Cloverfield [2007] - Paramount Home Entertainment

Boring

I got so bored with the pathetic camera work that I switched off after 30 minutes. If I want to see this sort of work I can watch home movies my kids made.

I don't know if it came across better on the big screen but having watched it on DVD I certainly wouldn't recomend it.

great entertainment

imho, it's the things that other people hated about this film that made me love it:

the acting was believable. i think that i would make a whimpering noise if i suddenly found myself on the ground with a huge monster standing above me.

the dialogue was believable. in real life people generally don't soliloquy like shakespeare, or describe ever innermost emotion, or philosophise or have great one-liners every minute - they usually just talk rubbish, like they do in this film.

the script was believable. it was what you could reasonably expect to happen if a half-kilometer high monster invaded new york.

there IS humour in the film, if you aren't po-faced.

the direction was tight. it moved forward. it did what it said on the tin, and on the tin it said "monster movie". watching it i felt tense.

there was no swearing in the film. you could watch it with your granny.

in short, a greatly entertaining film.

Bad..........very bad

The camera work was annoying - do we really need to feel like we are on a boat in the pacific during a storm?

However possibly the biggest problem was that I didn't like any of the characters and didn't care if they lived or died. As a result I didn't want to follow the plot and couldn't wait for the end.

After all the hype I was so disappointed, not what I expected from Mr JJ Abrahams!

Absolutely brilliant

I have been a follower of horror for over 26 years and have seen countless horror movies. From the very best to the very worst. Cloverfield rates amongst my very best. Why...? Because it brings something different to the horror genre. The last two - three years have been like a new dawn for horror. Horror I believe is being re-invented. The age old blood and guts with a poor story line is not as prevalant as before. Horror is now advertising itself to the thinking man/woman. This is most definately where Cloverfield comes in. It provides a good setting, sets the tone and then BANG your in, the horror begins. The film runs at a good pace , is consistent and the camera angles are superb. It takes the blair witch cinematography and puts it on a whole new level. You find yourself twisting your neck angling your body as the camera moves with the pace of the charachters it follows. There are shocks that happen which you just don't see coming, leaving you in anxious anticipation of more to follow. What a film!!!.
Trust me, you'll want to put this in your horror collection.

Original idea, great film

When I saw this in the cinema, I was blown away by it. You were left with more questions after the film than at the start, which you'd imagine would be annoying, but there was something that I loved about that. The camcorder, of course, made this film most effective. They describe it as 'Godzilla meets Blair Witch', and I can safely say that if you like both of those two films, you'll love this one. The fact that it had a cast list that you wouldn't have heard of helped it to be successful; the idea of this film was to get a first-person view of normal civilians reacting to a crisis, so it would be strange to feature Tom Cruise and George Clooney. You can see that the director has covered every corner to squeeze as much as possible out of this film to make it realistic (apart from the giant monster terrorising New York city).

If I was rating this film straight after exiting the cinema, I would have given it a hands-down 5 stars. The one thing that is holding me back now that I own it, is the fact that it is not nearly as entertaining on the second viewing as it is on the first. The most thrilling element of Cloverfield is that you are watching it without knowing much, so you don't know what's gonna happen next. It's part of the novelty of using a camcorder, that you have no idea what is going to suddenly appear in front of the camera. I think that a film should be thrilling and entertaining every time you watch it for it to be a real classic.

Apart from that, though, a very clever and well made film.