Cloverfield

I had high hopes for Cloverfield when I heard about it and last night I went to the cinema to watch it. I managed to sit through about 40 minutes of it before the urge to be sick was too much and I had to leave. The whole "hand held video" concept, to put it in technical terms, sucks. Watching a camera being waved wildly all over the place does not make for a good movie- and the effect was enough to have me on the verge of making a mess of a rather nice cinema. The fact too that the film was edited to cut from place to place- i.e. not anything at all like a real tape of events- kind of makes it a redundant effect.

Is it a good film? I'll never know- certainly the beginning of the monster attack on New York was well executed but I can't help but feel that if it had been filmed like a proper movie, it would have been so much better. The opening scenes, for instance, at the party were not only nauseating but terribly boring. Bad enough that we're cutting from person to person, catching bits and pieces of conversations, but to have it filmed in such a way that the camera is either swinging around like crazy or mis-framing what it is supposed to be seeing...I mean, does that really add anything to the story?

The obvious comparison to make is with Blair Witch- and that film, shown from the same perspective, had none of the nausea inducing filming techniques. The upcoming Diary of the Dead is also a "first person" movie- and so too is the already released Zombie Diaries. I'm hoping that neither have the same hyperactive camera effects.