I'll admit I initially avoided Cloverfield due to a big element of the film being the "shaky-cam" style of footage, as the film is supposed to be a home-recording of "the event" by someone with a handheld camcorder. I'm not usually prone to motion sickness, but the latest Bourne movie at the time had the distinction of the only movie I've ever seen in theater that made me feel physically ill. Understandably I passed up Cloverfield with barely a second thought. A few years later though and it came up, for whatever reason, in casual conversation, and Matt told me he really enjoyed the film. For this reason I decided to finally watch it, and was happily surprised.
To address the large concern, the film definitely is shot as if by an amateur cameraman with an unfamiliar camcorder (and in fact some of the shots are apparently from footage taken by the actors with such devices). However, instead of action shaky-cam prominent in movies such as the Bourne series, I'd classify the majority of the film as "unsteady;" exactly what you get on home movies. Of course there are some scenes which definitely fall under the classic shaky-cam style, the majority is just 'unsteady.' This combined with watching it on a television rather than a movie theater screen meant I suffered no problems, although I can't say this would be the case had I watched it in theaters.
To move onto the actual content, I'll admit I was expecting a monster film horror/thriller type film, in the vein of Jaws. I quickly had to revise this opinion, and by the end of the film I was actually unsure of where to place the film genre-wise. It featured a giant monster, naturally, but most of the film it was more of a backdrop rather than a centerpoint. It definitely has thriller-esque moments, but again they're surprisingly seldom and for me were not particularly tense. The military provides a few action scenes, but once again they're almost always in the background.
In fact, having taking a cinema class and being at least elementary familiar with film techniques, I was shocked when they right out showed the monster fairly early on the film, and extremely clearly at that. I thought it was a huge mistake, since this was a the key reason, for instance, the initial showing of Jaws bombed so badly with test audiences. However, as the movie progressed, I had to quickly shred the aforementioned genre expectations. I'd classify the movie as exactly what it seems like: a personal account and recording of what, for the people in Manhattan, is essentially the apocalypse. If that was the film's goal, it does an exemplary job of showing what would happen to an ordinary group of people in a catastrophic situation. They don't find the weak-point of the monster, they don't heroically band together a group of survivors and escape, and in fact they have no impact on the larger situation period. Instead we see exactly how the situation affects this small group of people, how they react, and what ramifications their choices end up having. The point-of-view framing makes this sensation very strong, and adds a strong degree of realism to the scenes that I think would have been lacking with traditional filming methods.
Beyond this, the acting is good enough and the special effects as well done as you'd expect (the monster itself seemed a little weaker, but it wasn't a huge deal). Although all these other aspects weren't spectacular, they weren't lacking, and in my opinion were all secondary to the story the film was attempting to display.
All together I don't think Cloverfield achieves a personal top spot for me, but I was highly impressed with the story it managed to convey and the way it went about it. The fact that it manages to tell such a compelling tale in only 80 minutes (the length of a standard residential cassette) is all the more impressive, and makes it a quick, enjoyable film to enjoy. I definitely think it's worth checking out if you get the opportunity, if only because it's quite different than the standard Hollywood blockbuster (not so much as many indie films, admittedly, but still moreso than comparable films). Now I'd just like to see a zombie movie in a similar style and I would quite pleased, or at least I think I would be.
-HTMC
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