What a movie!

Rating: 10/10 (22 August 2008)

What do you get if you combine THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT and GODZILLA? You get that movie. What a way to start the year. This film pays homage to the classic giant monster movies like KING KONG, THE BEAST FROM 20'000 FATHOMS and THEM plus some ma-sized or smaller than man monster films like Dracula (1931) and ALIEN (1979). Now why did I mention Dracula (which is a favorite of mine)? Here's why. There is one scene where they guy rescues his girl-friend and she has a metal bar impaled through her and he takes it off of her off-camera! Just like the way the title vampire gets killed. I also mention ALIEN because there is one scene where you see the small monster comes bursting out of the girl and growls about, which sounds like Donald Duck having a fecal fit or Homestar Runner's The Cheat loosing his mind.
Now when I saw the monster, it was sooo original and scary looking. In fact, it could make THE HOST look like a tadpole, King Kong look like a chimpanzee or Godzilla look like Barney. The gigantic beast (created at Tippet Studios, lead by JURASSIC PARK animator Phil Tippet) looks so imaginative, it contains characteristics of various animals (the tail looked like those of an eel).
At the end credits, it the music sounded like those of Danny Elfman (MEN IN BLACK, THE SIMPSONS and the SPIDERMAN trilogy) and Akira Ifukube (who did music to a lot Japanese fantasy and science fiction films, but he was known for doing the score to the original GODZILLA). After the credits, you hear a voice, if you mess it around, it says "Help us." or "It still lives."
After the film was a monster smash (no pun intended) at the box office, there was fan-art running rampant on Deviant Art (such as chibi-cloverfield, cute eh?), parodies like the one digital short in Saturday NIGHT LIVE and like KING KONG and THE BEAST FROM 20'000 FATHOMS, imitations of cheesy proportions like Asylum's MONSTER, the low-budget independent schlock-fest MONSTER MOVIE and the porno version, CLEAVAGEFIELD.
Usually movies released in the beginning of the year are boring, and not impressive Until there was ELECTRA in 2005. In 2008, there was CLOVERFIELD. I highly recommend it!
Rated PG-13 for violence, language, nudity, gore and scary going-ons.