Cory's Birthday Movie Celebration: Destroy All Monsters!

1968 monster mayhem

Rating: 14/20

Plot: A posse of alien chicks invades earth by unleashing the collective of monsters imprisoned on Monster Land. Some astronauts have to find a way to defeat them. Rawr!

That's right--the tradition of honoring reader Cory's birthday in the cheapest way imaginable is continuing. This year, I've picked what I believe to be fifth on his favorite Godzilla movie list.

This is a movie very obviously made for children. There's nothing wrong with that, and that's better than the cartoon I thought it was going to be with a first scene involving a rocket blast-off. All of these movies are a little goofy, but this one just feels goofier. I think it might be the heavy narration, especially during the first part of the movie. When the narrator said "a place called Monster Land," I again thought that I was watching a cartoon. I am glad that he introduced all the monsters though. I didn't remember their names later on though, except for the ones I'd already seen in the other movies. I'll tell you one thing about that narrator and his description of Monster Land. There's a whole lot of science going on there. Also making this whole thing so goofy that adults should be embarrassed for liking it (No, I'm not talking about you, Cory, because that would be a terrible thing to do on your birthday.): a scene where Rodan eats a dolphin; a scene where Rodan humps another monster, dryly, I assume; a doctor's suicide with an obvious dummy and the longest scream I think I've ever heard in a movie; the 1999 laser guns that make pew-pew-pew sounds; the dubbed voice of this old guy; and another dubbed voice that is supposed to sound French, I guess. One of the scientists says "the monsters look cute" at one point, and that might be part of the problem. Some of them are a little too cute. Despite the goofiness, this is almost wall-to-wall action. And I liked seeing the monsters in new locations with some familiar landmarks. The miniature stuff is well done although the movie's pretty much done with urban settings by the midway point. Some of the miniatures are complex and even having moving parts. And they're grander in scale, probably because they needed to make room for ALL monsters. The city does look a little devoid of people though, a little lifeless. Maybe at this stage in this series of movies, people knew the signs and found safe locations when they knew giant monsters were on their way. This is packed with monsters, probably too many! I still don't care much for Rodan, but I did like the spiky guy and the long guy. Son of Godzilla? Well, I just don't know about him. His voice is really silly, and he shoots smoke rings. I enjoyed the alien monster tadpole things, but the "burning monster" which turns out to not even be a monster at all is about the lamest thing ever. Oh, and Ghidorah and his trio of heads makes an appearance. They really weren't kidding with the "all" in that title! Of course, the star of the show is Godzilla, and he gets his moments. One series of scenes has some guys running from Godzilla in the woods, and I'm pretty sure some of the shots inspired shots in Jurassic Park. My favorite Godzilla moment comes early, a scene where he does a crotch chop move like that bowler Pete Weber. With the same lively music I've come to expect from these Godzilla movies and barely a slow moment, this is a fun and entertaining giant monster movie. Especially for children!

Happy birthday, Cory!

The Cat

1992 sci-fi kitty movie

Rating: 14/20

Plot: A guy apparently named Wei Si Li but who my English subtitles called Wisely and who is played by an actor named Waise Lee gets involved with a couple of people and a cat who are trying to save the world from an alien. I guess.

Really weird science fiction movie from the director of Riki-Oh. This actually has a fight scene that bests anything in that splatterific kung-fu extravaganza--a fight between the titular feline and a mean dog. Seriously, that is something else, one of those scenes that you watch and think, "I can't believe I'm seeing this on my television screen!" I call this a weird movie, probably because I don't understand it, but there's not much that really stands out as being weirder than any other science fiction movie if you think about it. Somehow, however, all the parts add up to something that just ain't right. There's a really cool monster, the kind that only Asians can manufacture. There's also this Robocop-type figure, flying cats, and other hardcore shenanigans, and it all made very little sense to me. That didn't stop me from enjoying myself, more than I did when watching Riki-Oh at least. My favorite bits include the gelatinous tree monster thing, an electrocuted dog, a subtitle that read "I never knew a cat could fight to and so hard!", tail repair, and a scene where the cat jumps through a window and makes a perfect cat-shaped hole in the glass. I didn't think glass could break that way, but who am I to argue with The Cat or, as it's also apparently known, The 1,000 Year Cat. This was sadly director Ngai Choi Lam's final movie.

Save the Green Planet!

2003 Korean movie

Rating: 15/20

Plot: Some guy with some emotional problems kidnaps business executives because he believes they are aliens planning a takeover of the titular green planet. A private investigator and a young cop try to find the latest kidnapped rich guy and the culprit. Meanwhile, aliens might be preparing an invasion.

