It's certainly a first and it probably needed to be made...

Rating: 6/10 (25 January 2008)

So here I am at home, having just gotten back from watching Cloverfield with two friends, and I'm all set to impress my opinion upon you like my fellow public and tell you why Cloverfield sucks/rocks.
Except not, I'm not going to tell you that you should or shouldn't go out and watch Cloverfield. You can decide that for yourself. What I will tell you about is how my experience watching Cloverfield was. I thought the movie was all right, nothing to blow my socks off, but I wasn't upset either. After all, I had friends with me, Cloverfield probably would have been less entertaining for me had I gone by myself.
It really is a different kind of movie. A familiar movie, but done up in such a way that it crosses multiple genres by combining different styles of movie-making. On one hand, we have the traditional story of a monster attacking a large, populated city. I've heard the comparisons to Godzilla over and over again, but in my opinion, the point of view Cloverfield was filmed in takes it further from Godzilla than closer. We, the audience, view the entire spectacle from behind a video camera being held by one of the characters. If I had to try and pin down what type of movie Cloverfield was, I'd say Monster Docu-Drama fits the bill pretty well. If nothing else it's a fast-paced, disaster-film version of the Blair Witch Project.
The movie doesn't spend much time establishing characters, it doesn't answer any pressing questions. It presents itself as if the audience were actually taking part in the events happening on screen. We know as much as the characters do at the end of the day, and can only really speculate and fill in the missing blanks with our imaginations.
Since Cloverfield has done so well in the box office, I expect to see a sequel or two in the coming years. Maybe not written or directed by the same people, but it's coming.
To its credit, Cloverfield is certainly a first and it probably needed to be made. The monster movie genre has become pretty stock and dead in the past years and could use a different, fresher viewpoint. If only a familiar, yet slightly altered view.
6/10