Sunday, June 29, 2008

Just watched Cloverfield, this is what I thought

I just finished watching Cloverfield. I really didn't plan on watching it today but when returning another movie to Redbox, I couldn't resist finding out what all the hype was about for only a $1. I really didn't know what to expect beforehand other than there was some unknown monster in NYC. Not having expectations usually is a good thing though. I am more likely to enjoy the movie if I don't know what is coming.

Overall, I thought Cloverfield was a good movie. It was definitely entertaining and worth watching. I am glad I waited to watch it on DVD instead of in theaters though. It would not have been worth $10. I still fail to understand all the hype. Why did people talk about this movie so much? Was it supposed to be some wildly original film? Was it just the reputation of J.J. Abrams that sold it? The mystery about what you were actually going to see?

Maybe all of those but it certainly was not very original. We have a suspense/horror-ish movie shot in the first person with hand held cameras à la The Blair Witch Project. (This one didn't make me as dizzy though and only in a few places.) We have some crazy monster crashing through a major city with the military trying to kill it à la Godzilla. We have monsters biting people and likely reproducing inside of them before exploding out of their chest à la Alien (watch it). Copy-paste.

Bravo on then ending though. I wondered how they were going to wrap it up and they did it well.