This movie took a little while to grab me. Once it did, I enjoyed its inventive style, quirkiness, and twists. It's the type of movie where you sort of think you know what's going on, and then you realize that you're not sure what's going on. Fun ride. It's got some blood and torture, but it's also got its fair share of black comedy. And there's a message in the mess about our violent culture, a reference to 2001: A Space Odyssey, and a couple covers of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow." I liked the guy who played the disgraced detective, a guy with enough cool he made me want to get my own brown leather jacket and lose some of my hair. The movie's plot might frustrate some because it's a little all over the place, and this shifts from one genre to the next in ways that may give you a wryneck. You've got a little romance, a tale of childhood trauma, the torture porn stuff, the comedy, a crime/mystery thing, a revenge story, and some science fiction shenanigans. At times, it's even fairly emotional. And there's a great scene where a guy shoots bees. Expect the unexpected when you dive into this unique movie.

Aliens

1986 sequel

Rating: 15/20

Plot: Ripley's convinced to travel with some soldiers to the planet from the first movie to check on some colonists. They have to square off against a bunch of Xenomorphs.

This replaces the chilling atmospherics and almost raw poetic and almost elegant creepiness from the first movie with non-stop action. And as far as non-stop action Hollywood blockbustin' action goes, James Cameron nails it. This pretty much takes the ideas from the first movie and increases the quantity while sacrificing the quality. This is bigger, bloodier, and louder, but if the first movie is a knockout, this is like a violent and exciting uppercut that looks great on the television before replays show that it didn't connect with anything. And Ripley's underwear fits a little better. The minimalist music that worked so effectively in the first movie is replaced with dull, predictable stuff. The space scenes look terrible compared to the first, odd since this comes about seven years after its predecessor. The characters run around like living and breathing stereotypes. There's a black guy chewing on a cigar, a bunch of asshole marines, an ultra-tough Latina, Paul Reiser's villain. They're Hollywood clichés except for my favorite character in this--Lance Henriksen's android Bishop. Bill Paxton is awful as one of the space marines and was apparently told that he needed to screech all of his lines. As much as I hate cats, I wasn't happy with the kid Newt who replaced the cat from the first movie. With this collection of characters, it's not hard to see why I was rooting for the titular aliens pretty early in the proceedings. Sigourney Weaver's character turns into Bruce Willis--taping space guns and flamethrowers together and discovering her inner-badass. Actually, I guess she retains her hair in this movie, so maybe she doesn't quite turn into Bruce yet. I was surprised to learn that she was nominated as Best Actress for this. She's at her best as Ripley here, but is it a Best Actress worthy performance? Maybe she was nominated for the scene in the elevator where she screams, "Come on, God damn it!" I've decided that I'm going to do that every time I use an elevator from now on. Don't get me wrong. This is a mostly entertaining movie even when it feels a little too ludicrous. Cameron knows how to put together an action sequence, and the last half of this movie is relentless action--just action piled on top of action, an orgy of action! It's a great action movie, but that's a little disappointing since its predecessor approached something a little closer to great art.

Supposedly, there's a subtext here, and this is a Vietnam allegory. I don't know anything about that. I didn't learn about Vietnam in school.

Alien

1979 sci-fi horror classic

Rating: 18/20

Plot: The titular fiend is loose on a spaceship where it starts picking off the crew one by one. A woman with ill-fitting underpants has to stop it.

This is the movie that my "ill-fitting underpants" tag was made for. And this is a movie that I was fascinated by way before I saw it. It came out when I was six, far too young to see it since the poster alone is terrifying. My father, however, bought me a Xenomorph doll, a foot-tall plastic guy with a button in the back that, when pushed, pushed a second set of menacing teeth from his mouth. It was not an appropriate gift for a child of six, and I didn't know what to do with it. I probably had my Star Wars action figures kill it over and over again. Anyway, I saw the monster in this franchise long before I saw the first movie which seems odd because one of the reasons why I think this movie works so well is that they don't let you see the monster for a really long time. You see eggs, you see a Facehugger (coincidentally also the name of something you can purchase from certain prostitutes), and you see the Xenomorph in bits and pieces, but you don't see the monster as well as I saw it in plastic form on my birthday when I was six.

