Cloverfield
I thought I had grown out of the stage to be impressed by a "monster flick", so I must admit how surprised I was to be so moved by the latest monster show "Cloverfield".
The plot was predictably not original at all, almost like a Godzilla running amok in New York (where else? Almost every disaster movie that took place in an American city invariably picked New York, possibly because then the director/producer could find an excuse to mutilate the Statue of Liberty. Small wonder that my friend called her "The Most Abused Woman in America". In this movie, the goddess of freedom was beheaded).
What was really original about the movie and earned it such high scores on IMDB was the style. Like "The Blair Witch Project", the entire movie was shot from a hand held camera. So if you managed to get past the first 15 minutes which were all shots from a farewell party, setting the stage for introducing the main characters and you managed to not vomit from all the jiggling, you would be in for probably the most shocking and frightening ride in a theatre.
With an abruptness that left one's head spinning (literally sometimes), the viewer was plunged mercilessly into the position of an average person caught in a city suddenly besieged by a monster that made Godzilla looked like your house gecko. I was so drawn into the movie that at times, I found my mind echoing some of the curses and expletives of the characters in the movie, "What the hell was that?!" and "Oh shit, this is really really bad." "Oh no, got to run!". If there was something that the movie did exceptionally well, it was in the conveying of the mood; nerve-wracking tension, panic, shock and helplessness.
On top of all these, there were some "easter eggs" for movie buffs like myself like the static radio noise after the credit which had fascinated so many fans to speculate and analyze the noise. According to youtube clips, when played normally, the static seemed to say "Help us" or "What next?" or some other completely different stuff. But when the static was recorded and played backwards, the message that was heard was much clearer and sent a shiver down my spine, "It's still alive."
It had been sometime since I could leave a theatre with my friends and talked non-stop about for the whole journey home. I almost wished (God forbid) that the incident actually really happened. That would have been horribly fascinating.
The plot was predictably not original at all, almost like a Godzilla running amok in New York (where else? Almost every disaster movie that took place in an American city invariably picked New York, possibly because then the director/producer could find an excuse to mutilate the Statue of Liberty. Small wonder that my friend called her "The Most Abused Woman in America". In this movie, the goddess of freedom was beheaded).
What was really original about the movie and earned it such high scores on IMDB was the style. Like "The Blair Witch Project", the entire movie was shot from a hand held camera. So if you managed to get past the first 15 minutes which were all shots from a farewell party, setting the stage for introducing the main characters and you managed to not vomit from all the jiggling, you would be in for probably the most shocking and frightening ride in a theatre.
With an abruptness that left one's head spinning (literally sometimes), the viewer was plunged mercilessly into the position of an average person caught in a city suddenly besieged by a monster that made Godzilla looked like your house gecko. I was so drawn into the movie that at times, I found my mind echoing some of the curses and expletives of the characters in the movie, "What the hell was that?!" and "Oh shit, this is really really bad." "Oh no, got to run!". If there was something that the movie did exceptionally well, it was in the conveying of the mood; nerve-wracking tension, panic, shock and helplessness.
On top of all these, there were some "easter eggs" for movie buffs like myself like the static radio noise after the credit which had fascinated so many fans to speculate and analyze the noise. According to youtube clips, when played normally, the static seemed to say "Help us" or "What next?" or some other completely different stuff. But when the static was recorded and played backwards, the message that was heard was much clearer and sent a shiver down my spine, "It's still alive."
It had been sometime since I could leave a theatre with my friends and talked non-stop about for the whole journey home. I almost wished (God forbid) that the incident actually really happened. That would have been horribly fascinating.
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