Cloverfield

Plot synopsis:
Rob (Michael Stahl-David) has taken a job as a vice president for the Slusho company, which necessitates his moving to Tokyo. His brother, Jason (Mike Vogel), and his girlfriend, Lily (Jessica Lucas) throw a surprise going-away party for him. Rob's best friend, Hud (T.J. Miller) is recruited to videotape the event but spends much of his time trying to hit on Marlena (Lizzy Caplan). Rob is uncomfortable when Beth (Odette Yustman) brings a date to the party. Rob and Beth have been friends for a long time and had recently had an affair; their date to Coney Island was recorded on the videotape that Hud is now using to record the party. Rob ended the affair abruptly when he got the job. At the party, he insults Beth, who storms out.Jason and Hud take Rob aside to lecture him about his boorish behavior and encourage him to never let go of those he loves most. Just then, a shock jolts their apartment building. The party rushes to the roof to see what is going on. In the distance they see an explosion and must flee back inside the building to avoid debris. Once they move down to the street, Hud continues to shoot video and captures the image of a monstrous shadow moving down the street several blocks away. The monster knocks over the Woolworth Building, sending a cloud of debris billowing down the street. As everyone decides to evacuate Manhattan by going over the Brooklyn Bridge, Marlena informs Lily that she saw smaller creatures attacking and eating people.As they attempt to cross the bridge, Rob receives a call from Beth. She is at her apartment in the Time Warner Center and apparently injured. Jason becomes separated from the others. As they try to make their way to him, the monster's tail appears out of the gloom and destroys the bridge. Jason is killed but Rob, Hud, Lily, and Marlena make it to safety. In an electronics store, Hud sees footage of the monster shedding parasite creatures from its back that in turn attack people on the street. Rob decides to rescue Beth, even though it means he will have to avoid the monster. Lily, Hud and Marlena agree to go with him. As they move uptown, the heavily armed military appears to fight the monster as it smashes through buildings just ahead of them.The four take refuge in a subway tunnel and decide to walk the tracks to the Warner Center. In the darkened tunnel, they see scurrying rats and hear unsettling noises. Using the night vision function on the camera, they see the scale creatures crawling along the walls. They try to run but the monsters attack; one bites Marlena. The four barricade themselves in a breakroom. After tending Marlena's wounds and waiting for the creatures to leave, they walk up into a subway station just outside Bloomingdale's.The military is using Bloomingdale's as headquarters. Rob pleads for help in finding Beth. Suddenly, Marlena begins bleeding from her eyes and mouth; shortly thereafter her abdomen explodes. A sympathetic soldier tells the others where they should bring Beth if they rescue her -- the last helicopters leave within the hour as the government has determined the only option for controlling the monster is the carpet bombing Manhattan. When they arrive at Beth's apartment building, they learn that it as collapsed onto the tower opposite it. Making their way up the standing tower, they then crawl into the collapsed tower and rescue Beth.Rob, Hud, Lily and Beth make it to a helipad as a battle rages against the monster all around them. Lily is pushed into one helicopter and the others into the last. Although an aerial bombardment seems to knock the monster over, it suddenly reaches up out of the debris and strikes their helicopter. It crashes into Central Park. The monster sneaks up on them and bites Hud in half. Rob and Beth grab the camera and take shelter under a foot bridge. They record their final goodbyes on the camera as the bridge collapses around them under the air force's assault.Epilogue. The military has found the tape several days later. Its final moment is from the trip Rob and Beth took to Coney Island. In it, an object can be seen falling from the sky into the ocean, unknown to Rob or Beth.*The following is all from the POV of Hud's video camera.The movie starts off with Rob videotaping the start of a typical New York day from an apartment in the North Tower of the Time Warner Center. He goes into the bedroom and chats with Beth, whom he has just slept with. The two agree to go to Coney Island for the day.The tape cuts to Rob's brother, Jason, as he attempts to get the same camera working. His girlfriend Lily tasks him with documenting Rob's going away party, and Jason passes the task on to his and Rob's friend Hudson (Hud). Hud obliges, and takes the camera and begins filming the party.During the party, Beth arrives with a date, much to the disappointment of Rob. The two argue, and when Hud asks Lily why, she reluctantly tells him and Jason about Rob and Beth sleeping together. Hud proceeds to tell a number of guests, and Beth leaves. Rob frustrates her even more by wishing "luck" to Beth's date as they leave.Shortly afterwards, the ground shakes and loud roars are heard in the area. The guests of the party go to the roof and look downtown, and see a large explosion in the vicinity. Flaming debris flies towards the roof, and the guests run downstairs and begin to pile into the street. There is another roar and the