"CLOVERFIELD"
I thoroughly enjoyed this movie! It was pitched to the studio as "a Cameron Crowe movie meets Godzilla meets Blair Witch Project" and that's exactly what it is. It starts out as a bunch of friends videotaping a goodbye party for one of their own and the first 20 minutes is establishing their relationships with each other. Then a building blows up, the Statue of Liberty's head comes rolling into the middle of a Manhattan street and the chaos begins. It's a roller coaster ride for the rest of the movie.
If you get motion sick, you will not enjoy this movie. It's way more jumpy than Blair Witch was. It didn't bother me at all and I don't think anyone left the theatre the night we went, but you might want to wait until it comes out on dvd if you get easily sick. The hugeness of most theatre screens nowadays contributes to the sick feeling according to my research.
It is completely told from the camera holder's point of view so there's no explanations by scientists or other Godzilla-y type stuff. You're not quite sure what some things are, which prompted me to do a little research before I wrote this review. For example, the monster rubs itself on a building and little monsters fall of of it and scurry around Manhattan. Because the movie doesn't have an omnipotent point of view, you have no idea what the hell they are. Apparently they're parasites that are stuck to the monster and he's trying to get them off. They're nasty little suckers and if they bite you, you apparently eventually explode. We never actually get to see someone explode, it happens behind a sheet of plastic, but it's gruesome nonetheless. We're not real sure where the monster comes from, but there's a scene at the end of the movie where we see a clip of two of the characters from an old part of the videotape that was used that night (flashback) that shows the two characters at Coney Island and if you look at the ocean, you see something fall in it. Monster from space? Who knows! Another thing that puzzled me was the title. WTF is Cloverfield? I found out that it's a street near producer J.J. Abram's office in West L.A. and they used it as the working title so no one would know what they were filming. Kind of like when George Lucas used the title "Blue Harvest" when filming "Return of the Jedi". Anyway, it got leaked during filming so they went with it permanently.
I thought it was really well done. It really made you feel you were a part of the action. I felt like I was really there and that kind of freaked me out a little. It has action, emotion, humour and great special effects. It's kind of short, but I have no doubt that it will probably have some sort of sequel because it's made gobs of money.
So if you don't get motion sick and are looking for a fun time, go see "Cloverfield." It does not disappoint!
