One word:
AWESOME.
More words: see my Bad Astronomy review.
Overall, I was really impressed with this flick. I won’t spoil anything here, but I will say that I wish I hadn’t eaten a big ol’ beef burrito before going to see it; my stomach was in knots by halfway through. Not from gore or anything, just from pure tension.
In my opinion, this was a truly terrifying movie in the original sense of the word. I was scared. Not sickened, or jumpy, just good and truly scared.
Very cool. Go see it.
If you went to BadAstronomy.com and found yourself here, never fear: the BA Blog has moved to its new home at Discover Blogs. The original BA site (with the Moon Hoax debunking and all that) is still online, too.
Phil Plait, the creator of Bad Astronomy, is an astronomer, lecturer, and author. After ten years working on Hubble Space Telescope and six more working on astronomy education, he struck out on his own as a writer. He has written two books, dozens of magazine articles, and 12 bazillion blog articles. He is a skeptic, and fights misuses of science as well as praising the wonder of real science.
Contact me: The Bad Astronomer "at" gmail "dot" com
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January 18th, 2008 at 10:59 pm
Okay, really, I’m stunned Phil. I’ve been reading your blog and movie reviews for years and I almost always agree with your taste and your criticisms of films, but not on this one. I thought this was one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen. I thought your “nitpicks” ruined it. Completely. Utterly. Your Nitpick 8, – I was laughing during that scene because it was so absurd. I thought the idea for this film was great, but if you’re trying to do the monster-attacks-NY movie realistically then you can’t have things like your Nitpick 8 (I had other gripes, but I’ll not reveal spoilers). For me, the unbelievable moments (and there were a LOT of them) completely undercut one’s ability to buy into the monster being there at all. At best, we thought this movie might attain Rocky Horror style campy-cult status.
January 18th, 2008 at 11:01 pm
I’ll go along with Phil on this one. I enjoyed it (even though it now costs $17 to see a flick here in Sydney.) And the Star Trek trailer was VERY cool.
January 18th, 2008 at 11:06 pm
If you’re interested, it says on the Wikipedia entry what the backwards message at the end is. I wont write it here for fear of being exterminated, but you can see for yourself.
January 18th, 2008 at 11:34 pm
I’m not with jesse up there, this movie was not horrible; yet, it wasn’t awesome either. I agree, it was suspenseful as heck, but most, if not all, of the suspense (as you point out in your review) was due to the fact that we got to see everything in the handy-cam view. Which brings me to this comment (non-spoiler) from your review:
“I suspect a lot of knockoffs will come out, and like others before it, it will change the way horror movies are done. I’m sure we’ll get sick of ripoffs soon enough. ”
But that’s just it; this already is a ripoff (or homage, or whatever you want to call it). The horror movie that really introduced the idea of creating, and maintaining suspense through the usage of first-person/handy-cam POV is (as far as I know) “Blair Witch Project”. I’m sorry, there were so many ripoff/homage shots from BWP in Cloverfield, it got a little annoying after a while. Take that one aspect away from the movie and what do you have left? Very little.
Also, while I completely agree that the POV did wonders to create and maintain suspense, but it also sacrificed a lot. With the 1st person POV, you can make the images suspenseful, but rarely can you make them dramatic. And with a good monster flick, dramatic scenes can be really, really important. Just compare Cloverfield to what I consider the best monster flick in movie history, the first Alien. Some of the most memorable scenes from Alien were only possible with the traditional, God’s POV. I can certainly understand why the creators of Cloverfield didn’t want to switch back and forth between two POVs (although I’ll bet dollars for donuts that it was considered), but it doesn’t change the fact that that weakened what could have been a fantastic monster flick. On IMDB I gave it a 7/10. 6 for the movie itself, and +1 for the amazing viral marketing they pulled off
January 18th, 2008 at 11:51 pm
Overall, I’m with Phil on this one. I was entertained. The nitpicks are dead on; two friends and I had pretty much the same ones. But we agreed that the small-slice-of-the-big-picture format was very effective.
January 18th, 2008 at 11:57 pm
Well, that seals it! I must go see this movie!
January 19th, 2008 at 12:45 am
I knew this one would be good with JJ Abrams backing it, and the writer (name eludes me) wrote episodes of Alias, Lost, Angel, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I am so ready for this to be awesome.
As long as the crowd doesn’t get rude (cell phones, incessant talking).
Can’t wait to read the physics nitpicks!
January 19th, 2008 at 1:37 am
Thanks for the review Phil. I suspect I’ll get around to seeing this one when it comes out on this side of the Atlantic, and I’m guessing my opinion will be closer to your than the more negative ones, from everything that has been said.
One comment though – on your phone battery nitpick… actually just about every electronic gadget I’ve bought in recent years (and I seem to buy a lot!) has had a partial charge, if not a near full one. I’m not sure why, but I seem to remember reading somewhere that some types of battery do not charge easily if they are run *completely* flat.
So I don’t know if in the film the “new” battery is shown to be completely charged, or just works well enough for the purpose at hand, but I wouldn’t be at all bothered if it was the latter.
January 19th, 2008 at 2:09 am
Sounds like the kind of movie I will like… oh the review…
Nitpick #1
- “…we hear a crackling of osme kind,…” small typo.
Sorry, it just caught my attention.
January 19th, 2008 at 2:15 am
I wanted to see it tonight, but NOOO, the local cinemas won’t show it.
Solution?
Road trip!
