69 thoughts on “Cloverfield”

1. Wil, great review. Not to be a leech, but now I can tell folks, “What did I think about ‘Cloverfield’? Read this (link to you), expressed much better than I could have written.”
   Two by-the-ways, not meant as boasts but just for those keeping score from the comments:
   1. The camera movement did not bother me. In fact, I munched on my bag of popcorn throughout. (This is NOT an iron-stomach boast; I get queasy at the silliest images in movies — any vomit, mucous, clowns, etc. — but the movement was no problem.)
   2. The day after I saw the movie, I compared notes with a friend who lives/works in NY. He enjoyed it very much and had no problems with any geographic or logistical issues.
   Thanks again for the great review.

2. I’m with you, Wil. I loved it – fantastic storytelling. The Blair Witch concept done RIGHT.
   I just have this to say… Cthulhu Takes Manhattan!

3. Didn’t see it yet, but everyone I know that has LOVED it.
   BTW, did you know you were on Perez Hilton the other day?

4. Thanks for your take on the film, Wil.
   I experienced pretty bad vertigo toward “Cloverfield’s” last one-third.
   Still, it is a decent movie despite the whole feeling like a huge video game.

5. I didn’t particularly want to see it, but went Saturday night with my spouse (scary movies for date night are tradition). I loved it. I really liked the characters and loved the ending.
   I’m glad you enjoyed it.
   (the other movie I saw this weekend was Juno, which I totally recommend even though it has no Stuff Blowing Up Real Good(tm))

6. I saw Cloverfield tonight I must say I actually Liked the whole see it thru the experience of the people type movie. It did make me feel alittle seasick too from the shaking. But the special effects were good, the whole why is this happening suspense was exciting.

7. I didn’t survive watching the entire film. I saw about the first 45 min, before I realized I’d retch if I stayed. I need stable cameras – I should have known if it was compared to the Blair Witch Project – which also made me pretty ill.

8. Saw it tonight and really liked it…my only gripe is that I wished they would have given up on the hand held camera thing at some point. I understand and liked the feeling of being with the characters, but I wish they could have made it less shaky. Not that it made me sick, but it was distracting. The scene in the tunnel when they turn on the night vision was awesome. I knew something was going to jump out at them, but it still freaked me out and had me flailing in the air in front of me. Awesome flick and if they do a sequel from someone elses perspective, I hope it is a guy wearing a steady-cam!

9. Well, I got to see the first 15 minutes or so of the movie and an interview with the director so I was pretty impressed. I am debating whether to see this in a theatre or wait for it to view at home. Because of the CGI, I’d like to see it on the big screen. However, because of the handheld filming, I’m not sure it will translate that well. I still remember the rescue scene in the end of “GI Jane” that they shot to make it look more ‘actioney’ but only managed to turn my stomach; and it wasn’t just her acting. I picked up on the 9/11 tie in once the action started. I heard not once, but twice an actor in the background saying something to the effect of, “It’s a terrorist attack!” and/or “Are we being attacked by terrorist?!” Well, next weekend is movie date night so I may go see this one anyway and take my Dramamine first. BTW, I listened to the 360voice podcast.

10. @Katie: As soon as Rob started opening the door out of the service room, I was screaming at the top of my lungs to go back for the crowbar. I think I became “that douchebag” for the folks next to me.
    @everybody else: Please, stop whining about shaky cam just ’cause it exists. There’s a difference between shaky cam that’s used to achieve a specific effect, and shaky cam that’s tossed in to make things seem extra-frenetic. Unlike Transformers, Blair Witch Project, or any of the other movies that are overly-prone to shaking for the sake of shaking, in Cloverfield you can actually tell what’s gong on. The only points where I lost track of what was happening was when the filmmakers wanted me to.
    As far as the motion sickness goes, that seems to be a personal thing. I get the FPS thing if I sit too close to the monitor, I get vertigo in imax theaters, and I get nauseous after one back-and-forth on a swing, but I had zero problem w/this movie. I would recommend sitting towards the back if you’re concerned.

11. MrBread: My comment wasn’t so much a complaint, as it was more a confirmation that it IS dizzying… that being said… i can’t see how they could have made the movie any other way and be authentic.
    It HAD to be done that way, no doubt of it!!

12. At first, I wasn’t sure if I enjoyed it or not because I had some issues with the film. It sounds weird, but it took me awhile to realize that I thought it was a good movie.
    Here are a few things I initially had problems with, until I thought them through:
    – The camera movement did make me look away twice, but I agree with Wil that I crisp, clean film would not have captured the necessary realism.
    – At first, I too thought the party scene was too long, but then I realized I needed it. We needed that time to see the “Perfect day” video, see that they had broken up, and see that they both still really cared about eachother. If the film makers hadn’t given me that, I would have thought it was over the top for Rob (main character) to go trampsing through Manhatten to go find a girl who was probably dead. If I didn’t get that feeling that Rob was thinking, “She’s all I’ve got, and I love her,” then I wouldn’t have believed the movie.
    – Finally, it took me a second to realize that I was on the edge of my seat the whole movie. I was scared, but not too scared. I saw action, but not over the top *cough* Michael Bay *cough* action. I had a good, constant level of adrenaline through the whole film. Which, quite honestly, is what a movie (like this) should do to the viewer.
    So, I, like a lot of people, had problems with the film, but those problems melted away when I actually thought about them.

