If this was real I'd crap my pants ..........twice

Rating: 8/10 (4 February 2008)

Imagine if Godzilla and Kraken had a baby you would get the monster from Cloverfield. I saw this movie in a tiny theater at a local mall, I highly recommend sitting in the back seats to prevent puking or getting puked on. Well let me explain the plot, the movie follows a group of 20 something year olds that journey through downtown Manhatten in search of a trapped friend (I''ll let you find out who it is on your own) as a giant monster runs amuck. These 20 something year olds not only face off against the giant monster but they also face crablike parasites that climb off the monster. With such a wild plot this movie could have fallen into a pit of clichés, sappy moments, and crappy one liners but it never even attempts these movie atrocities. The movie itself is very experimental even though the cinematographic style has been used before but it has never been used on an epic scale until Cloverfield. The shaky camera style made the cgi seem more realistic and less like Final Fantasy creatures. Some will argue that there is no character development in the movie but the whole movie is seen through the eyes of a guy holding a video camera. Now logically if u picked up a random video camera from the streets (I don't know why would you) and played back the video thats on it, the people in the video wouldn't explain their life stories unless they have the time to do a video memoir. On the whole movie seen through the eyes of one character, this makes the movie much more intimate then if it was told in third person with the "eye of god". Now beware (if you're a wuss) there are images similar to that of 9/11 in this movie, but these images are used to forward the movie and also gives it a creepier and familiar atmosphere. Cloverfield is very disorienting but this is good, since disasters themselves are disorienting. This makes movie seem realistic even if you don't expect to see a giant monster attack New York City tomorrow. People with short attention spans beware; even though the movie is about an hour and 20 minutes, there is much dialogue in the film but there are intense moments at critical parts of the movie. The dialogue itself is not dumb dialogue like in most horror movies. I gave this movie a solid three stars out of four or and 8 out of 10 (since I cant rate 7.5 out of 10) because I have never seen anything like it, I enjoyed it, and it left me wanting more even if the acting is a tiny bit shaky it still deserves three stars.