head of the Statue of Liberty flies through the streets, landing near Hud. Hud walks over to it, then finds Rob, Jason and Lily and the four watch as the Woolworth Building suddenly collapses. They run into a shop to escape the debris. Minutes later, they exit the shop, and find their friend Marlena - whom Hud has a crush on - babbling about "it" "eating people".After discussing what they saw and concluding that a giant creature is roaming the city, the five friends decide to make to leave the island. They are cut off, however, when the monster destroys the Brooklyn Bridge, killing Jason in the process. They run back into the city and go into an electronics store so that Rob can try and find a battery for his mobile phone. He finds one and gets a message on his phone from Beth, who is trapped in her apartment. Meanwhile, Hud watches the news and sees live images of the monster rubbing its back against buildings and dropping dog-sized parasites on the ground. The parasites start attacking people. Rob, however, decides to try and help Beth, and the friends all agree to follow him.They make their way further north, towards midtown, and have an up-close encounter with the monster when the army comes and tries to shoot it down. The group panic, and run into a subway to try and escape. When they are below the streets, they discover that they can get to the other side of Central Park from Beth's apartment by following the train tracks and then turning west down Central Park South, and begin to walk through the tunnels. They are ambushed by the parasites during their walk, and during the attack Marlena gets badly bitten by one. They hastily climb into the abandoned Bloomingdale's via the 59th Street subway station. They are led by a squad of infantry to an army field hospital, which was set up to care for the hundreds of wounded civilians scattered around the city.Shortly after arriving at the hospital, Marlena is dragged behind a paramedics screen and we see her silhouette gruesomely expand and then explode, some sort of viral effect brought on by the bite she received. Some of the parasites, both alive and dead, are shown in containment cages being examined by a few white-coated scientists. The group are permitted by the sergeant to leave and try and help Beth, but to report at a military evacuation zone by 06:00 that morning. Hud has a minor break-down as they leave, but pulls himself together and they continue towards Columbus Circle in order to help Beth.When they reach the Time Warner Center, they find that the north tower has been pushed over and is leaning against the south tower. Hud suggests that they climb the stairs in the south tower and try and find a way onto the roof of the north one, and they manage to get themselves to Beth's apartment. When they get there, they find Beth lying on the floor with her shoulder impaled by a length of rebar. The group pull her up, and lead her back down to street level. They briefly see the monster again as they cross the roof of the north tower, and have another encounter with a parasite as the go down the stairwell. Rob stabs it with a fire axe and the four manage to escape. As they run to the evacuation zone - which is just by Grand Central Station - they see the monster step right over the station as they run by it. They hastily try and get on a helicopter, and are separated from Lily, who is put on a different helicopter. Hud, Beth and Rob get on the next helicopter, and begin to evacuate.As they fly over the city, they witness the monster being bombed by various planes and finally get knocked down into a building and under a cloud of smoke. As Hud shouts in joy, the monster suddenly rears up and smashes the rear rotor of the helicopter, sending the chopper circling towards the ground. It lands in Central Park and the group wake up a couple of minutes later, and help each other get out. The pilots are briefly seen in the helicopter dead.Rob injures his leg in the crash, and Hud puts the camera down to help him get away, but when he goes to retrieve it the monster suddenly steps over him and looks down at the camera. Rob and Beth look on from behind the helicopter as the monster bends down and scoops Hud up in its mouth, and for a few seconds the camera is inside the creature's mouth. The top part of Hud falls out of its mouth - camera and all - and Rob and Beth run over to him sobbing.Rob picks up the camera and carries it with him and Beth, and the two collapse under a bridge near the south eastern corner of the park. They sit there and listen as the bomb-warning siren goes off in the city, and Rob makes a last testimonial to the camera. As he quietly comforts Beth, a bomb drops on the park and the camera gets knocked out of Rob's hand, getting buried beneath some rubble. Rob and Beth each proclaim their love for each other just before another bomb goes off.The camera pauses, and then cuts to a shot of the ocean from the Coney Island Ferris Wheel. In the far distance, you can briefly see a Japanese satellite fall from the sky and crash into the ocean - a part of the film's viral marketing campaign. Rob turns the camera back towards him and Beth, and then zooms in on Beth's face. She says "I had a good day." and then the tape freezes on her smiling face, and cuts to black.At the very end of the credits, there is a short static transmission that, when played backwards, says "It's still alive."