13. I saw the movie last night and I really liked it. I was almost loathing going hom to my empty place becasue I wasn’t sure I wanted to be alone.
    And I also loved that most of the cast were unknowns. Lilly I recognize as the new girl on CSI: and Marlena was in Mean GIrls as the “Goth” chick (so she almost escapes being a known person since she looks so different).
    All in all I didnt find any part of it unbeleivable (except whwen they save Beth and pull her off of a rod that is through her shoulder and she didn’t bleed out) and the building leaning on the other I didn’t have issue with since I known zilch about building construction.
    As for the camera movement I forgot about it after the first bit. And I love that I only knew as much as the characters and that it was all hand-held with no escape for the audience formt he fate of the heroes.

14. After years of reading this blog, THIS is the topic that finally inspires me to get interactive…
    I couldn’t agree with you more, Wil, on your assessment of what makes ‘Cloverfield’ so awesome. Furthermore, I was dismayed at the outright hostility and public displays of douchebaggery toward it at my screening. My girlfriend and I just felt like we went through one of the coolest, most intense rides in monster-movie history, and everyone around us was demanding their money back.
    Ebert was lukewarm about it, the New York Times was awfully mean-spirited, and now I find myself in the unusual position of agreeing with aintitcoolnews.com and few others. I’m glad you’re here to back me up.
    The points that so many people seemed to miss: 1) The monster is irrelevant. It could have just as easily been the Sta-Puft Marshmallow Man but it wouldn’t matter because the movie is about the experience of being on the ground during a disaster – not about the backstory of the beast. 2) All the 9/11 similarities are there because that’s our common understanding of what a disaster looks and feels like. It’s not crass or in poor taste. Movies are products of their times, and we are processing that shared experience just like Japanese filmmakers were processing their experience with the atomic bomb by dreaming up ‘Gojira.’ 3) The handheld camera-work may very well make you sick, but it’s a style that is absolutely necessary to the experience of the film. 4) Some dialogue is great, some of it is stiff or dumb – just like real life. I can’t fault anyone for that as so many critics seem to do.
    For everyone who expected smooth shots from an omniscient camera, or a scene with a scientist explaining the monster’s origin or a dramatic scene in which our ‘hero’ grabs his brothers hand on the collapsing bridge and says something like ‘just hang on! You can make it! I’m not going to let you go!’ well… this isn’t that movie. That other movie may be perfectly good too, but ‘Cloverfield’ takes every one of those conventions (except, maybe for rescuing the girl) and absolutely pommels them.
    I actually didn’t find ‘Cloverfield’ to play like a video game as someone suggested to me. If it were a video game, someone would have showed up with a BFG and cleared the “level” with all the little spider-beasties, and then they would have moved to the next round. Here, each challenge was random and didn’t necessarily end with any kind of resolution. The utter helplessness was just relentless, and it plays true in the context of the world of the movie.
    Will I go see it again? Ummm… probably not on a big screen and certainly not after a heavy meal. On DVD? Yes, a hundred times yes.

15. I wanted to see the film to familiarise myself with JJ Abram’s work before seeing Star Trek.
    The film scared me in all the right places, but at the end I thought it was fairly superficial…
    Until I left the cinema and started my walk home and expected buildings to start exploding around me, causing me to run for my life.
    The more time passed, the deeper the film affected me. We know at the end of the film the human race survived simply because the video was found and labelled confidential US Government footage. Who cares how the monster was eventually defeated? Although the bomb would be the logical conclusion.
    I loved it. The ST trailer ticked me off. It was too short, but after seeing how Mr Abrams handled Cloverfield, I feel confident he can carry off the challenge of delivering an ST film true to canon and fresh.
    Night,
    Daniel

16. Someone just emailed me that your review of Cloverfield was better than mine.
    *sigh*

17. I watched cloverfield Saturday night generally I enjoyed it. I had no problems with nausea, but I have never had any problems from movies or FPS games. I have one small science nitpick about the movie, which I am surprised that nobody else seemed to have picked up on.
    *** SPOILER ALERT ***
    Presumably the “hammerdown” (I think that is what they called it) protocol that the military was going to implement would have been a nuke, as it looks like that is about the only thing that could stop whatever the monster was. At the start of the movie, it says that the video was found on a SD card in central park. If the military used a nuke to take out the monster, I would imagine that the EMP from the nuke would have completely erased any magnetic storage within a rather large radius.

18. I don’t think they should have answered everything, but I do think they could have given us the type of answers that only lead to more questions – a little more meat. I know they did some of this in the ARG, but I would have liked to see a little more of this make it to the film.
    As far as a sequel goes… if J.J. wants to do it, I’ll trust him. I hope that further sequels abandon the shaky cam for a more traditional filming style, though.
    It takes balls to leave questions unanswered, but I’ll be more impressed if he finds a way to answer them without losing the magic (Lost, anyone?).

19. Awesome review. I got a site that lists movies to check what people think before going to see a movie. On this site Cloverfield got a 6.9/10 which was very dissapointing. After seeing the movie I give a 10/10, it’s a masterpiece. I think a certain percentage of people get nauseous in that type of situation so it was no surprise that many people didn’t enjoy the movie due to the way it was shot. I got used to the camera pretty quickly and found it made the whole movie more real. My girlfriend, on the other hand, felt ill. I’m so happy that there are movies that come out once and awhile that don’t spoon feed you every detail. I agree that letting people use their imagination is a much better tool that CGI special effects. I kind of wish they had never shown the monster at all. The ending was perfect just the way it was, some things are better left for you to decide what happens.

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