Exactly what I expected. Which is AWESOME.

Rating: 9/10 (18 January 2008)

****SPOILERS BELOW, PLEASE DON'T READ IF YOU DON'T WANT TO BE SPOILED****
I went in the movie having no idea what to expect. I heard that you want to sit back from the screen to comprehend it, and I agree with that. But other than that, all I had seen were the trailers. And I was hyped. And I wasn't disappointed at all. I'll say my only criticism first: the movie is short. It feels like even 10 more minutes of just running or fighting the little monsters or even grieving like in the subway platform scene would have been great. The ordeal seemed to take so little time for how large of a crisis it was. The movie has a couple awesome aspects. First, the presentation. The filming feels really real. The stops are natural, and the characters are always aware of the camera. The hand-held camera view also leads to better tension in some scenes, like in the subway tunnel. Second is the characters. In the monster/action movies I've seen, the protagonists always seem to want to save everyone. The entire city, country, world. Now ask yourself this: if a monster attacked your city, would you try to fight it, or try to escape? I think most of us would try to escape, which is exactly what the characters do. They're not involved in any of the problem solving, they're just victims, bystanders of a crisis. They always seem real: real reactions, real decisions, etc. And the characters interact with each other perfectly. No sudden romances, no relationship changes in the span of 6 hours. Hud and Marlena are perfect examples. Marlena sort of warms up to Hud before her explosion(no, she's not taking her coat off), but it's not like they're star-crossed lovers. And Hud is always making funny comments during the quiet times, which seems a natural way of his dealing with grief and anxiety. I was worried this movie would end up with no reveal of the monster, just a mysterious figure. But throughout the movie, the monster is shown, though not in full detail until the end. And then, it is awesome. It's absolutely original, and it's a good type. Not too much like a dinosaur, not too much like a fish, but instead something totally foreign. And, there are little monsters, but I still don't know for sure if the main monster spawned them or if they hitched a ride in, or what. Which leads into the open-endedness of the movie. The movie ends with Manhattan being leveled to destroy the monster. The camera obviously survives, so we don't know the outcome of the monster, or Beth and Rob for sure. Also, we learn nothing of the origins of the monster, what exactly the bites from the little ones do, or anything. And this stresses one of the points of the movie before it was out. Admit it: we all had fun hypothesizing what every single line of dialog and frame of video meant and figuring out how it could fit into the plot. The fun with Cloverfield was that everyone could have their own idea on what the monster was, where it came from, the outcome of the characters, etc. And with an unresolved ending, we can do the same. Now, granted, I didn't stay through the entire credits, but I doubt there's that much resolved, if anything. My final recommendation: see the movie. It's an excellent movie with style and a realistic flair that should not be missed.