It's hard to find a flaw in this movie, and I should probably give it a 20/20 just because it's one of the best science fiction movies of all time, one of the best horror movies of all time, and probably the very best horror/sci-fi movies of all time. The story's derivative, and it's easy to find the same yarn spun in the 50's and 60s'. Here, here, and this here Mario Bava film are some examples I could think of. The story had never been told like this, and it's never been told this successfully since. The opening credits and the way the title appears--deliberately, like the rest of the movie--with the scraping and rumbling minimalistic music set the tone early. Then, Ridley Scott gives us a tour of the Nostromo, taking his time to get to any characters or a story. The characters are snoozing anyway. The set design for the spaceship is impressive except for the Christmas lights on the bottom of it. That tour of the Nostromo creates this sense of loneliness, makes it palpable. Space looks great in this movie, too, no better than what Kubrick did the previous decade though. Kubrick didn't have Harry Dean Stanton though, and this movie does. There's not a lot of character develop here as they're kind of just there to be killed by the Xenomorph. But they get to exist like you'd figure bored astronauts would exist. I like how the dialogue is handled during a less-famous dinner scene where the characters talk like they think they're in a Robert Altman movie. The biggest surprise about the characters? Just look at the last three survivors--a black guy and two girls. Who would have predicted that? The black guys are always the first to go in horror movies! And women? A lot of the fear in this is because of how effective Scott is at building up tension. It's relentless, even if you've seen the movie. It's almost relentless even if you're not seeing the movie. There are times in this when you could listen to the sound effects alone and be terrified. There are a ton of memorable scenes and shots. The more-famous dinner scene reminds me of a Thanksgiving dinner I was once at, only less gruesome. I still remember watching that scene for the first time and being shocked and mesmerized. And check out that cute little guy skitter across the room! There are scenes that would terrify claustrophobics even more than non-claustrophobics, but a lot of the fear, I think, has to do the amount of sexual imagery in this thing. The imagery hits you more psychologically--taking advantage of women's fears of being sexually assaulted and men's fears of being attacked by a homosexual. Next time you watch this thing, watch for sexual imagery just to see if I'm making it up.

Shane Watches a Bad Movie with Friends on Facebook: Invasion of the Saucer Men

1957 science fiction movie

Rating: 9/20 (Libby: 7/20; Fred: 16/20; Carrie: 9/20; Chris: left because of newborn issues)

Plot: Teenagers' make-out sessions are interrupted by the titular invasion of some broccoli-headed aliens. One couple runs over one with a car, and they find themselves in trouble when a dead human is found in its place. Oh, snap!

The broccoli-headed aliens are great. Not sure how they even walk with heads that bulbous. I also liked a scene where a severed alien hand grew a hand and started moving around. Man, teenagers could make out in the 50's. They were going at it for what seemed to be hours of movie time. They've all got that "golly-gee" attitude that I'm sure all 50's teenagers actually had. They're all essentially the same character except some of them get to talk more. My favorite character was the farmer who owned the fields they were parking on in order to lock lips for hours. He's played by Raymond Hatton who acted in 416 things in his nearly 60 year career, a career that started in 1909. I'm sure this nearly unintelligible farmer was one of the highlights. Frank Gorshin, playing the town drunk, is also in this movie, but I didn't know that until about five minutes ago when I was looking up the farmer's name. The best thing about the movie is the morality they try to inject into the thing at the end, a hugely silly anti-booze message. The worst thing about the movie is the oppressive soundtrack. The music is constant and overwhelming. Phone-cranking and looking out of windows just aren't actions that need music to make them more cinematic. This is just silly enough to be watchable.

Star Slammer

1986 women's prison space adventure

Rating: 5/20

Plot: A scantily-clad woman is arrested and taken to a women's prison on a space ship. She tries to escape.

The other title--Prison Ship--would have given away that this is a women's prison/science fiction mash-up. I thought I was just popping in a Star Wars rip-off, but then there's lesbianism and cat fights with other scantily-clad women. Fred Olen Ray--co-director of Dinosaur Island, a movie that barely looks like it has even one director--created this gem, and a glance at his filmography probably should have at least given away that there would be some sleaze. The heroine, played by Sandy Brooke who reminded me a little of Joanna Kerns, was cute enough and tough-looking enough, and the other women brought just the perfect amount of skank to their roles. The beginning part of the movie takes place on some anonymous planet, but I'm going to go ahead and guess that it was filmed on Earth. There's a bulky vehicle that I'm sure was borrowed from some other B-movie and a variety of alien things that look kind of cool along with a bunch of incoherent action. The majority of the movie takes place on the ship, and it gets a little tiresome and redundant after a while. The sets are cheap, and the thrills are cheaper. No amount of rubber rodents, robot rodents voiced by the director, a handful of goofy-looking alien guys, or over-the-top dialogue of Bantor--a Vader-type character played by the incomparable Ross Hagen--could save this movie. And neither can a five-minute scene where one of the women finds a harmonica and plays it.

