Movies
Apollo 18
“If anything, ‘Apollo 18’ lacks creative intensity. It’s a very lazy attempt at bringing terror to the moon. In fact, it’s not even scary, unless of course you consider a sleeping dude opening his eyes and yelling into the camera “frightening”…”
Warning: Suggestive Spoilers
Dimension Films got their hands on NASA’s leaked declassified video footage from their Apollo 18 mission, which to the public was previously “canceled”. While what was being kept from the American people will definitely shock and cause panic, the footage itself isn’t all that frightening.
Featuring unknown and uncredited actors, Gonzalo Lopez-Gallego directs the latest found footage genre film that takes the audience 238,854 miles from Earth to the dark side of the moon where “something” is alive.
The film introduced three NASA astronauts who are pulled from their family’s backyard BBQ to go on a top-secret mission. They’re to go to the moon and set up some devices that will help America defend against Russia and other potential attacks. Little do they know that they’re actually there for another purpose.
Apollo 18 unfolds a bit like Ridley Scott’s classic Alien or James Cameron’s Aliens as the audience is taken on a fish-out-of-water sci-fi trip that results in clueless humans being used like sheep in the name of “science” (or money). But unlike the two aforementioned classics, Dimension’s found footage horror flick never pays off. Imagine if the Alien franchise was all about the little facehuggers and we never saw the actual Aliens – this is the crux of the problem behind Apollo 18 as it feels as if there’s no actual climax or big reveal. In all honesty, your imagination is probably about 100 time cooler than what you’ll see in theaters – and even more frustrating is that Apollo 18 is built around actual internet web conspiracies, ones that are way, way, way, wayyyyyyyyy more insane. Think about it: the filmmakers are taking the audience to a place only seen by a few men, and even more so they’re heading to the DARK SIDE of the moon, which is basically un-photographed and unexplored. There are no rules and no boundaries; it’s an empty canvass with an endless array of creative ideas that should range from finding alien-built structures to the moon itself being a giant, planet-sized alien base.
If anything, Apollo 18 lacks creative intensity. It’s a very lazy attempt at bringing terror to the moon. In fact, it’s not even scary, unless of course you consider a sleeping dude opening his eyes and yelling into the camera “frightening” (he does this twice, by the way). Unseasoned genre lovers may find entertainment in the slow burn, and may even experience goose bumps upon some reveals, but in all honesty their time could be better spent watch any of the Alien films.
There’s been a lot of talk about how Christopher Nolan snuck in some horror elements into his epic adaptation of The Odyssey. However, even before the Cyclops began to eat Ithican soldiers and Circe subjected them to magical body-horror, cinemagoers were already witnessing supernatural terror through a certain trailer that was attached to most IMAX screenings of Nolan’s film.
It turns out that this trailer was for Rob Savage’s Other Mommy, an adaptation of Bird Box author Josh Malerman’s horror novel, Incidents Around the House. With the teaser now available online and revealing that the award-winning Jessica Chastain is playing the titular antagonist (as well as her ill-fated human counterpart), not to mention the fact that the picture is being helmed by the director of hits like Host and The Boogeyman, genre fans are understandably hyped for this upcoming thriller.
That’s why I’ve decided to take a closer look at the trailer and share four things we learned from this sneak peek at Other Mommy!
4. Rob Savage is Going Back to His Supernatural Horror Roots
I know I’m in the minority when I admit that Dashcam is my favorite Rob Savage movie, but even I understand why the filmmakers’ fans have been waiting a while for the director to get back to telling more grounded paranormal stories as he did with 2020’s Host.
Other Mommy obviously isn’t a found footage movie, but moments like the poltergeist activity on the kitchen table combined with the nature of the source material, which actually features a full-on exorcism, indicate that this adaptation is more than a simple creature feature. That’s why I think Savage is once again going to borrow from the same ghostly narratives that made his debut film such a viral hit.
3. Other Mommy is a More Convincing Doppelganger in the Adaptation
Part of the horror from Malerman’s original novel came from the fact that the entity taking on the form of Bela’s (Arabella Olivia Clark) mother wasn’t very good at passing itself off as human. This resulted in several uncanny moments where other characters began to notice that there was something visibly wrong with the family and decided to keep their distance.
Savage’s film appears to be taking a different route, with the trailer showing a version of the entity that can, at least physically, imitate Chastain’s character perfectly. This change is likely the result of the filmmakers wanting to incorporate more paranoid scenes where Bela and her father, played by Jay Duplass, are confused about which Mommy is safe to interact with.
2. The Family is Also Better Off This Time Around
Incidents Around the House featured some interesting subtext about how poverty can negatively affect American family dynamics. After all, the main characters were already feeling scared and isolated before the entity emerged from Bela’s closet and began scratching at their emotional wounds. The trailer for the movie, however, depicts the family as being relatively well off before these incidents begin to occur.
I can only imagine that this part of the story was changed so that the family’s fall from grace can be even more dramatic as the mom and dad’s pasts are revealed and Bela falls further into the clutches of the demonic antagonist.
1. Jessica Chastain is Embodying Evil Dead Rise’s Alyssa Sutherland
Mothers turning against their children is one of the most disturbing horror tropes out there (just check out classics like Hereditary and Carrie if you need proof), but it takes a remarkably skilled actress to pull off such a monstrous transformation. This is especially true when both a regular, loving mother and the Other share the screen in the same film.
That’s why I appreciate how Chastain appears to be channeling another evil redhead mother that recently traumatized audiences with her performance. It’s too early to be sure, but I’m fairly confident that Chastain’s character has at least some amount of Ellie in her cinematic DNA – Ellie being the iconic deadite brought to life by Australian actress Alyssa Sutherland in 2023’s Evil Dead Rise.
Let us know in the comments if you think we missed any important details from the trailer, and don’t forget to check out Other Mommy when it hits theaters on October 9!
You must be logged in to post a comment.