Cloverfield

An exemplary demonstration of terror and mob psychosis. If there’s any film that the "amateur" POV documentary style suits and looks good on, it's Cloverfield. The *SPOILER ALERT* depiction of the destroyed town and the gradual culling of more and more of the main characters *END OF SPOILER* is truly brilliant. I was exceedingly pleased with how realistic it manages to feel (and at the same time such total bullshit, as a classicist would say). (10/24/2017)

It is a blast, but sometimes the excessive effort to push for authenticity at all costs can be bothersome. After all, there are simply moments when even the toughest journalist, reporter or cameraman wouldn’t be able hold the camera and would run to save their own life. So besides the fact that director, Matt Reeves, basically shouts to the world “look how realistically I filmed this” thanks to these scenes, the film does not suffer from any significant shortcomings. The characters behave quite believably, the chaos and confusion are excellently portrayed, and the sense of unpredictability is brilliant. Only the clichéd subplots of the story (except for the rampage of the monster and the rescue of the loved one – as later revealed) get a bit boring, but among all the explosions, shooting, and falling buildings, there is not much time for it anyway. (06/23/2008)

A demonstration of an ineffective effect. For most of the short runtime of the film, I felt that I was witnessing the realization of a typically sparse screenplay of a disaster film, which was cleverly wrapped in refined technical means and served to the audience raw. Unfortunately, this does not change the fact that under the raw packaging, Cloverfield is baked, in some places even burned. In fact, the technical design must also be seen in the context of the time period - just look at the extent to which the handheld camera dominates, for example, in contemporary American series. From this perspective, producer J. J. Abrams perfectly found the pulse of the time period and presented the audience with a film with a familiar appearance and content that fully suits the current obsession of people with feeling threatened. Unfortunately, Cloverfield is no more than wrapping, and even this wrapping only plays on the first signal. This film is only image and sound. Bad characters, affected actors, no content. Although this is undoubtedly a quality genre film, the way in which the film's carelessly obscured conventionality shines through disappointed me. Despite my modest expectations... [6/10] (01/27/2008)

"I'm documenting." I am devastated that Cloverfield is just an average picture. It was a really nice idea (despite being pipped to the post by that Spanish zombie movie - Rec - that I’m intrigued to see). That goes hand in hand with the convincing stylization. I’m not exaggerating when I say that the sound is just perfect. The music composition during the closing credits was just delicious. And lastly the entire movie up to the storming by the army was absolutely gripping. Unfortunately, the creators then ran out of ideas, just recycling those already used, all of a sudden the chosen style no longer has anything to offer and primarily the characters’ reaches the pinnacle of illogicality and starts to be actively annoying. If this were just another classic Godzilla movie, that wouldn’t matter at all, but pseudo-documentaries trying to be “what would happen if" realistic, this is really surprising and ruins the entire concept. And the last five minutes really puts the icing on the cake. Why couldn’t it have finished with that fall? This way, although it has a clean running time of about seventy five minutes, in the end even that is too long. And it’s a huge shame. (01/26/2008)

Great. The creators of Cloverfield exceeded my expectations. A journey around New York has never been so terrifying and intense. But back to the beginning. The introductions to the main characters was done really nicely and doesn’t seem too forced. Definitely the best of the team is Hud. The cameraman who (it seems) had never held a camera in his hands before shows the most important things, adding a suitable commentary to the picture and is really intent on filming this documentary from life. I don’t think I have ever felt such an affinity with a character as I did with Hud. The rest of the cast is fine too, but I won’t go into it too much, to let Hud shine through. ;) And now to the most important thing. The monster seems like it’s crawled out of one of those dark fantasies by H. P. Lovecraft. It really is horrible (Godzilla was pretty in comparison), has no name (in fact we don’t know if it’s a him or a her) and what it does is a dream come true for monster movie fans. He appears suddenly, unexpectedly and at the most apt moments. He demolishes bridges, tramples tanks and still keeps something up his sleeve for the finale. And have I saw that he’s really horrible yet? And that he has big, spikey teeth? And his repulsive followers are almost the same, always turning up at the least appropriate moments (absolute darkness, dark places behind doors etc.). And the hand-held camera is great, draws you into the action and I personally have nothing against it. Quite the opposite. Congratulations, Abrams, congratulations, Reeves. And those readers who haven’t seen Cloverfield yet... GET ON DOWN TO THE MOVIE THEATER! Believe me, this is movie that you just have to see on the big screen. (02/01/2008)