Paranormal Activity may have been cleverly paced, expertly marketed and wildly profitable, but it was by no means a perfect film. For instance, it wasn't set on the moon. And there weren't any aliens in it. And nobody ever confused it with a distant, imaginary sequel to a Tom Hanks film from 1995.
Happily, though, Apollo 18 is ready to swoop in and correct all of these flaws. If you liked Paranormal Activity then you're going to love Apollo 18, mainly because it basically looks like the exact same film but set on the moon. Let's pick through the film's brand new trailer to see just how great it'll be.
1) The trailer opens with archived footage of a real-life Saturn V rocket. This is because Apollo 18 is about Nasa's discontinued moon-landing programme. The premise is this: why did Nasa never return to the moon after Apollo 17? Is it because of exorbitant operational costs, dwindling public interest and a new focus on developing reusable space exploration technologies like you thought? Or is it because, you know, the moon's full of aliens and stuff? It's the first one, obviously, but try to pretend that it isn't for the next couple of minutes or so.
2) This bit's important. The following footage has not been altered or enhanced. This either means that what follows is an important historical document of an event that really happened, or that it's a load of old guff that hasn't been altered by good directorial decision-making skills or enhanced by a story that we haven't already seen a million times before.
3) Here's where the Paranormal Activity comparisons start coming in. As you can see, the events of Apollo 18 come from the perspective of a character who obsessively films everything on a little camera. The difference being, of course, is that this guy is an astronaut and therefore has presumably been selected for his job because of his strong work ethic and relentlessly analytical mind, so he should probably be above titting about with a camcorder like this.
4) And just like Paranormal Activity, things slowly start going wrong. For instance, what's that shadow in the corner of the screen? Is it simply a shadow, or could it be something more sinister – like an alien? What's that? It's an alien? Because that's the entire point of this film. Oh, fine.
5) The dread continues to build as the astronauts find footprints that don't match their own. Could this mean that they're not alone? Actually, yes, that's exactly what it does mean. There are aliens there too. I thought I'd already made that clear.
6) Now they've found a smashed astronaut helmet as well. This doesn't look good at all. What could possibly have caused ... oh, that's right, it was an alien. Never mind.
7) Now things have really gone wrong. One of the astronauts has been infected with some kind of awful-looking alien parasite. Will he be able to return to Earth for treatment in time, or will it cause him to go mad and bring about the deaths of all his colleagues because that's how all of these found-footage films end, so what's the point of even watching it? It's the latter, obviously, but hold on for the big finish – the astronauts are about to make a shocking discovery.
8) That's right, it's the corpse of the only man in history who thought that making Paranormal Activity in Space was a good idea. As you can imagine, he probably died of stupidity.