January 19th, 2008 at 2:20 am
Totally agree with BA here! The hand held camera viewpoint made it more personal and scarier. Hud was very annoying indeed! Can’t wait for the sequels! Batteries such as phone batteries comes out partially charged, around 1/4-2/3 charge, so no surprises there for me. BUT the hand held camera batteries were incredible! One thing puzzles me, at the end (the “intimate” monster scene in the park), the monster just sees Hud and not the others? And it can’t eat properly?
January 19th, 2008 at 3:00 am
Finally, I’ve learned enough about this movie that I know I’m not going to like it (rather than I simply refuse to see it because all I have is a name that has nothing to do with any plot I can imagine.)
-It’s a monster movie. 99.9% of all monster movies suck. Especially if they don’t take place in Tokyo.
-It’s shot in crappy handy-cam mode. If something’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right, and cinematography cannot be done right with a handy-cam. 99.9% of all movies shot in part or in total with a handy-cam suck.
-Enjoyment of the film appears to rely on knowing nothing about it. Surprise is not a worthwhile story element. 99.9% of all plots that rely on surprise suck.
that’s a 0.1% chance times three. (0.0000001%) I think I’ll wait for it on DVD. At the library. And then pass over it to watch something else I’ve already seen. Because it’s bound to be better.
January 19th, 2008 at 3:10 am
Wow!
I thought it was great. Im surprised at the polerised views in response to this one.
Im also happy we get a movie released here in NZ at the same time as in the US.
January 19th, 2008 at 5:32 am
Your nitpicks are dead on. Nitpick one (the one about the speed of sound) occurs in a lot of movies. I will add one: When they’re on the Brooklyn Bridge they look over at the headless Statue of Liberty. It appears to be fairly close. In reality, however, the two landmarks are on opposite sides of Manhattan’s southern tip.
Some people have said that during the very last scene of the movie, when the couple is at Coney Island, something lands in the water behind them. Personally I missed it, but I also wasn’t looking for it yet. That would suggest a possibly extraterrestrial origin for the creature.
Another site had a backwards recording of that very last snippet of audio that you mention. Supposedly it was Rob saying “It’s still alive.”
Can I put in a shameless plug for my own Cloverfield review? Well, here it is. I’ll add a link back to Phil’s review just to try and maintain the cosmic balance of the universe.
January 19th, 2008 at 6:15 am
This sounds very cool, and I look forward to seeing it. That being said, Dr. Plait, I’m glad someone mentioned the square-cube law, if not by name. There’s a reason we don’t see land animals that big. If we ever run across a land animal that big, it will be on a planet that combines very low gravity with a very thick atmosphere.
January 19th, 2008 at 7:43 am
On nitpick #8….I’m not a structural engineer, but I oversee large building construction projects…a building’s loads are carried (eventually) straight down through the footings (duh…there’s no where else for it to go!!). A leaning steel structure builidng with spanning joists and concrete decks would fold like a house of cards…no way it stands…the joints are not designed to carry those kinds of moment loads!
I’m going to see it anyway…it’s not supposed to be real, it supposed to be FUN. How many space movies do we see where we hear sounds in a vacuum and stuff like that?…still…..FUN!!
January 19th, 2008 at 8:29 am
@ Phil…. Your nitpick #2. I just replaced the battery in my cell phone a few days ago, and it was partially charged right out of the package. I used it for the rest of the day before I got home. So that could be plausable. And in your nitpick #4, you spelled Cthulhu wrong. Do you really want his darkness coming after you?
@ Jedibear… so the 0.1% of movies shot hand held include Saving Private Ryan? Because some of that film was shot that way. And it sure didn’t suck.
BTW, that hand held style of movie making is called “cinema verite” and it works quite well, especially in documentary films.
January 19th, 2008 at 8:33 am
After all the “viral” promotion that this flick has been given over the past YEAR or so, I figured that it would end up NOT being screened for critics in advance (Uh-oh!), and then ultimately it would turn out to be a real stinker. BUT: Surprise surprise, its Rotten Tomatoes score currently stands at an impressive 77% positive. And some people whose tastes in films I respect say it’s worth seeing.
I’m NOT a big fan of the jittery hand-held minicam technique, but it’s supposed to work within the context of this movie. One friend says, “Whatever you do, sit as far BACK from the screen as possible, or you may find this movie entirely too disorienting.”
I guess I’ll see it this weekend.
Out of curiosity, did you see last year’s sci-fi flick “Sunshine?” I watched it last week and simply did NOT like it as much as I had hoped. It started off promisingly enough, but then veered into more routine potboiler stuff before going off the metaphysical deep end.
January 19th, 2008 at 8:41 am
I loved the film. I noticed several of the nitpicks mentioned, but I was having such a good time that I was able to suspend disbelief to continue on the ride.
It seems that everyone is comparing Cloverfield to Blair Witch. Seems right, with the same low-budget, cinema verita look and viral marketing strategy. another place where they cross paths is the reaction. Seems people either love or hate this film, with very little middle ground.
January 19th, 2008 at 9:00 am
I have heard this movie referred to as “The Blair Godzilla Project”.
January 19th, 2008 at 9:15 am
I forgot to run the file through a spellcheck.
I hopefully found all the errors.
January 19th, 2008 at 9:16 am
As for a ripoff of Cloverfield, besides the already mentioned “Blair Witch Project” a direct-to-DVD movie called “Monster” just came out earlier this week or last week. A giant monster attacks Japan and here is the camera footage we found from some tourists telling the real story that the government is trying to cover up.
