You heard about it, but do you know all about it?
Since its trailer was shown before the Transformers movie last year, Cloverfield has been one of the most anticipated films of 2008, The trailer showed a scene of people partying, filmed on a handheld camera. Then all of a sudden something attacks the Statue of Liberty!
Details of the movie were kept under wraps until its release date Jan. 18th 2008. I couldn’t wait to see what this movie was about.
Cloverfield had my attention from the very beginning. As you’re watching the movie you are viewing a tape made by people who recorded the attack on a handheld camera. I was so interested in the characters and I wanted to see what was going to happen to them. Cloverfield had me wound up in anticipation. What is the monster? A dinosaur? An alien? What happens to the characters when they are trapped in the army zone?
But I thought it was a very disappointing movie. The movie lacks character background and a plot (at least Godzilla had that! And I hate dinosaur flicks). Basic questions like, “Where did the monster come from?” and “What are the characters’ backgrounds?” are never answered. I was disappointed because the movie ended abruptly, leaving me yelling at the screen, “What the heck?” One guy even got up and threw his soda at the screen.
The film has been compared to such movies as Godzilla and The Blair Witch Project. The monster attacking the city was much cooler than Godzilla, but the movie had crazier camera angles than The Blair Witch Project. People near me who had been complaining about feeling sick left the theater because of the camera’s frequent shakiness, but I didn’t feel sick during the movie.
The producer J.J. Abrams (the creator of the TV show Lost) was really why I wanted to see the movie since I watch Lost all the time, so I thought, “Oh wow, this is going to be a great movie.” But the movie left me stranded on my own desert island in my head. I had seen it, and I still didn’t get it. That is worthy of a refund to me.