Cloverfield

A sketchy film with confusing camera work, unexplained monsters and a peculiar plot.

Review by Jenna Doughert7, from Washington, on 26-May-2008

My initial feeling toward the film, Cloverfield, was “This movie’s all right!” Cloverfield begins with a satisfying summation of the characters and an increasing intrigue into Rob and Beth’s relationship. But the movie that held such promise quickly declines into a series of confusing explosions, dizzying camera work, and a sketchy plot.
Creators of horror movies often leave gaps in a plot so as to captivate the audience and let them come up with their own conclusions about the movie, but in Cloverfield there is nothing BUT gaps in the plot. The Cloverfield monster is never fully explained to the audience, leaving it up to us to assume that it is either an alien or a Military mistake. What exactly the miniature monsters are is anyone’s guess, as is what happened to Marlena when she was bit by one.
The unbearable camera work is enough to have you popping Dramamine and praying for the end. Through the dark tumble of running and explosions, Hub’s camera work leaves much to be desired. While I myself could stand the shaky film, what I could not stand was that most of the movie took place at night, so I was literally in the dark as to what was going on.
As for the conclusion of the movie, we finally get a gratifying 20 second view of the monster, but that is hardly enough to compensate for an hour of poking your neighbor for answers to this confusing film. The touching but predictable ending of Cloverfield leaves you shrugging and heading to blockbuster for a more interesting movie. Perhaps we should feel compassion for the loss of characters in this movie, but frankly, we never spend enough time one on one with them to really care that they died.
All in all Cloverfield was simply a cheap remake of dozens of monster movies. It simply lacked a few main elements such as an explanation as to what the monster is, why it is here, how it got here and what happened to it. On the bright side it had very pretty actors.