My wife saw a few scenes from this and said, "I don't like this movie." But she did miss the sleaziest parts.

Shane Watches a Bad Movie on Facebook with Friends: The Angry Red Planet

1959 science fiction movie

Rating: 12/20 (Fred: 8/20; Carrie: 7/20; Bryan: 12/20)

Plot: Four astronauts go to Mars and realize that they're not wanted there. Luckily, they brought both a machete and a boat.

I know it's 1959 and all--many years before mankind would actually set foot on Mars--but having the characters travel with a machete and an inflatable boat still seems silly. This movie's kind of cool for it's use of "cinemagic," a special effect that makes everything pink and red. See the poster up there? When the characters leave the spaceship and walk on the titular planet that is both heavily-foliaged and containing giant bodies of water, the whole screen is this watery hue. The astronautic quartet are stock--there's a smart one, a horny hunky one who looks a little like Bogart and frequently has his shirt unbuttoned, a weak dame who is sometimes in distress, and a goofball there for comic effect. You have to trudge through a lot of scenes where "science" is discussed to get to the giant rat spiders and Peeping Tom aliens once they decide to investigate Mars. The set looks like it's been hand-drawn, and the aforementioned Peeping Tom alien (see the guy on the right side of the poster up there) is oddly two-dimensional, but there's a charm to it all and the reddish-pink does kind of look neat. This is the type of sci-fi that would offend most scientists and more than likely any being that lives on Mars, and it's nothing I'd call classic science fiction or anything. Still, it's actually kind of fun.

Oh, and I nearly forgot to mention that the male astronauts are wearing loafers. Cinemagical loafers!

Shane Watches a Bad Movie on Facebook with Friends: Alien Predator

1987 science fiction horror comedy

Rating: 5/20 (Fred: 14/20; Libby: 4/20)

Plot: Three college kids vacation in Catalonia in a Winnebago and run into the some trouble from another world.

Dune buggy chase scenes, nose bleeds, the Spanish John Ritter, eviscerated bulls reminiscent of Taun-Tauns,  the dude from Breaking Away, alien harvesting, massive squelchiness, bulbous oozing goiters, a lack of aliens, a lack of predators, half-doll/half-chickens, dead old people, seventeen mentions of "Hollywood's number one driver," shooting up horse serum, bullfight music, rubber horror, windshield wiping, and a broken boobies streak. This movie, in case you want to look for it, is also known as The Falling, but if you're a 1987 movie that wants to call itself Alien Predators in an effort to capitalize on the success of two popular film franchises, I'm not going to argue. Fred enjoyed the bullfight music, but called this "very possibly the worst movie we've seen on bad movie club." He's wrong though.

I think I could probably make that poster up there using nothing but clip art and word art in PowerPoint, by the way. Not that I'm bragging or anything.

The Monolith Monsters

1957 killer rock movie

Rating: 14/20

Plot: Rocks invade earth.

Of course, they're not just rocks. They're aliens. And they're not even aliens. They're black people, and when black people start popping up or moving into a predominantly white neighborhood, white people need to do something. Of course, all it takes to get rid of black people [SPOILER ALERT!] is some salt water. Everybody knows that black people can't swim!

You just have to love a movie where the threat--the titular monsters--is giant rocks that grow, topple, and freeze anybody who touches them. It's the least amount of personality that I've ever seen in a movie monster, but it's such a unique premise that it doesn't matter. Don't get me wrong. I liked the rocks. The growing effects were kind of cool, and I really liked how the rocks stand out with the black and white photography. Other great special effects involve people standing completely skill or showing a room or area, showing other things, and then showing the place again after somebody's thrown black rocks all over it. This is a really wordy science fiction movie. It's really closer to a science fiction/mystery hybrid than a science fiction/thriller or science fiction/horror movie like you might expect after looking at the poster there. Of course, there's this constant music that tries its best to make you think that the whole thing is thrilling. At times, the tense dramatic music is inappropriate, like when it picks up during a scene where a guy drinks some water or again when a little girl picks up one of the rocks while on a field trip to the desert where the children are instructed not to touch anything they don't recognize. Oh, speaking of her, she's Linda Scheley in her only film role, and although I probably shouldn't criticize six-year-old actresses in old movies like this, she's really awful. Luckily, her character goes into shock pretty early in the movie. Shrinking Man Grant Williams stars and has slightly more charisma than the rocks. This movie will be enjoyable to people who like to watch smart people try to figure out something that seems impossible even if the ultimate answer is a little disappointing.

