Apollo 18

Think The Blair Witch Project, Paranormal Activity, or Cloverfield—only set in outer space. What the audience sees in Apollo 18 is culled from 84 hours of NASA footage found at an Internet site called www.lunartruth.com, which purportedly documents a final manned flight to the moon in 1974—two years after Apollo 17—that was super-secretly funded by the Department of Defense. While NASA denies its authenticity, others claim that it's the real reason we've never gone back to the moon. As the faux documentary begins, three astronauts are catapulted towards the moon on a Saturn V rocket launch. While John Grey (Ryan Robbins) pilots the command module, Nathan Walker (Lloyd Owen) and Ben Anderson (Warren Christie) descend to the lunar surface to place a payload of high-tech detection devices (supposedly to monitor the Soviets), but weird things start to happen—including strange sounds, mysterious footprints, and the disappearance of the American flag. Exploring a nearby crater, the men discover a Russian landing craft, but what happened to the cosmonauts? Director Gonzalo López-Gallego's film eschews individual characterization and narrative logic (who exactly was filming this allegedly covert mission?), relying instead on schlocky sound effects and jarring cuts. Not recommended. (S. Granger)