Very good

Rating: 9/10 (7 July 2011)

A slight problem with films like "The Blair Witch Project" and "Cloverfield", whose stories we see through the eyes of someone behind a camera, is that it is improbable that in situations of such a stressful nature anyone would keep on registering the events, even in fantasies like this one, which are ruled by parameters far from the realistic. And, as in "Titanic", most of the events would probably happen in darkness... It is obvious that nobody would like to watch a dark screen while people shout, but just imagine the real events of the Titanic tragedy, deep in the dark, and in a chilling ocean... This is hard to convey cinematically. This said, "Cloverfield" is one very good motion picture, dark, pessimistic, terrifying. You may think I am pushing things too far, but for me this is a most telling metaphor of American people's fears, (the more so with the action taking place in New York), just as the Godzillas, Mothras and Rodans were projections of the Japanese panic after the atomic bomb experience. The film has a by-the-book script with plot points where film industry lawyers unwittingly want them to be, a love story that (not surprisingly) is the raison d'etre of the whole enterprise, adequate rhythm, little music, and it is short as it has to be, before a know-it-all starts making "Cartesian" demands.