Tags: suspenseful, violence, cult, romantic, flashback

Review:
Perhaps the 80 minute run time will bother some people, but on the other hand I think that's better than a film wearing out its welcome.
You're placed with a bunch of characters whom you get to know and eventually must join in their frenzied search for a friend while being subjected to some horrifying imagery and new threats.The effects look great and realistic thanks to the hand-held camera, which isn't too bad-looking if you manage to get a seat further from the screen.
Definitely worth a watch.Hand-held camera can be tiring, yes - but in this case, and combined with the great effects, it works.The plot itself isn't exactly news, but as it's all seen from the antagonists point of view and with no further explanation, you really get that "what would I have done"-feeling.Yes, we need explanations, but I really like that Abrams hasn't tried to tag on an ending explaining what happened..
The *entire* movie is filmed in the "handy-cam" style of the trailer - but in my opinion, it works better here than in Blair Witch.
If you haven't heard by now Cloverfield is a film about a giant monster attacking Manhattan all seen through the perspective of a 20-something's hand-held camera.
Now the acting is amateur but thats for the best considering that the film would have made no sense if they had used big name actors/actresses, the characters are not that deep either and mostly serve as fodder, comic relief, moral guidance, panic, commentary, puzzlement, a little bit of annoyance, in other words they're people surviving a monster attack.
The monster itself is actually not seen in its entirety only being viewed from different angles for the audience to piece it together as the survivors themselves are, you pretty much know as much as they do about everything going on making you actually feel like you're there.
Critics compare the film to Blair Witch meets Godzilla but it is so much more than that, Cloverfield is the definitive American Monster Film, best if seen on the opening weekend just to hear the audience's reactions not to mention the presentation is far greater on the big screen, watch it again to see the things you missed or just to enjoy the ride again, admittedly the shock value will wane with multiple viewings but for what it's worth Cloverfield is an excellent piece of film and special effect engineering and is the first great monster film of the millennium.
Pros: -Many thrills -Surprisingly good acting for a 'no-name' cast -Great story -Convincing special effectsCons: -The shaky camera may be nauseating to some people -The acting in some scenes could be a little better -If you are someone who likes for all the loose ends to be tied up at the end, this is not for youOverall, I give this movie 8 out of 10 stars.
Cloverfield is a very intense movie and the first person view really makes you feel like you are in the middle of something that you would try to avoid in real life.
Now people are coming out and saying there was no plot or back story, and felt it was hard to relate or understand the characters, but what people aren't getting is that Cloverfield isn't supposed to be that kind of film.
I felt like I had been right there all along, and that's the feel you get from the unique first person, free-hand camera angle you get the entire film.
And this coming from a geek who loves Fantasy, and monster movies.I have to admit it was an interesting idea, and I can live with the headache from the camera, and the horrible ending, but to be honest the movie was down right boring.
And of course lets not forget the camera style that makes you feel like your watching a home video filmed by your drunk grandmother.
I mean a bit more to the story please , like where did it come from, that kinda stuff, not just monster comes, stuff goes crazy, blair witch style, camera down, movie over.
When Lars Von Trier was preaching his Dogma manifesto all those years ago, I'll bet my left nut he didn't think it would be embraced to create Hollywoods latest pile of steaming, stinking celluloid, Cloverfield.Take out the 12 minute credit crawl (arguably the most exciting thing in the film), and you get 73 minutes of headache-inducing hand-held camera-work, a monster that would've been best left unseen and a whiny group of objectionable Manhattanites, everyone of them perfectly suited - nay, deserving - of a fate between the backteeth of any monstrous beasty.I was hoping the brave creative decision to shoot the whole film from a first-person perspective would have the desired affect - put the audience into the action; redefine the disaster/monster movie for the post 9/11 generation; take genre pics to that next level that many promise to do but none ever really have.But in trying to provide realism to B-movie myths of years gone by, the film-makers only manage to emphasise the cornball situations and horrible clichés that have driven these films for decades.
You can make the camera-work as dandy as you like, but it don't mean squat if the script and acting is every bit as turgid and wooden as it was 50 years ago - when the giant octopus (an obvious inspiration for Cloverfields critter) crawled over the bridge and headed Downtown.I know we have to give a movie about a marauding jellyfish a little slack, but its not the monster scenes that stink.
The filming gimmick (making the movie look like it was done on a home DV camera) shook the screen so much that it left many people I saw this with dizzy.
