[Review] Cloverfield

Cloverfield poster
Cloverfield teaser poster. Credit Yahoo! Movies

Synopsis : Five young New Yorkers throw their friend a going-away party the night that a monster the size of a skyscraper descends upon the city. Told from the point of view of their video camera, the film is a document of their attempt to survive the most surreal, horrifying event of their lives.

There was a lot of hype about this movie before it came out. Loads of teaser trailers, little snippets of information about the monster who attacked NYC. I went to watch this movie two days ago at Cineleisure (where else) and – like many other movies with loads of hype (i.e: The Golden Compass) it was kind of a dissapointment.

The movie was shot freestyle ala-Blair Witch Project. I think its actually harder to shoot a movie like that rather than the traditional cameras on the set style. The good part about it is that it really makes you feel like you are in the movie itself. The bad part is the shaky camera, unclear sounds and generally messy atmosphere. As a result, its like you miss little parts of the movie.

The story line was actually very slow in the beginning. A bit too much emphasis on the party they planned for Rob and introducing the characters so it was rather boring. I thought the interesting part only started somewhr in the middle of the movie where the attacks started (and when the statue of liberty lost her head – literally).

The reason what I said it was a dissapointment was because the ending sucked. After the movie, the whole cinema was speechless. Not out of awe, but like “huh? that’s it?”. There was no proper explanation about the monster, what happened next and all that.

Rating : Two stars

7 Comments

anonguy

January 21, 2008 at 3:57 am Reply

It seems quite a lot of people who watched this movie have an obsession about finding answers. Not everything needs to be wrapped up in neat little packages you know? If you want that kind of movie, then I suggest that you get 1998’s Godzilla.