Sunday, January 20, 2008

Cloverfield


Prepare for the end of the world as you know it.

It was just a regular day. We planned a surprise part for Rob. He's like, my main dude, but he's leaving for Japan to land a new job. It wasn't that great of a party really, some nasty stuff went down and it kinda went downhill from there you could say. So after there's this big argument between Rob and this girl, there was this explosion. Yeah, I told you it got worse. At first we thought it was another terrorist attack or something, but it wasn't. There were explosions and fires and stuff, we could see it from the roof. We ran out to the street and for a moment, I saw it. It was, well I don't know exactly what it was, but it was huge and it was destroying the city. I thought it was Armageddon. I mean, I thought I was gonna die.

Filmed on a home-movie camera, Cloverfield is about a small group of people who must survive a monster attack on New York City. When you go to see it, be prepared to be scared out of your pants, or at least to wet them. The camera work is shaky and sometimes blurry and sometimes pointed in the wrong direction, but the filmmakers did a crazy-good job on this. I wasn't sure if Cloverfield could live up to J.J. Abrams' hype, but wow, it does. Great choreography and lighting, and the effects were absolutely insane. (I can explain if you saw it and don't understand why I think they're amazing.) I loved the way they used background noise as a soundtrack almost. Deep humming machines, roaring, etc. takes the place of music. Also, the conflict of emotion they're able to evoke from the audience is amazing. Just when you're scared out of your mind, a character will say something utterly offbeat and funny. And you will definitely be scared out of your mind. A New York viewer said he came out of the theater half expecting to see the city in ruins.

Great performances by virtually unknown actors and actresses, really adds to the film and lets you focus on the story. The filmmakers really want you to focus on sounds and the story, so they add elements like blurriness or something when you need to be listening carefully, perhaps to a conversation, that's important to the story. They take a page out of Hitchcock's guide to suspense films and definitely apply the motto "What you don't see is more frightening than what you do see." Anyway, if you won't get annoyed by the shaky camera waving all over the place, go see Cloverfield. Definitely very enjoyable, got a good scare out of me, very well, done, I'd recommend it to the 14-40 age-group since they'll be more likely to be able to handle the seasickness brought on by the camera and still enjoy the film. Most excellent.

Conclusion: See it. Now.

Rated: PG-13 for terror, violence, and some disturbing images (Don't take little kids to see this, okay?)

Trivia:
  • The teaser trailer was shot before principal production began with small digital cameras.
  • The film has no soundtrack whatsoever.

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