The movie is put out by “The Asylum” which is known for cheap DVD sci-fi/horror movies. So expect a bad script, acting, direction and special effects.
January 19th, 2008 at 9:40 am
[...] I’ll include the teaser anyway. My bets are on Cloverfield to be honest. If the Bad Astronomer says its good, it must have something [...]
January 19th, 2008 at 10:10 am
I agree with the other posters who were less than thrilled about this movie. I just don’t agree with the hype. I wrote a “less than excited” verdict about the movie on my blog.
January 19th, 2008 at 10:10 am
@Doug Berry
“Seems people either love or hate this film, with very little middle ground”
Welll, I guess I might be in the minority here, because I thought Cloverfield was a pretty good film. That might have to do with the fact that, like I said, a lot of Cloverfield depended on the same exact elements as Blair Witch, and I’d already seen that many times. But I loved Blair Witch. Which means that if I had never seen Blair Witch before, I would have given Cloverfield a much higher score (8 or maybe even 9/10).
January 19th, 2008 at 10:56 am
BA, just noticed your review and Nitpick #2. When you do buy a rechargeable battery there is often a small charge when you buy it, however it is not recommended that you use it right away, but allow it to charge for at least 14 hours. So, it is possible that the scenario in the movie could happen. I used to work at Radio Cra… Shack many years ago, and would run into this lots.
January 19th, 2008 at 12:01 pm
Seems like one of these “love it or hate it” movies. Haters call it Blair Witch Project: Monster Version, lovers call it just plain awesomeness in a box…
But these kinds of movies are the BEST MARKETING THERE IS! That way, everyone thinks “I’ll have to see it.” due to the teasers and the reactions to it…
Of course, that means I’ll have to see it too. WOO.
January 19th, 2008 at 12:12 pm
I went to the Wiki page and saw no information about a backwards message. Maybe that was deleted from the page.
I like how you used the word “Disquieting”. I just learned that recently from a Sagan book.
January 19th, 2008 at 12:20 pm
One little footnote prompted by some of the comments:
Hand held camera mixed with (usually unnoticed) mounted camera shots has a long origin in good film making. Abel Gance (1889 – 1981) used the technique “cinema verite” in his silent film “Napoleon” (1927) to evoke the panic-ridden chaos of the battlefield. It has a you-are-there quality. The Russian director Sergei Bondarchuk used hand-held sequences to similar effect in his masterful version of “War and Peace”. Stanley Kubrick, Orson Welles, Serge Eisenstein and Steven Spielberg have used it too so its not unusual for “The Blair Witch Project” and “Cloverfield” to make it an effective primary dramatic element.
January 19th, 2008 at 12:25 pm
Say, I just wanna know one thing… Do they at least explain in the movie what a cloverfield has to do with a big monster hurting New York?
January 19th, 2008 at 12:35 pm
Phil, I LOVE your reviews… One day i would like to see you get your own BAD ASTRONOMY review show- you could review movies and and TV shows related to sci-fiction. My only complaint about your review is it should have been a bit longer! but you loved the movie and i did as well, so i forgive you.
PS- how bout that Star Trek trailer?
January 19th, 2008 at 12:42 pm
cool but when is the sunshine review coming???
January 19th, 2008 at 12:44 pm
My friends and I saw Cloverfield last night. This is the way a monster movie is supposed to be made. The first battle scene were the army tries to attack the vaguely seen monster was a classic. The fact that the whole movie occurred at night added to the tension. I did see something drop out of the sky and into the water during the Coney Island scene so I have to assume it was from out there. Go see this movie. It’s worth it!
January 19th, 2008 at 1:30 pm
At the beginning of the movie there is a cryptic notice from the government explaining that the following footage is from a video recovered from “case Designate ‘Cloverfield’ retrieved at incident site… Area formerly known as Central Park.” In other words, Cloverfield is basically a code name given to the investigation of what happened. That is the one and only reference to the name Cloverfield, and there is no explanation as to why that particular name was chosen.
In reality: Cloverfield is apparently the name of the street on which J.J. Abrams’ office is located.
January 19th, 2008 at 1:50 pm
There’s one thing I have to know. When I saw “Blair Witch,” the shaky camera gave me motion sickness. I seriously had to look away at the corner of the screen so I wouldn’t puke. Is this movie as wobbly as “Blair Witch”? I love a good monster movie, but I hate upchucking in the theater.
January 19th, 2008 at 2:05 pm
I prefer “The Blair 9/11 Project” myself.
January 19th, 2008 at 2:23 pm
I feel pretty much the same way as Phil does, though I don’t like it quite as much as he does (I guess I’m in the middle). I’m glad I saw it, and I loved the limited narrator rather than the omniscient narrator. It was amazing to be in the middle of a monster attack like that.
But the illogical bits bugged me more throughout. The camera with a never-ending battery. The power going off very briefly all over the city, then, amazingly, coming back on again all over the city. No stopped subway trains anywhere in the subway. No one else trying to hide out in the subway. The Alien overtones. The overly-long set-up in the beginning (though I enjoyed the periodic returns to the trip to Coney Island).
