Cloverfield Review

Last year when I saw the trailers for the movie Cloverfield I thought it looked great and could not wait to see it.  Then I started reading negative reviews and hearing that the shaky camera work was actually making people sick so I started to feel like I wouldn't like it much.

But last week I was looking for something for Netflix to send me and saw it in my queue and decided to give it a watch and I'm so glad I did!  My husband didn't even get antsy and enjoyed it as well.

Cloverfield takes place in Manhattan where a farewell party is taking place for a young man named Rob who is moving to Japan.  His friend Hud is roped into documenting the event on his video camera.  The first half hour or so takes place at the party where Hud walks around collecting farewell messages from the guests and hounding a young lady he is romantically interested in.  When Rob's friend Beth arrives we find out that the two of them slept together and there is some tension in the relationship as she showed up with a date.  To make matters worse, Rob finds out that Hud was taping over some footage of Beth and Rob taken at Coney Island.  Some of the clips of this footage displays here and there throughout the movie.

The real action begins after Beth leaves the party and some of the guys get Rob out onto the fire escape to talk about Japan and Beth.  A series of explosions and crazy things happen causing the guests and the population of Manhattan to hit the streets to find out what is happening. When they realize that a huge creepy monster is on the loose wrecking the city and killing people, Rob, Hud, Rob's brother Jason, and two gals named Marlena and Lilly try to escape.  On the way Rob gets a voicemail message from Beth and he decides to get to her apartment and save her rather than getting out of Dodge.  The friends reluctantly follow along and Hud continues to record the entire thing on his video camera.

A great deal of action and scariness occurs after this point but I don't want to ruin it for anyone.  Bottom line is that I really, really liked this movie.  For a long time they showed only parts of the monster so it was hard to really see what it was all about.  Toward the end of the movie there are a few really good, full shots of the monster which were really cool.  I was really happy to see that it was not just a giant Godzilla type monster but something really unique, creepy, and scary. 

The camera shots were shaky at times and there were lots of fast movements, but the entire movie is not comprised of shots like this.  There were a few times when looking at the screen made me dizzy so I just averted my eyes slightly.  The majority of the movie is not so shaky that it made me nauseous or anything. 

4 stars - both my husband and I really liked this movie. We liked it so well that we watched all of the extra features on the DVD and had some discussions about the movie which does not always happen.  The monster was cool, the ending was good, the whole idea of it was very creepy, and even the acting was pretty good (although we weren't crazy about Beth).