Cloverfield: Camera-shaking, nausea-inducing nonsense? Or horror Masterpiece?
During the summer, a movie called Cloverfield was released into theaters. Me and my friend decided to go a few days after it came out, and we had no idea what we were getting into. We had seen the previews and all, but nothing could prepare us for what was about to unfold on the screen.
For those that haven’t seen it, I suggest you put aside the comments you may have heard about the camera work. Sure, it was shaky throughout the whole movie, and it did take some getting used to. But one thing that they did so incredibly well, in my opinion, was immerse you into the movie. The fact that you have someone talking behind the camera makes you feel like you’re right there in the madness of it all. the story is well-set and is fairly relatable. And it’s 99% bloodless. The cinematography was amazingly beautiful at times. The cuts from the old tape to give background story were brilliant. I still can’t get over how creative that was. I usually don’t like monster thrillers, but this felt so raw and compelling that I would say that its one of my top ten movies. One shot in particular will be engrained in my mind forever; at the end of the movie, the protagonists finally face the monster, unable to escape, and the monster grabs the one holding the camera, bites him off camera, and the camera and the body both drop to the ground. I don’t know how they did it, but when the person was laying in the grass, eyes wide and glazed over, the camera kept focusing on his face, went out of focus, then focused on the grass in front of the lens, whirring each time it refocused, and it did this four or five times until it was picked up again. That shot moved me very deeply.
Am I wrong, though? Does the camera move too much? Is the monster lame? Is the story tired and boring? Let me know what you think.
It’s been a while since I’ve seen this movie, so I honestly don’t remember too many details of it… all that I remember in fact is sitting in a hot movie theater watching a shaky camera hoping and praying I wasn’t going to throw up. Now I’m sure the fact that the movie theater was completely full and was about a MILLION degrees probably didn’t help the fact, but the camera work made me feel super nauseous and I could not enjoy this film at all- I know they were trying to make it look real and all, but they should probably tone it down a bit.
brettswanson said this on November 14, 2008 at 8:58 pm |
I loved this movie. I thought that the camera “shakiness” was fantastic throughout. I agree with the idea of feeling immersed in the film. All but one of my friends with whom I saw the movie did not like it. I would love to see it again but I’m not sure how good it would be on a smaller screen. I think they did a great job depicting the monster as well. It really wasn’t cheesy-looking or anything like that.
oncewaslost257 said this on November 17, 2008 at 12:31 am |
Hey, this isn’t posted in your category. Please go back and edit the post to change that so that you’ll get credit for the post.
Thanks.
-jimmy
JimmyBH said this on December 6, 2008 at 6:10 pm |