January 19th, 2008 at 3:06 pm
I’m with the people that find it somewhat contrived and of no lasting artistic value other than the thrill of being held in suspense. I don’t think it will be remembered much a couple years from now. It was an average, albeit mainstream offering and admittedly that doesn’t appeal much to me. I feel it was aimed at a younger crowd, particularly those not old enough to remember Blair Witch, which in retrospect had zero substance and is remembered today for its marketing campaign. The parallels to BW are, in my opinion, overwhelming, and the “nitpicks” were every bit as glaring as Phil and others have noted (granted, there has to be a large suspension of disbelief in a monster movie anyway). I don’t feel suspense for suspense’s sake is worth two hours of my life and am not on the side that recommends the film. That said, there’s lots of eye candy and my nephews LOVED it!
(Assumedly, Central Park has become a clover field.)
January 19th, 2008 at 3:33 pm
I saw the film today and just read Roger Ebert’s review. He says the little beasties are parasites of the Big Beasty. He says he discovered this while surfing the net, but I don’t know where he found it. Makes sense, since the little ones look nothing like the big one. I’ve checked out some of the viral marketing and there seems to be clues to be had. I think they are setting this up for a sequel where we get more of a “God POV”. Some of the “news clips” indicate the beast came from a site in the eastern Atlantic and moved toward New York. Shots of paramilitary and a helicopter evac with Japanese CEO with a briefcase ‘cuffed to his wrist imply there is a manmade element to the beast. That would be classic monster movie plot. I was wishing for a little more “God POV” to find out more of what was behind it all. I smell sequel!
January 19th, 2008 at 3:38 pm
Saw it last night, awesome is right. You know, the backstory exists in the form of an online viral marketing campaign, don’t you Phil?
January 19th, 2008 at 3:39 pm
Saw it last night, awesome is right. You know, the backstory exists in the form of an online viral marketing campaign, don’t you Phil?
January 19th, 2008 at 3:53 pm
It seems to me that a lot of the folks who didn’t enjoy the movie were those who also didn’t follow up on the storyline that was given out bit-by-bit over the past year through the viral marketing campaign, which revealed the relations between the characters, bits about the characters themselves, as well as the involvement of a secretive organization, and a rebel group trying to stop it.
Don’t get me wrong, however: I’m certain that there were folks who know what Tagruato is, and how they had been at odds with TIDOwave, and who Teddy Hannsen is, but still did not get a kick out of seeing the film. It’s just that from what I’ve seen, it’s mostly been the first situation described.
“Cloverfield” wasn’t just meant to be a, “wtf is that?” kind of movie – that’s only the initial draw. It’s more of a kind of puzzle, with clues to piece together and red herrings to toss aside, in order to get to the bottom of the mystery. That said, it might be rather obvious that I felt that the movie was rather interesting.
January 19th, 2008 at 4:25 pm
I saw this earlier today, too. I had a blast. I think I was a little too overhyped for much of the movie because the lulls seemed like lulls to me (I expected constant excriment conflicting with the air-circulation device), but there were so many parts in the movie that even the hype could not prepare me for. My favorite being the introduction of the military.
January 19th, 2008 at 4:29 pm
Movie chews. Save your money. If you do go, don’t mistake the nausea that the camera shake causes as fear. Take anti-nausea medication before entering the theatre.
Some of the effects and scenes were truly awesome and unique, but overall on a scale of 1 to 10, I’d give it a 4.
January 19th, 2008 at 5:05 pm
I feel like the only person who has no interest in this movie. I said “WTF?” after seeing the trailer before Transformers and that started laughing at how bad it was.
January 19th, 2008 at 5:27 pm
IT’S SPOILERS ALL THE WAY DOWN…
Well, I’m right there with you Phil. I’m a huge fan of giant monster flicks (and also THEM! and THE THING). I thought this did us the service of reminding us that while it is fun to watch the omniscient view and track the military models as the roll up on the man in the suit – little consideration has been traditionally given to the screaming hordes of people fleeing as a giant monster destroys their city!
This film does that for us, making it seem a far less pleasant experience…
Observations:
1) The little ones (per rumor) are more of an opportunistic parasite, not young.
2) If we assume the footage we see is the total footage shot (a safe assumption, I think) then although several hours passed only 90 minutes (or less) was shot – making the camera’s battery life a moot point. Most cameras will last a couple of hours these days…
3) My biggest problem (aside from most of the ones you mentioned in your review) was that in the end in the park, the creature’s scale is grossly inconsistent with the creature from the rest of the film. If we assume that the camera-man’s height is 6 feet then its mouth appears to be just slightly larger than that, maybe 7 – 10 feet? Whereas we saw earlier that the creature had to be 20 or more stories in height… That doesn’t seem right. I’m sure that was a mistake, and that you’re right in there being only one (indestructible) monster.
4) What would something that big need with 2 eyes and a mouth? And if normal weapons can’t hurt the big one, how do the little ones manage to use it for sustenance/reproduction?
January 19th, 2008 at 6:39 pm
[...] I vaguely remembered seeing the preview and thinking it looked interesting. But when I saw the Bad Astronomer (who seems to have a pretty good taste in movies) say it was (and I quote) AWESOME, that was enough [...]
January 19th, 2008 at 6:45 pm
Couldn’t you just use a dead person’s phone, not steal the battery? But I guess you don’t remember numbers any more when there is a phonebook in your phone. I don’t know -my- number. Also, special recharger batteries are sold for “emergency” use – be prepared. However, those are designed to charge your phone from outside.
Buildings are over-engineered… but maybe not as much as -that-. I forget if you raised this during asteroid movie season; an asteroid tsunami hitting New York in long shot and gently pushing skyscrapers sideways while keeping them vertical was subtle, disturbing – you imagine what’s happening at street level – and probably not credible.