Only the crash doesn't kill the people in the chopper right away, just the pilot and co-pilot, you know the unimportant people, but the main characters stay alive just long enough to wake up the next mourning so we can get a good look at the monster.
I'm asking, why isn't this guy dropping his camera while a bunch of little critters, much like "Alien" that are falling off the big monster, chasing him and trying to kill him?
For one reason or another, the thought of dropping the camera never came into one of these characters heads and I wish they did since the movie would just end.
There were very few cues from the original monster film, and those that made it in were very subtle and seemingly unnecessary unless you had seen the original.All in all it was a fantastic movie, even though it was made with a very shaky handycam, and JJ Abrams should be commended on his direction; however...When it was over and the credits began to roll, I was left with this tremendous feeling of unhappiness with the movie as a whole, a feeling shared vocally by everyone who passed by my seat on the way out.The problem was the ending.
I had not only spent $8.50 and sat through commercials that should be making the tickets cheaper instead of more expensive, I had spent an hour and a half watching Cloverfield instead of doing something else that would have left me feeling much more happy.In closing, I do heartily recommend against seeing this movie, not even if someone else springs for the ticket or video rental.
If there is someplace you could go, a TV show you would like to watch, or a dog you would like to take for a walk, don't let this movie keep you from it.-edit-The gibberish that is heard after the credits is supposed to be translated into a statement that the director feels is quite clever, but after reading the translations people have made of it (basically a backwards recording according to internet boffins), it is actually redundant and stupid because you already know what this secret message is telling you..
It is just like every other disaster/monster movie ever made, except with a camcorder telling the story of a group of self-absorbed people caught in the middle.
As I wrote, it is just like every other disaster/monster movie ever made, except with a camcorder telling the story of a group of self-absorbed people caught in the middle.
About a dozen people had already left the screen-room when my girlfriend and I had to leave because we were both feeling sick and had already stopped watching the movie for 10 minutes not to throw up.We left maybe 45 minutes into the movie and barely saw three seconds of the monster we so eagerly wanted to watch.
By the time the monster shows up and finally starts killing off the idiots (read: every character in the movie), you've already wasted 20-30 minutes of your life listening to people who were apparently paid to cram as many lines with "dude" in them as they could under a strict time limit.
Every scene contained something needlessly immersion-breaking which, coupled with the nausea-inducing camera-work made for a decidedly poor movie.If given the choice of being bitten by one of the little monster-lice from Cloverfield or watching the actual movie, I'd take being bitten.
Now another thing i don't quite get is the camera...hmmm 10 hours of battery..yea, Captures all the good bits of an exiting adventure,HD quality and doesn't run out of battery or stop working from all the times its dropped and thrown in the movie!
i went in expecting a scary monster movie.what i got was 15 minutes of bad TV dialog, and 45 minutes of shaky-cam running through the streets.
those kinds of things really annoy me when they could have been fixed with a line or two of dialog.finally at the end of the movie there were a couple minutes of cool special effects.
Big deal.In the end you didn't know how the monster got there, if they actually killed it, what it's powers were, what the little monsters were, where it came from, what it wanted....you never even got to see the entire shape of it or the use of all it's body parts.It is the only movie I have ever wanted to walk out of.
The military, being the sweet, understanding people that they are known to be when under hostile fire from aliens, point him in the right direction and wish him much success.The only thing amazing about the film is the battery life on the video camera.
The fact that the guy talks the military into letting him risk his life (for a girl he slept with once by the way!), the exploding people, the fact that you can abuse a camera so badly and still have it work, the fact that you can buy a phone battery in a shop and not have to charge it before use, the convenient buildings propping each other up allowing for a daring rescue, the immense healing capabilities of the main characters who survive impalement and a crashing helicopter with barely a scratch, carrying the camera incessantly throughout this whole 'terrifying' ordeal, the stare out between monster and camera man at the end.
I think it was meant to add grit and suspense to the film, only giving you fleeting glimpses of the monster, but in the end it just helps to tarnish this train wreck of a movie even further by making sure its a blurred mess.I left the cinema feeling cheated of my money.
*shudder* The reality is in order for movies like this to work, the characters have to be borderline, intellectually retarded in order to validate why they would even consider getting close enough to the monsters, or whatever enemy, to make for a good film.
Not only was it hard to watch because of the home video concept of filming, but it was horrible.The Alien monster was like a giant praying mantis with babies that fell off itself and attacked people.