This fun little 50's entry in the "big things threatening humanity" sci-fi sub-genre was recommended by Barry. He wrote about the thing on imdb.com back in 2000. Some cat named Oscar beat him to the punch.

Barry and I would both like to apologize to any black people who read this. And there probably isn't a racist subtext in The Monolith Monsters.

Planet of Vampires

1965 spaghetti science fiction

Rating: 15/20

Plot: A strange planet influences a space crew.

Alien seems to borrow a bit from this science fiction/light-horror movie made by Italian maestro Mario Bava. You have to look past a flaky story, bad dubbing, and bad acting from actors who just look too generic to be astronauts, and if you focus on the mumbo-jumbo pseudo-scientific stuff that they say in this thing, you'll be distracted. So don't pay attention to any of that. Or the fake blood. Instead, watch this for the cool visuals--great sets, superfluous dry ice usage, backwards fog drift, awesome spaceship interiors, giant skeletons, moody planet landscapes, grave emergence. Combined with some creepy synthesizer music, a menacing alien voice, and cool space suits complete with yellow motorcycle helmets, it adds up to something atmospheric and fun to watch. I wondered since hearing about this movie what existential angst and general moodiness Bava could bring to the sci-fi genre, and this wasn't disappointing even though so much of what happens with the characters makes very little sense. I did like that ending a lot though.

Mars Needs Women

1967 sci-fi nonsense

Rating: 4/20

Plot: See title.

I took notes while watching this movie, but I can't read any of them:

"a short otter to cheetah"
"Martian flashlights--gnarly"
"mok lather then scientific centuries"
"hop nature/pot hypnotic states"
"That's a long chance!" "Time is short--we have to take long chances."

Ok, so I can read that last one. I'm just not sure why I wrote it down. I must have liked it. This is a film from my main man Larry Buchanan, maker of this and this and this and that. The latter is a Manos Award winner, and one of those is called Attack of the the Eye Creatures according to the title screen. This one's rated a 4/20 which makes it the best movie of his that I've ever seen. Nondescript Martians [By the way--Isn't 1967 a little late to have "Martian" movies? I'm not an expert on the history of astronomy or anything, but this is well after we knew that Mars didn't have anything living on it, right?] body snatch some women for their snatches, and nondescript heroes have to stop them. The acting conists of reading lines although Yvonne Craig is in there. So is troubled Disney actor Tommy Kirk who called this "undoubtedly one of the stupidest motion pictures ever made," apparently before he was involved with Buchanan's It's Alive. The most inspired performance is from "Bubbles" Cash who plays a stripper and one of the Martians' abductees. Blue-tinted stock footage stretches this into a feature length, as do a whole lot of scenes where people just kind of stand around and wait. My favorite bit is when the Martians have a conversation about neckties, a "male vanity" with "no practice purpose" that Martians gave up a long time ago. This movie isn't as obviously inept as Buchanan's other movies, but with silly Martian costumes, special effects that barely pass as special effects, and bad actors reading bad writing, it's worth the time for fans of crappy movies. And the extended screen time that "Bubbles" Cash gets definitely helps.

Goke, Body Snatcher from Hell

1968 space vampire movie

Rating: 14/20

Plot: After the sky turns red, a plane crashes in the middle of nowhere. Space-age bloodsuckers launch a fiendish attack that dooms the entire universe! Ok, so I ripped that off directly from the above poster. What's going to happen? The makers of Goke, Body Snatcher from Hell are going to sue me?

Bonus points for a sweetly bleak ending. Oh, and another bonus point for the cool title. I don't know where "Goke" comes from because, as I recall, that name isn't mentioned in this one at all. The titular hell is actually just generic outer space, too. There is some body-snatchin' going on though, so I guess it's all good. This is a weirdo horror movie from Shochiku studios, and although its plot, characters, or really anything else aren't anything special, there's a strangeness to the proceedings that keeps you interested. Start with the effects. The shot of the airplane swimming through this red sky are really cool even if they make you think the color's all messed up on your television which makes you wonder how you even change the color on these new televisions. There are glowing orbs, forehead gulches, and cheap avalanches. For such a simple plot, there sure is a lot going on. None of it makes much sense and all of it is pretty goofy, but for a movie that isn't bad enough to be funny or good enough to be really stand out from similar movies about body-snatching or vampire aliens, this is actually fairly entertaining. It might be worth it for the Blob-esque face attacks that leave slightly embarrassing facial scars alone. And it does have that stunning ending that puts a morbid capon all the goofiness.