Speaking of over-engineering, maybe the critter was designed, a weapon that escaped from somewhere. Maybe the U.S. intended to drop them on Russia or Iran as the need might arise. Maybe it’s a space thing that can’t really digest humans but it eats them anyway. And that could still be designed, but by aliens.
And, heck, something like that comes and stomps all over your town, one strategy not recommended is to try to refute it. It probably won’t even notice.
This is a problem though with new British TV series [Primeval], in which critters from the dinosaur years wander through shortcuts in time into the present day – and they, at least the predators, are all enormously vigorous and agile. Now I suppose that evolution makes them that way but they seem to expend way more energy in killing people than they can get from digesting us. Well… I suppose I should compute how many days you really can live on eating one actual human being, using a freezer obviously, and then that’s how many more times vigorous than us a people-eater should be, depending on body mass.
I shall require a volunteer -
January 19th, 2008 at 6:47 pm
I agree with you all the way, Phil. The nitpicks got kinda annoying, but after reading the Wikipedia bit about the ending and watching the Coney Island scene at the end makes me want to go see it again. In my opinon it ties with the original “Alien” as best monster movie evar, and being a hundred times better than Godzilla ( a thousand times better than the Roland Eimmerich poop.) One last thing- J.J. Abrams “Star Trek”+”Iron Man”=EPIC WANT.
January 19th, 2008 at 7:13 pm
(Spoilers of course) I kind of thought there were four types of monsters. Everybody in the movie does seem to refer to “It” and not them but they knew about the little guys and didn’t count them so it’s possible they were just focusing on the big one. Anyway, I thought the thing that crushed the bridge looked like a tentacle with suckers and I didn’t see any tentacles on the giant guy. Also the monster in the park looked much too small to be the giant guy so I figured he was another medium-sized type of monster.
January 19th, 2008 at 10:01 pm
Saw the show, liked it although it did make me nauseous for a few hours after the show, for the same reason I cannot get on a boat or play FPS games.
January 19th, 2008 at 10:47 pm
The only confirmation that we get that the creature is eating people was the Marline character, who was clearly in shock. She may or may not be mistaken, but we never see otherwise. Even in the end, with Hud, he’s not eaten, just killed.
The issue with the buildings actually seemed slightly plausible. Didn’t a number of large skyscrapers do just that after the Mexico City quake? Lean over frighteningly, but stay standing until they were demolished?
The little beasties also may not be killable. Rob incapacitates it, but IIRC, it was still flailing when they ran down the stairs. I almost had the idea that he’d pinned it with the axe, because I couldn’t’ figure out why he didn’t take it with him.
My biggest nitpick: The speed of the military response. Granted, we don’t know if they had some advance warning, but assuming that the first moment that they know something is up is the destruction of the tanker/Statue of Liberty, they were on the scene almost immediately. If it was all infantry I could assume they were mustered from some nearby base, but the heavy stuff would take time to arm and fuel and get into the city. They clearly had tanks within, what, a half hour of the intitial attack?
January 19th, 2008 at 11:05 pm
My two cents…
I enjoyed it for much the same reason as BA, the “street-level” point-of-view.
In response to ScottS-M’s observation above, I got the impression that thingie which smashed the bridge was the beasty’s tail. But I could be wrong (hey, maybe there’s a whole coordinated invasion going on in the background that we never see!)
The only “flaw” I found was the way Hud kept filming with that camera all the time, even when they were fighting off critters trying to gnosh on them, well past the point where you or I or any sane person — well, any sane person, anyway — would’ve said, “Screw this!”, chucked the camera, and beat feet for the tall timber.
Of course, the answer to “Why did he keep filming?” is undoubtedly the same answer John Ford suposedly gave to the question, “Why didn’t the Indians shoot the horses in Stagecoach?”
“Because then we wouldn’t have a movie.”
January 20th, 2008 at 12:03 am
@Chip
Shaky, first-person-like POVs have, I know, been used many times in the past; however, what’s unique about Blair Witch (and something that Cloverfield knocked-off of directly from Blair Witch and not those other films) is the fact that the first-person-like POV was supposed to be, according to the story line, actually part of a footage shot by one or more of the characters. And *that* is what adds to the suspense of those two films, not simply the cinematographic effect of the “cinema verite” technique.
January 20th, 2008 at 3:24 am
“@ Jedibear… so the 0.1% of movies shot hand held include Saving Private Ryan? Because some of that film was shot that way. And it sure didn’t suck.”
I regretted tossing in that “in part” bit in retrospect. I might have to increase it to as much as 10.0% with those criteria. Not that it will matter much. On the other hand, I really didn’t appreciate the handheld shots in Saving Private Ryan either. There’s a widespread belief that certain types of bad cinematography can add something to a film. I disagree.
January 20th, 2008 at 9:43 am
I want to see the movie just so I can read the review!
January 20th, 2008 at 11:52 am
To the other Greg:
Phil is not going to review “Sunshine.” He got cozy with the science adviser and his wife and became quite friendly with them. I’m sure he feels the “science” in Sunshine was terrible, but he can’t bring himself to hurt his friends like that.
Which is too bad, because if any movie deserves a rubbing from Phil, it’s Sunshine.
January 20th, 2008 at 12:44 pm
I just saw the movie two hours ago. Very good, very gripping. It kept me locked in and interested the entire time. I appear to be alone in at least not hating Hud, despite his mild douchebaggery in the beginning at the party. His mildly funny lines were actually a nice break from the tension. Perhaps he kept filming during some of the more intense scenes because the camcorder was strapped around his hand? Less likely to just let it go.
