Cloverfield (2008)

- written May 2008

Summary: A group of friends gather in Manhattan to hold a surprise party for Rob who is departing to take up a job in Japan. His friend, Hud, is given the job of recording everything on a camcorder. But as gossip spreads around the room that Rob and a friend of his, Beth, were sleeping together, the events of the evening take a drastic turn. It appears some creature is rampaging through the city and everyone ahs to run for safety. And, Rob takes his friends on a dangerous journey across town to rescue Beth where she is trapped injured inside her apartment building.           Overall: The film explains very little about almost everything. What the creature is, why its there, who are the little creatures, etc. We get barely any info. And frankly even with the deleted scenes and alternate endings, there is no more info to be had. It’s just a mystery and like with “Jeepers Creepers,” we gotta move on. I do think the film was quite well made and constructed. Loved the shots of the camera malfunctioning giving us some flash-backward scenes…but only bits and pieces which won’t make any sense at first. I thought the promotional campaign and the giant production as a whole was both ingenious and worked quite well. My flaws with the film are the obvious copying of similar scenes from “Blair Witch” including the last scenes as well as the lack of true caring for our main characters. See our problem at the party is, we’re not sure who is gonna make it and so we have lots of characters we get introduced to who never show up again and people we figured would be ignored or magically still running around after 60 minutes. But overall, a good film and worth a viewing.           Comparison: Blair Witch Project meets Godzilla

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