Well, witness Moosetastic has revealed how he would have done it, and another prime witness, Fisherman, has already covered the unsteady camerawork angle, so I guess all that leaves is for me to do is pass my usual judgment.
First to sum up the case: Take part of mega hit Blair Witch Project, mix it with mega bomb Godzilla and add a pinch of Days of Our Lives, and you end up with Cloverfield. So, it is not new material. But is it done well?
The special effects are well done (well, they seemed to be in between my bouts of motion-induced nausea) and the running around and mayhem is all very chaotic. The characters are all disposable with their various motivations all very pat (if Moosetastic's suggestions had been followed, that would definitely have upped the “care” factor), with my favourite bit of character development occurring when one explodes (now that was unexpected!).
But, the worst crime for an action movie, I got bored. The film seemed long. There may have been a hidden subtext about the impotence of the impressive American war machine in the face of an implacable enemy, but all we really got was one US soldier happy to let distraught yuppies go prancing around a disaster zone where a full-on military situation (Operation: City Shield, perhaps?) was underway.
Of course, a disaster film based in New York these days has to have some reference to the 9-11, and I noted the “homage” (if that is the right term) to the camera footage of a gale of debris passing by the window of a convenience store, though possibly this footage from a real tragedy was the inspiration for this film?
At any rate, Cloverfield is a cinema movie for me, as I probably needed the “confining” theatre environment to provide the impetus to concentrate.
Verdict: Not much to say really. Passable. A two leaf out of a four leaf clover.
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