viewer alert: crazy making camera work, otherwise good creature feature

Rating: 5/10 (26 April 2008)

I am writing this review specifically to alert viewers who might not yet be aware of the camera work in this film. If you know about that and don't care, you needn't read what I have to say.
First, camera work aside, it is a fresh, engaging, well-done creature feature. I can find no fault with the script, the directing, the f/x, or anything like that. I kind of enjoyed that part of it.
BUT this film takes shaky cam to a new, nauseating level--to an insane level. The film is photographed ENTIRELY, BEGINNING TO END, as if it were shot using a hand held, consumer quality, video camera by someone who has never, or hardly ever, used a video camera before and who is, once the creature shows up, running and jumping for his life most of the time. The camera *almost* never stops moving and a lot of that time it is moving *wildly*. Once things get moving in the film, you almost never see more than a split second of still footage at a stretch.
And it isn't just that. They keep in all of the weird, random, accidental junk shots--pants legs, shoes, blank walls, stair steps, railings, etc., etc., etc., that most people would edit out of their home movies.
They might as well have suspended the camera from a slinky and bounced it off the floor and walls of the set. Let's just say I spent a lot of time wishing the kid with the camera would get killed so the picture would stop jumping around. It about made me seasick, literally.
Now, if you really don't mind that, if you really aren't expecting an actual movie with actual cinematography and professional-style camera work, where you can kind of see what is happening and absorb the acting and the characters and the f/x and kind of zone out and enjoy the mayhem and the weirdness ... if that isn't what you are looking for, then this film's for you. However, if crazy-super-jumpy camera work ins't your cup of tea, then take a pass on this one.