Apollo 18 (film)

Apollo 18 is a 2011 found footage science fiction horror film. Brian Miller wrote the script, Gonzalo López-Gallego directed, and Timur Bekmambetov and Michele Wolkoff co-produced. It was a co-production between the United States and Canada. The story imagines that the real-life cancelled Apollo 18 mission did secretly land on the Moon in December 1974, but the crew never came back. This was López-Gallego’s first movie in English. After several delays, it came out in the U.S., U.K., and Canada on September 2, 2011. Critics mostly panned it, often comparing it unfavorably to *Paranormal Activity*, *The Blair Witch Project*, and *Alien*.

The plot follows the Apollo 18 crew—Commander Nathan Walker, Lieutenant Colonel John Grey, and Captain Ben Anderson—who are told two years after Apollo 17 that their mission will secretly proceed for the Department of Defense. Their job is to place an early warning detector on the Moon to watch for Soviet ICBM attacks. Grey stays in the command module *Freedom* while Walker and Anderson land in the lunar module *Liberty* to set up the device. Anderson collects rock samples, and they return to *Liberty*. The samples cause small disturbances, which Houston blames on the detector. The next day, Anderson finds footprints leading to an abandoned Soviet LK lander. They discover a crater with a dead cosmonaut, but Houston dismisses Walker’s questions. That night, Walker wakes to strange noises and something bumping the lander.

Walker and Anderson finish the mission and try to launch, but *Liberty* shakes violently because of damaged foil. Outside, they see non-human tracks and damaged equipment. Walker is horrified when a spider-like creature enters his spacesuit and vanishes; Anderson later finds him unconscious near *Liberty*, but Walker denies it happened. Later, Anderson removes a Moon rock embedded in Walker. Walker smashes the rock, contaminating the ship. Unknown interference prevents them from contacting Houston or Grey. Anderson suspects the detector is meant to monitor the aliens and is causing the interference. They try to deactivate it but find it already destroyed. Walker grows paranoid, and they realize the aliens camouflage as Moon rocks. Walker destroys controls inside *Liberty* while trying to smash cameras, causing depressurization.