints, the crew of the previously-cancelled Apollo 18 mission is called upon to complete their mission in secrecy on classified orders from the defense department. With Earth far behind them, astronauts Nathan Walker (Lloyd Owen), John Grey (Ryan Robbins) and Ben Anderson (Warren Christie) are delighted just to be apart of an opportunity they previously believed to be out of reach.

Walker and Anderson separate from the orbiting return spacecraft, piloted by Grey, and begin descent to the lunar surface. Once they arrive, they place U.S. missile detectors in various locations and tuck in for a quiet nap on board their ship. Quiet until they begin hearing strange noises that Houston attributes to ‘interference,’ and discover a moon rock sample on the floor that had been secured and stowed away earlier that day.

The astronauts find footprints near their landing site and follow them to a strange discovery that will begin to unravel the mystery of their true mission on the lunar surface.

In short, Apollo 18 is a science fiction-oriented horror film of space exploration gone wrong. It contains hints of Cloverfield and Paranormal Activity as it provides an astonishingly realistic first-person perspective of these events in vivid detail. The final product truly looks like recovered footage from the 1970’s, thus allowing the average audience member to ‘buy-in.’

The three actors in this film all do a spectacular job. They are relative unknowns in the States, so their roles in this film can be believed as they each play the authentic-everyman-who-happens-to-be-an-astronaut.

I thought the jumpy moments of the film would be fake-outs early on, which brought me great concern. Within the first half hour or so, one of the lead actors pretends to be sleeping and startles the actor holding a camera; it startles the audience a bit, too, but it’s always disappointing to be scared by something that’s not scary at all. However, this early observation turned out not to be true. In the form of most great horror flicks, they used this technique once and early so that they could open up to the real frightening moments later on. Coming off watching Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, a movie filled with disappointing fake-outs, I enjoyed the scarce employment of the technique here.

The rest of the film delivered some great moments of strange happenings, suspense and gross-outs. All throughout we’re asking questions that lead us to the next stage of the film; keeping the pace moving well through the relatively short 86 minutes feature.

That said, Apollo 18 is not without its faults. The attempt to place the story into a believable reality is somewhat overstretched early. The filmmakers try to explain the reasoning behind each and every camera used on the mission, which makes the point feel belabored and counterproductive. The film certainly doesn’t say much about society and won’t be up for any Oscar nominations at the top of next year, and that’s okay; sometimes we just want a believable trounce into the unknown as we head back to school around Labor Day weekend, and Apollo 18 accomplishes that and more.

Any discussion about this film must acknowledge the outright panning by otherwise respectable movie critics. On Rotten Tomatoes, Apollo 18 currently holds an aggregate of 21 percent positive reviews. Part of this can be contributed to the fact that distributors wouldn’t allow showings of the movie to critics ahead of release date to uphold the film’s viral marketing strategy. This has kept the total number of reviews very low, almost to the point where the 21 percent rating is decidedly unscientific.

I would disagree with most of the critics’ observations and encourage the college crowd to check this one out; it’s everything you’d expect from this kind of movie and some things you wouldn’t expect lurking in each lunar shadow. If you allow yourself to enjoy the premise and have a good time, you definitely will. Sometimes, that’s all we want as we depart reality from the comfort of our seat at the local movie theater.