I nearly walked out ten minutes into the movie once I realized the entire film was shot from a shaky hand held camera.But even the worst visual movies can have a deeper meaning, right?
But honestly, it's not like people would expect that from a monster movie anyway, right?
well what can I say...I went into watching this film knowing it was filmed entirely in a shaky "Blair Witch" cam style,but I didn't expect over an hour of motion sickness overkill.Unless you have taken the time to watch ALL of the viral marketing the first 20 minutes of the film are a COMPLETE waste of time.Don't get me wrong I don't expect any film like this to slap you in the face from minute 1 with monster attacks and carnage but the first 20 minutes would have made much more sense to those going in totally fresh if they would have spliced in some of the back story.Namely the reasons behind the career move and the company he was going to work for,the attack on the oil rig and possibly a teaser news clip before going into the final few minutes of the party and then the attack.I understand the idea behind having "amateur footage" but the film tries WAY to hard to get that idea over.Seriously I knew full well that it was supposed to be a handy cam after 5 minutes,they didn't need to vaguely wave the camera around every few minutes to get the point across.Yes this film has been compared to Blair Witch but Blair Witch had something that Cloverfield SERIOUSLY lacks...Ambiance.In Blair Witch even though you never see anything the off camera sounds give the film the mood it needs to drive the story and give the feeling of fear.Cloverfield simply doesn't have that and it leaves me feeling no compassion for the characters and no sense of danger unless they are in the open and within shouting distance of the monster(s) Simply put this movie is a love or hate experience,there isn't any middle ground.Although it's meant for the big screen I'd advise waiting till it's available for rent to avoid disappointment.
I went to this movie with high hopes, and was very let down, not only was the film barely even 80 minutes long, but the whole thing was through the view point of somebodies video camera, jeez, what crap, and i would like to add that it also had the worst possible ending it could of possibly had.
Seriously, do I want to spend money to watch a movie that looks like a 10 year old with a handy cam filmed it?
The bad hand-held camera work was already doing that anyway but a stupid goof like that killed the film before it ever got started.
I think at this point in the movie they had run out of ideas & were just doing anything to kill time.Hud gets an excellent death (bitten in half by the monster) & then you get Rob & Beth talking to the camera, an explosion, rubble falling, Coney Island then nothing.
To quickly sum up, one by one all our main characters die either by a big monster, a little monster or an explosion.The entire movie is filmed from the point of view of a hand-held camera which for some reason has the longest battery life I've ever seen, and somehow is able to still function properly despite being dropped a couple of times and survive a helicopter crash.Overall, Cloverfield is filled with people pretending to be actors, A boring story with little or no explanation of much of anything, and one indestructible video camera.It is clear that the marketing campaign was where the majority of the budget for this movie went as this film was all hype and no substance.
This film is complete crap and yes, the analogy of Blair Witch meets Godzilla is quite accurate, with my apologies to the Godzilla people for the reference.After nearly falling asleep in the first 20 minutes, I kept waiting out of morbid curiosity for the movie to get better, but it never did.Basically, this is the video taped reaction of a couple of late teen/ early 20 somethings reacting (poorly I might add) to a monster of unknown origin attacking New York (presumed).
If you are prone to motion sickness, don't plan on enjoying your popcorn in the theater, as the first-person shaky-camera footage throughout the movie (as in, the ENTIRE movie) will ruin your intestinal fortitude.Much of the plot surrounds a small group of young adults who (like ALL good horror film antagonists) refuse to evacuate the city under siege in favor of rescuing an injured friend who happens to live near the center of the monster attack.
The story is told from the viewpoint of one of the characters that has a hand-held camcorder, and as a consequence the pictorial style of the movie is very similar to "Blair Witch", e.g. jerky camera shots in an attempt to make the film more "realistic".
First off I didn't like this film to begin with seeing how the monster movie genre has no cinematic value to me at all.
Borrowing liberally from films such as The Blair Witch Project, the recent Godzilla remake, and every horror movie you've seen where the main characters act completely illogically and are knocked off one by one, Cloverfield fails to meaningfully deliver on its goal of taking the big monster film down to the level of the individual "ordinary" people caught up in the wake of an attack.It fails mostly because it fails to make us care at all about the central figures and their ludicrous quest to save a girl who is most likely already dead.
Make a monster movie, keep it simple and interesting and people will love it...case closed.The fact that we had to suffer through a shaky camera the entire movie added nothing to the plot, added nothing to the story, and just took away from the cool effects.
Most of the time it looked like normal movie-quality footage, just shot with a hand-held camera.