Cloverfield is a monster movie directed by Matt Reeves. It follows a group of people trying to rescue their friend in the wake of a monster attack. There have been many different monster movies in the past (Godzilla, The Giant Claw, etc.), but none of those movies were shown through the perspective of a video camera held by one of the city’s survivors. Because of this, Cloverfield makes itself one-of-a-kind.
Unfortunately, this unique camera perspective can make you nauseous at times, or more commonly confuse you as to what’s going on in the movie. There are other times where you know that it would be impossible to have the camera perfectly aligned with what’s going on, and that further dampens the whole effect.
Like with Kane and Lynch: Dead Man, the characters in Cloverfield are just hard to like. The main character won’t stop whining, the two women characters are bland (but totally hot), and the cameraman is annoying as all Hell. Nearly at all times throughout the movie, I just couldn’t find myself giving a damn about the people in the film, but I just wanted to see the stupid monster.
That’s another disappointment that I would like to focus on. The monster. It’s basically a giant cricket that craps AIDS. No awesome dragon. No bad ass whale. No rhinoceros-thing.
A fucking cricket.
That craps AIDS.
Genius.
All in all though, the movie’s really not that bad. Choosing actors that no one’s ever heard about was a great idea on the casting agent’s part. It really made it so you could immerse yourself further into what’s going on, and how it’s effecting the character’s personalities. For example, if the main character wasn’t this nobody actor and was, say, Zac Efron instead, the movie would have been total ass. The sounds are also nicely done, and the action scenes were pretty intense (except for a few cliché moments here and there [example: turning on the camera's night vision to see a bunch of AIDS monsters all around you]).
I believe you should give this movie a go and see it for yourself. It’s a lot like the video game Assassin’s Creed; you either hate it or you love it. Me? I’m right there on the divider.
I give Cloverfield:
3 out of 5 stars
