I know it’s been out over a week already, but I before last night I didn’t really have much of a chance to get out to the movies for a while. I had heard good and bad things about this movie before seeing it, but decided that wouldn’t sway my opinion in either direction, I wanted to make up my own mind. So last night I made the trek to the local theater, bought my $10 ticket, and plopped down in a seat with a enough Cherry Coke to quench the thirst of all of Africa to see this movie and give you guys the skinny on how I felt it deserved to be viewed. Here’s my review of Cloverfield.

This movie is shot in the second person, much like the Blair Witch Project. So if you’re prone to motion sickness, it might not be for you. Be warned now, it gave one of my friends who went with me a bad case of motion sickness and he’s usually not effected by such ailments.

During a going away party for a friend who landed a vice-president position of some kind in Japan, a “tremor” hits New York. In typical movie genius fashion, the entire party decides to go to the roof to see what has happened. Now, anyone who has been in an earthquake, even a minor one, knows the last place you want to be while waiting for possible after shocks is on the roof of a high-rise building. Something about the potential 4million foot fall seems to be against all better judgement.

At any rate, the entire party goes to the roof, buildings blow up sending hunks of flaming debris hurdling towards them and they all flee down the stairs and into the streets. This is where you see the head of the Statue of Liberty come to a skid in the street on the commercials as well as a brief glimpse of the monster slipping between buildings. Evacuation attempts are made, but the Brooklyn Bridge, the major evacuation route at the time, is destroyed while hundreds of people are on it including the main characters. The rest of the movie is the main characters attempt to get back to help one of their friends who is hurt.

The monster dropped small insect-like creatures from itself. These “killer dingleberries”, as my friends were calling them, seemed to cause someone to explode if bitten and not killed. There’s only one shot of this in the movie and you really can’t tell what’s going on at all. A lot of the “finer points” of this movie were just skipped over in exchange for more shots of the floor. Coincidentally, I like the chest exploding effect better the first time when it was called Aliens, but that’s just me.

The monster itself was impressive, but not altogether scary. It had so many arms that it looked like it was all armpit and not much else. It also had a problem “eating” one person in the movie. Being so big you would think it could eat a person in one bite, but instead it just looked like the monster decided to heat-butt the person to death, much like a hockey player, or disgruntled soccer player.

All in all it was like watching a documentary shot by a six-year-old with a drinking problem. Faces half out of shot, lots of shots of the floors, that sort of thing. I can only assume that JJ Abrams worked on this during his lunch breaks while working on the new Star Trek movie.

For me, this movie is a strong rent. Don’t waste your money going to the theater to see it, just put it on your queue for Netflix and wait for it to hit video. It’s got some good moments along with the bad, and a few parts did make me flinch which is really hard to do. So, it’s not quite bad enough to give it the rating of “wait for cable”. Which is a good thing, but I wouldn’t hit the theaters for this one.

Cloverfield — RENT

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3. Silent Hill
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