Ok, so I’m only like nine years late with watching this move but 10 Cloverfield Lane is on Hulu so I thought I’d watch Cloverfield before watching the “sequel”.
For starters, it has been a while since shaky cam has given me a headache, so long in fact that I almost didn’t realize why my head started hurting. I don’t know if newer movies have “fixed” this problem but it hasn’t been an issue for me for some time. Or maybe I just haven’t been watching movies with a lot of shaky cam.
Beyond the movie causing me actual physical pain, I was also in mental pain watching this so called found footage movie. Most found footage movies have a reason that the cameraman keeps filming. They’re making a documentary or they’re a journalist or they’re trying to document something specific. Hud, our cameraman, starts filming a party and when the giant monster attacks the city he just keeps filming. Not a bad premise but he films everything. He films when they’re walking along the subway lines, when they’re just standing around talking, when his friends are pushing against a door to keep out the little monsters; he just keeps filming. There are so many times when he should be using two hands to do something and he just keeps filming.
And once he’s dead you would think that would be the end of the tape. Nope cause then his friend picks up the camera from his dead body and starts filming everything. He films himself and his girlfriend huddling under a bridge. In that scene he has to be holding the camera up at eye level. Why? Why would he do that?
Another problem I had with the movie is near the end after they have rescued Beth from her building, where she was impaled on some rebar, And everyone starts running toward the military. Everyone is faster than Hud. Even the woman who was impaled through the chest can run faster than the cameraman. How is that possible? I understand it’s so the filmmakers can have a shot of everyone running to the military but come on.
I’ll admit the monster looked cool and when it was on screen smashing stuff the movie was enjoyable but these moments were short and fleeting.
So overall: shaky cam bad, cameraman motivation bad, monster cool.
Rating: 1/5