The Landing

A found-footage 2011 movie called Apollo 18 posited that the famous moon landing originally scheduled by NASA for 1973—but cancelled—actually did occur and ended disastrously. This mockumentary by David and Mark Dodson uses the same premise, but while in Apollo 18 the crew was attacked by aliens, here the craft malfunctions and Commander Bo Cunningham (Don Hannah) must attempt a manual landing, which takes them not to the Pacific but rather the inhospitable desert region of China, where the other two astronauts die mysteriously, leaving Cunningham as the sole survivor. He quickly becomes the focus of conspiracy theories contending that he stage-managed the entire episode to kill his fellow crewmen. The Dodsons have expanded their identically-named 1995 short film about the men’s time in the desert, adding an extended interview with the older Cunningham (again played by Hannah), and comments from others, including relatives of Cunningham and the dead men, a congressman who headed the original investigation of the incident, and various conspiracy theorists and debunkers, along with archival stills and footage that bring an aura of historical authenticity to the Watergate-era backdrop. The result is a canny fabrication that ridicules today’s penchant for coming up with ridiculous explanations to explain past events, but one so skillfully put together that it could fool many viewers. Still, in the end, this is essentially a stunt, although admittedly a clever one. A strong optional purchase. (F. Swietek)