Cloverfield

All I knew about this film was the it was a monster movie set in New York, apparently shot from a handheld camera by a person in the thick of the attack. And that pretty much sums it up. It could be lame, but instead, it was great. Throughout the whole film I felt like I was watching the event through the lens of an amateur filmer.

Here's more details (without ruining anything): a large group of people gather at a Manhatten apartment to throw a suprise going away party for a friend who has aparently been promoted to Vice President for his company and is moving to Japan. The guy holding the camera is supposed to get "fond farewell" clips from party attendees. What happens from this point forward until the monster attack is unimportant, except as setting up a backstory for what happens during the remainder of the film.

A small group of people from the party manage to stay together after evacuating the apartment building they were in. Since the camera's with them, we see the night's events through their eyes. The camera is shaky, the flow is sometimes ragged, but what do you expect? They're running for their lives from a friggin' monster!

The film makers upheld the cardinal rule for any decent monster movie: don't show the monster too soon. Throughout the action, we only see occasional glimpses of the creature, but what we see, when we see it, is frightening. If they had goofed up and showed the whole monster right at once, seeing it subsequently wouldn't have been nearly as effective (oh, yeah, look, there's that monster again... *yawn*). Instead, throughout the film I was forced to guess what the creature was and what it could do. Everytime I saw the monster, I was treated to a new surprise. A hint: there is more to this monster than just the monster.

A few warnings: this movie is rated PG-13, but don't watch it if you're prone to motion sickness or are put off by blood. The camera is shaky and several people in theaters vomited due to the jagged perspective of the camera. And it's really scary. My almost-16 year-old daughter was fine with it, but I wouldn't let my 12 year-old son watch it. Another thing is the movie is rather short (though it didn't seem that way to me). It is only 85 minutes long, when most feature films are at least 90 minutes long (remember, a good 10-15 minutes of that 85 minutes is taken up with credits).

So, if you like good monster flick, in the grand tradition of Godzilla, King Kong and even Alien, see this movie. You won't be disappointed.

External links

• Cloverfield at the Internet Movie Database
• Cloverfield at Rotten Tomatoes
• Cloverfield at Kids in Mind
• Cloverfield on Wikipedia