Tarantino borrowed a shot from this for Kill Bill Vol. 1.

The Lemon Grove Kids Meet the Monsters

1965 children's entertainment insanity

Rating: 5/20

Plot: The titular gang races against a rival gang, fights a guy in a gorilla suit, cleans a starlet's home, and battles sinister aliens in a trio of adventures.

Look out! It's Ray Dennis Steckler, the creator of gems Rat Pfink a Boo Boo and The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies!!? This time, he takes a stab at kiddie entertainment, a trilogy of short films that are like The Little Rascals on mescaline. And with random monsters. In the first, they have a foot race against an antagonistic gang from another grove. They also encounter the same gorilla Rat Pfink and Boo Boo had to battle in that movie. I guess Steckler owned the suit. Or, more likely, the guy who plays Kogar the gorilla owns the suit. His name is Bob Burns, and during his sixty year career as an actor in almost 24 films, he's played Kogar the Gorilla, Gorilla Monster, or Tracey the Gorilla in eight of them. Not that he isn't versatile because he's also a mummy in one of these Lemon Grove things. And he's a "NY Stander" in Peter Jackson's King Kong movie. And he worked on special effects in the Lord of the Rings movies. This whole first adventure--crazy music, bad dubbing, cartoonish sound effects--makes for a maddening experience although it's both completely harmless and energetic enough to be watchable. There's even a Rat Pfink cameo. Oh, and Frankenstein is involved somehow. I should have probably typed "Spoiler Alert" before that though. Things pick up with a little sci-fi craziness with a sexy vampiresss and a grasshopper alien. When the latter talks, it's a beautiful thing. The former is also a beautiful thing, but I would never type that as to not invite accusations of objectification. I was totally objectifying her though. Steckler's in this himself as Gopher, the goofiest of the Lemon Grove Kids. He operates under his cool-guy moniker Cash Flagg here, and his finest moment is when he does a bunch of animal impressions. But his bad acting is overshadowed by his own daughter Laura as Tickles. Her acting almost makes it seem like she had decided at the age of five that she hated her daddy and wanted to ruin his career. Of course, she must have been a dumb five year old to not realize that her daddy didn't make very good movies in the first place. The sheer zaniness, a catchy musical number that probably took two minutes to write, and a bunch of cheap-looking monsters keeps this fun even when it's nowhere near good.

Apollo 18

2011 found footage thing

Rating: 12/20

Plot: A trio of astronauts venture to the moon on a secret mission that NASA never tells us about. Those sons of bitches!

In space, no one can hear you say, "Puh-leeze!"

I saw a preview for this on the big screen during one of my rare trips to the theater, and I was pretty excited about it. A found footage horror flick that takes place on the moon? It's a really cool premise. And the moon stuff looked so good in the preview, even better than the stuff that NASA did with Neil Armstrong in their studios in the late-60s. The visuals in this are never an issue. There was never a moment in this movie that I didn't believe this was taking place on the moon. The filming is imperfect from a variety of cameras, as unprofessional as it should be since it's being shot by panicking astronauts. Some of the shakiness and jitteriness could induce seizures though. And this movie is suspenseful and scary. I was on edge for most of the movie until the end when I got frustrated and bored. The main issue with this movie is the astronauts are forced to say some really dumb things, and they do it in what I can only describe as a heroic monotone delivery. The movie is sans music, like a found footage thing should be, but it's got all kinds of chittering insect noises that often seem louder than they should be and eventually become grating. There were times when the chittering (the subtitles would say things like "Chittering intensifies," so that's not my word) almost seemed more like a soundtrack than the actual sounds of moon beings. A good found footage film isn't allowed to have anything in it that wouldn't be in the footage being found, and this one has some scenes from a barbecue that just don't make sense and a lot of shots of the astronauts sleeping. Of course, the first real scare is during one of those scenes, a scene of an astronaut going "Aaaaahh!" There's a surgery scene where this thing really jumps the crater (you know, because there are no sharks on the moon--or so NASA would have us believe), and this builds up to something so frustratingly stupid that it had me slapping my forehead. Rocks? Seriously? Rocks? This was disappointing because it could have been much, much better.