Naysayers Completely Miss The Point

Rating: 8/10 (1 February 2008)

A couple of things which will help you chart my review:
1) I hated the Blair Witch Project
2) Did I mention the above?
Now, to get the motion sickness issue dealt with: Put yourself in a time of trauma, some disastrous 911-style event and imagine the camera-work you are capable of.
Yes, it's all over the place, yes it's frequently difficult to have exact clarity as to what's going on. . . And yes, if it weren't for the above two points this movie would not work at all.
As it is, it does what it sets out to do brilliantly.
Intense is a word that's used in many reviews here and that fits the bill perfectly. The immersion and sense of place is perfect.
Indeed, I suspect - quite strongly - that Cloverfield's style owes a little to the video-gaming FPS (First Person Shooter) genre, BUT do not let that drift your mind towards cheesy cannon-fodder shoot-'em ups, instead think of the much more sophisticated and adult 'Half-Life 2' PC series.
This, for those unfamiliar, is a tremendous compliment in that never before has a PC game managed to create such a sense of immersion and suspension of disbelief, and nor has a movie before mirrored that interactive sense of involvement.
Half-Life 2 sets the player in an alternative near-future where government dealings with extra-dimensional beings has resulted in the collapse of society and the imposition of a totalitarian regime whilst the cities are infested with all sorts of nasties - and in Cloverfield the smaller parasitical creatures which drop off the monster and scuttle around the streets and subways are a direct lift of Half-life 2's 'antlions'.
Indeed, the bleakness of the movie continually drew me to the HL2 gaming experience - there is no saccharine salvation here, just the plain horror of the attack and the ever-perilous dilemma of the characters, into which the viewer is also thrust through the first-person perspective with excitement cranked up after an initial domestic scene that lulls you into a false soap-opera storyline which is cut abruptly and amusingly short with a - literal - bang.
Too many complainers are hung up on the camera style. But there's no Cloverfield if there's no shaky cam. It's realism come to town, beautifully executed and completely understandable.
In fact, as the film wears on I found myself looking for compromise in the shots, scene to scene, awaiting the inevitable third-person palliative for the groaning masses, the shot out of synch with what's gone before.
It never comes, thank god. Honesty and conviction survive and triumph.
And the trembling smile of being immersed into this bitterly tense, sci-fi survival horror along with the amiable characters stays on your lips.
You UNDERSTAND why you don't see this and that clearly - because if it were you wielding the camera its exactly what you'd shoot, too, no more, no less.
A different, brave, and joyful, nail-biting experience that I'm thoroughly glad I indulged in. You'll need a couple of beers to relax after the experience but it's well worth it if you throw yourself into it the way you might not have done since you were a child.
It deserves its 8 out of 10.
In time, if anyone else is competent and ballsy enough to execute similar styles of storytelling and we develop a genre with a canon of work, you might just look back on this as a 10, a defining moment where all the endless familiarity of the 21st Century's obsession with reality TV, and youTube, and eyewitness documentaries, and warzone reportage and the video gaming subculture came together in a sharp-as-a-tack embodiment of our times and our fascination with apocalyptic self-destruction.
My opinion of the Blair Witch Project didn't alter as a result of Cloverfield - they're different enough; BWP a bit gimmicky, with overkill on the camera motion (blah,blah,blah to the 'small-budget' apologists - they still forced it far too much with little respite). But here, the balance is struck beautifully between disorientation and comprehension.
Don't miss Cloverfield. You'll be pleased you didn't.
FOOTNOTE: As for the motion-sickness fluster - a tip which worked for me: when the camera is in extremis, focus on then CENTRE of the screen - you're not missing anything anyway and as the movement stops you'll find your eyes in direct focus with the camera. Think of yourself running - you don't whip your head side to side; there's always a focus for your brain, a direction to which you aspire. Same here, forget the whipping camera - natural if you were carrying it - and instead keep focused as if you were running INTO the screen. In fact, don't treat this as just a movie; think of it as a bit of a theme-park ride thrown in and treat it accordingly.