It mostly looked like there was just one big monster, but the tentacle on the bridge was confusing. I don’t think it was a tail, because the creature’s tail was a bit stubby and definitely didn’t have suckers on it (you get a good look at it near the end before they get to the helicopters). Maybe my eyes deceived me and it was actually the creatures arm…?
I pretty much ignored the nit-picks and just enjoyed the movie. They didn’t describe the characters and their backgrounds much, but you could get a feel for them pretty well just from watching the film and seeing how they interacted.
January 20th, 2008 at 1:01 pm
I have been told by someone else who saw the movie that something can definitely be seen falling into the water during the Coney Island scene, which would strongly suggest that the Cloverfield monster is extraterrestrial in origin.
Guess that means Lou Dobbs is right: Aliens are destroying America!
January 20th, 2008 at 2:03 pm
Saw Cloverfield. Loved it. As with many movies, you expect some artistic licence, so even though I saw the nitpicks, I just let them slide.
Like being on a Rollercoaster. You know you aren’t likely to come off, and you aren’t in any danger, you just enjoy the ride for what it is.
As for Sunshine, I saw it in Australia long before it was released in the US. It was very bad science, but nice visuals. I bought the DVD though, because I wanted to hear the Science commentary.
The science advisor even noted some of the bad science. The film is poor science, but not the most awful science fiction film I’ve seen.
..and I hope the scientist gets some good results when the LHC fires up this year.
January 20th, 2008 at 2:11 pm
Well thanks for the update on the reviews. oh well, the bad science is obvious, but sometimes needed (sunshine is not a happy movie, and so weightlessness probably wouldn’t add to the atmosphere of the film) I actually liked it a lot, even if the science is bad. Though i think that if you ever made a movie with perfect science, it would be pretty boring. (Don’t say 2001 because it is not possible for a big black rock to teleport you to another dimension where you age in a matter of minutes before turning into a fetus the size of the moon)
On the subject of cloverfield, i thought it was excellent, especially with the cryptic messages from the Dept. of Defense. This only added to the tension, becuase if they try to explain the monster, it would only make it stupid. This way, they mantain the mystery around the thing, and make it much more believable.
January 20th, 2008 at 2:27 pm
I just got home from seeing this movie and for the most part, I think your right with your review. My only nitpick is the Military, there isn’t much that could get into NYC within an hour, let alone M1A1 tanks. lol My father worked in NYC for most of last year and he had a tough enough time getting a cab from the airport to mid-town let alone a tank! Otherwise, I thought it was a fantastic movie! I was on the edge of my seat almost the whole time!
Also, the US military stopped using the UH-1 Huey (The chopper they went down in) years ago, unless that was a reserve unit, but even they have Blackhawks now.
As for the tanks, I do have a little trouble seeing an M1A1 not do any damage to this thing, that 120mm cannon it mounts fires a depleted uranium sabot round that is actually only 40mm wide and has an exit velocity of 6000 feet per second and can go threw 9 feet of normal steel at 2 miles… lol Thats power!
But as said in some other replies above, I think there were more then just one, or maybe that mid-sized one at the end was one of the tiny one’s offspring from bitting people? They never actually show anything “popping” out, but that would be a good guess.
Again, either way this was an A+ movie for me, I really want to go back and see it again!
January 20th, 2008 at 2:31 pm
I just got home from seeing it, and I liked it a lot. Yes, there are some science nitpicks that I had to hold my breath and move past (just like in the trailer for “10,000 BC”) – but these are the people who made “Day After Tomorrow” so what can we expect?
If you liked this, you might also like a Korean monster movie (but in English) from 2006, called “The Host” – it was well done, and has a similar “intimate” feel, but without the shaky cam.
I LOVED the intimacy of it – disaster movies always have the “God POV”. This gives it a similarity to “Signs,” which I enjoyed for the same reason. I liked that the filmmakers didn’t feel the need to explain every little thing to us – I liked trying to figure it out along with the characters.
I liked Hud – he’s the comic relief. You have to have comic relief in a movie like this! There were only a couple of places where I was thinking “put the camera down and help!” but most of the time, it didn’t bother me, because if I had a camera on me, I’d probably have been doing the same thing, wanting to document it all. I’m a little biased through, because I know the actor playing Hud slightly, and so I was really excited for him because this was his first major role.
January 20th, 2008 at 7:38 pm
One more response to the phone-battery nitpick: plenty of places these days sell fully-charged batteries (tailored to specific phone models) that you can just plug into your phone and start using right away. Mostly they’re marketed for travelers who don’t have access to normal charging methods (I once had to buy one, at an outrageous price, in an airport terminal), but it’s not unthinkable that a business-heavy location like downtown New York would have shops selling them.
January 20th, 2008 at 11:09 pm
You are Hud …
Your Mission Whether you Accept it or Not, is to Document The US Armed Forces Engaging an Unspeakable Horror in The Streets of Manhattan and Losing …
That and Attempt to Score with The Beautiful Stranger, who EXPLODES Just as she’s Starting to Like you!
January 21st, 2008 at 12:03 am
I was so bored all the way through this, I can’t see how anyone can say it was scary or suspenseful. If I had have been watching this on DVD I would’ve stopped it 10 minutes in and refused to watch any more of it. And I didn’t even get the Star Trek trailer! No fair. That would’ve at least made it worth the ticket price.
