We just got home from watching “Cloverfield”, and I’m still feeling a bit nauseous. Not because two tickets cost me $20 – that’s a rant for a different day. The movie wasn’t that bad, it was the Blair Witch style camera work that had me wondering if I was going to hurl. I saw more than one person leave the theater during the movie; some of them came back.
The story is told from the point of view of the people on the ground, fleeing for their lives, documented via a camcorder. It starts off as a video at a going-away party for Rob. There is some drama (as there always seems to be at parties on movies), and then the mayhem starts. Something unknown, unseen, is destroying the city. And so there is a lot of running and screaming. Despite the ongoing military evacuation, the main characters insist on making their way through the city to save their trapped friend (the one about whom the drama revolved). She is pretty hot, so I would probably be tempted to risk life and limb in the face of a horrific monster which has set about destroying Manhattan and is pretty much impervious to any weapon our military has thrown at it to save her, too.
There are no shots of scientists or politicians trying to figure out where the monster came from, why it is attacking the city, or anything of the sort. The entire movie is focused on the survival of this small group of people.
So the story is really nothing new – how many monster-attacks-and-destroys-city movies have there been? But what is interesting about this one is the (shaky and somewhat nauseating) first-person vantage point, which adds to the suspense as you can’t ever really quite tell what exactly is coming at you. The CGI is actually really good, especially considering how much the camera moves. Overall, though, a pretty good movie – the plot keeps you interested, the pacing feels good, and there are brief moments of dork-friend humor to break up the suspense.