January 21st, 2008 at 1:16 am
Phil, with regards to the last paragraph in Nitpick #4 of your review:
I’m betting the little beasties were parasites. Fleas and ticks. They didn’t look related to The Big Beasties (except for the gigantism), and just think for a moment about the effect of their bite. Did it seem similar to a Giant Monster of Doom form of anti-coagulant saliva to anyone else?
January 21st, 2008 at 1:59 am
The movie is absolute bull___. And I mean it. It lacks originality. And there is no explanation of any sort.It was like sitting through a freaking console game like Halo with all kinds of weird ass creatures crawling around. The only selling point is the sound and special effects. And why are all of them attacking NY for chrissake. To conclude, I don’t know what the hype is all about. I’m very very disappointed
January 21st, 2008 at 4:28 am
better see it in HD quality or it is a totoal waste of time .. the movie killed the Lovecraft spirit … and if you want to seriously see it .. do not read any spoilers or watch trailers … just go and see the movie in theatre… that’s it .
January 21st, 2008 at 7:15 am
About the things origin. I didn’t catch this when I saw it last night, but my roomate said he did, and I tend to believe him when he spots tiny things in movies, but in the footage of Rob and Beth on the ferris wheel at the end of the tape in one of the upper corners of the shot a meteorite might have possibly been seen crashing in to the water. Was it really there? Was it the thing? I don’t know, I didn’t see it. I;m almost willing to go see another movie, then sneak into the end of Cloverfield to figure it out.
January 21st, 2008 at 7:49 am
To defend the concept, I think that it’s the wet dream of any cheesy monster movie fan to believe they are IN THE ACTION. Down there in the street while all heck and chaos is breaking loose. You don’t know what is going on because if you were just a guy in the street, you would NEVER know what is going on anyway.
I find the concept fascinating. I can’t wait to see it. I don’t know why, but it doesn’t sound blair witch to me, even if they are holding a camera and you have a first view seat – it’s not stupid teenagers trying to find a witch.
January 21st, 2008 at 9:27 am
My favorite moment of the movie is “the payoff”–without that I might not have liked it so much, but I loved it. Very well scripted, filmed, and acted, and with a neat advertising campaign that was nearly as much fun as the movie.
January 21st, 2008 at 9:54 am
My whole family loved the movie. Best one of its kind in a long time, no government conspiracies, no easy wrapups into a neat bow, just a survival story.
What we really spent a lot of time discussing was:
1 – where does it come from, Outer-space, underground, underwater, etc.
2 – Logistics and “was there two of them”. For example, there seemed to be a big explosion in downtown and then the head of the statue arrived, those two places are far apart yet happened almost simultaneously. Then when they are on the bridge and its attacked, soon afterwards (we don’t really know how long) its back in downtown walking among the buildings again.
3 – wishing for a different ending knowing it made sense and was completely appropriate.
4 – would the final bombing really have done anything? What about other weapons, like bunkerbuster bombs designed to penetrate into solid rock and then explode, would they have penetrated it, or perhaps fuel-air explosions.
5 – did the humans win? Obviously the tape was found, at the beginning it showed a gov file and said the tape was found in the remains of what used to be central park. Did the monster get killed and they were cleaning up or did it just move on and they were searching through the rubble?
All in all it was a great movie, totally unlike others and a great ride. I will definately buy the dvd when it comes out.
January 21st, 2008 at 12:20 pm
[...] of Cloverfield January 21, 2008 — ronbrown Phil Plait of Bad Astronomy has given an enthusiastic endorsement for the movie Cloverfield. I’m going to have to second him on this [...]
January 21st, 2008 at 12:25 pm
Michelle pretty much hit the nail right on the head with her comment. I am indeed a cheesy monster movie fan and I live in NYC, and it was very enjoyable to see this kind of movie made. The survival aspect of something as crazy as this was captured almost perfectly, I thought. Sure, the Zoom Lens and Battery Life on that camera are awesome, but that’s just movie magic type stuff. Overall, I found the whole experience to be awesome and I will instantly buy it on DVD when it comes out.
January 21st, 2008 at 1:14 pm
> It seems to me that a lot of the folks who didn’t enjoy the movie were those who also didn’t follow up on the storyline that was given out bit-by-bit over the past year through the viral marketing campaign
I’d say that if you need to see the ads to watch the movie, complaints that the movie felt uncomplete in and of itself are perfectly apropos.
As it stands, I enjoyed the movie as a piece of art because it did everything it set out to do: depict Force of Nature from the perspective of a completely bewildered set of people on the ground. It was enjoyable to watch, although it didn’t really set off any of my fear triggers. If the monster is [i]that[/i] far away, it’s not a threat. If the monster is [i]that[/i] close, you’re dead. Because of the necessities of the monster movie genre the entire plot cannot help but be formulaic and therefore any suspense is planned for and lost by reasonable observers, especially how the ending is telegraphed at the very beginning. I’m admittedly biased towards psychological thrillers that rely more on letting people’s imaginations scare them than RAWR MONSTAR GO FAST AND MAKE WOBBLEWOBBLEWOBBLE NOISE but no, this didn’t trigger any fear responses in me.
What it did trigger, however, was a dread response as I’ve been in the whole “victim of uncontrollable natural disasters” boat a few times and it is a decidedly uncomfortable feeling. Combined with the movie’s intentionally nihilistic lack of ‘meaning’ or purpose (thus not generating any sort of catharsis), it triggered that dread without doing anything to relieve it. Thus, I couldn’t and don’t enjoy it emotionally as a personal response to the art.
It is, in essence, the Blair Witch Project meets Godzilla. In and of itself is not groundbreaking, nor is it entirely derivative; it intended to be neither. Watch it, make your own conclusions, then argue with people on the Internet about it.
January 21st, 2008 at 1:46 pm
I never followed any of the viral marketing but I really enjoyed the movie.
I think anyone who can appreciate a story over an idea will really enjoy Cloverfield. When I’ve had a chance to actually converse with those that didn’t like I tend to find they are of the mindset that a good movie is about the larger picture not the people involved.
This film was all about the personal story within a bizarre situation.
The lack of knowledge was key to the feel of the film. Some people want resolution, they want an omniscient view of things above and beyond the characters. And this movie is not for them.
This movie is for people like us who enjoy a story that sci-fi yet human at the same time.
If you go to the theater for an explanation or “missing piece” than I could see walking away angry at the film. If you go there to be entertained and take it for what it is, then you’ll probably leave happy.
SPOILER AHEAD
I love a film where people live and die as they do in real battle grounds…fast and random. For being a crazy monster movie, it was astoundingly “real”.
January 21st, 2008 at 2:24 pm
Spiral Q:
I disagree with you, but for the opposite reason. The characters were (by the limitations of the format) two-dimensional cardboard yuppie cutouts with no discernable personality beyond the archetype. Only Hud had any sense of actual past-the-obvious personality, and that’s because we get to hear his stream-of-consciousness muttering…
…and even then he’s never more than an abstracted “lovable doof” cliche.
January 21st, 2008 at 3:01 pm
I need to settle a debate and maybe address Nitpick 4. Did anyone else notice something interesting in the final scene on the ferris wheel? Perhaps a splashdown way off in the distance? I think the answer as to where this thing comes from was in that scene.
Overall I thought the movie was good.
January 21st, 2008 at 3:58 pm
I got there late, had to sit in the 4th from from the front. Got a terrible migraine, motion sickness, and ended up staring at the back of the seat in front of me half of the movie. I’ll check it out on dvd sometime, I’m sure a smaller screen will help. Other than that, the movie is pretty dreadful with a couple of good one-liners. This movie shakes so bad it makes the Blair With Project look like textbook steady cam work.
January 21st, 2008 at 10:00 pm
Woo-hoo! finally found a nearby cinema showing this film. Saw it and enjoyed it immensely. What follows is a somewhat rambling list of my reactions…
I felt regret that people died (in a “I wish that person would have made it” sort of way), but that’s part of what made it more real. Sometimes, even though people struggle to survive, they still don’t ‘make it out alive.’ Pretty gutsy for a film to do that, but realistic at the same time.
Also gutsy was the non-omnicient POV. I like the fact that we never really know what’s going on; the sense that we’re one of those characters caught up in an extraordinary event worked really well, and helped keep the ’startle relfex’ going throughout the film for me. (I also liked Steven Spielberg’s War of the Worlds precisely because of the one-person POV. Everyone complains about not seeing the battels in that film from an omnicient POV, but I felt it made the movie more realistic; I practically WAS the main character. Same with Cloverfield.)
I didn’t notice anything in the ferris wheel shot, but I did notice the scratchy ‘message’ after the music ended at the end of the closing credits. No clue what (if anything) it said, though.
Oh, some of you may remember my earlier posts about this possibly not being a monster film. I knew it was, but part of me was hoping it wasn’t. Still, I’m not upset that it WAS a monster film. It was done in a unique way that kept me entertained, unlike the awful 1998 American Godzilla movie. (I still hate that film.)
I couldn’t help but notice a few things that seemed to be borrowed from some of the better Japanese kaiju eiga… the parasites in particular seemed to be a cross between the parasites at the beginning of Godzilla 1984 (’85 in the US) and the Legion soldiers from the mid-1990’s Gamera: Advent of Legion. Anyone who’s seen those films will know what I mean, and if you haven’t, well, it doesn’t really matter. The Cloverfield parasites were not Japanese kaiju clones, and were scary enough in their own right.
Another homnage to the Japanese kaiju eiga genre, of course, was the closing credits theme music… shades of Akira Ifukube’s Godzilla themes, but not a direct copy.
I didn’t get a headache nor motion sickness, not even the slightest bit, which was a pleasant surprise. Whenever I watch someone’s home made, hand-held video, I usually can’t stomach more than a few minutes at a time. In Cloverfield’s case, it helped that I sat in the back row of a large cinema, I guess.
Oooo, I figured out how to get around a couple nits.
The camera battery is the eaiest one: there were periods when the camera was turned off. Some of them were lengthy, such as parts of the tunnel walk, or the 50+ story climb up the tower next to Beth’s apartment complex, as well as most of the trip down. Remember, this event (the attack) took place over seven hours ‘real time,’ and we were witness to only about an hour and a half of that.
The response time of the military can be PARTIALLY explained away in that there wasn’t more of a military presence in the city… I caught a snippet of dialogue between some of the military members talking about there being at least ‘thirty minutes’ before another unit was due to arrive, or something like that. It was during the triage scene after the tunnel walk the main characters took. (I’ll defer to those who’ve already commented, though, that even the presence shown in the film may have been too much for reality, but that definitely has to be chalked up to artistic license for the sake of the story.)
Anyway, a fun film, worth the Monday night cheap-ticket price I paid. Now that that’s all done, I’m thirsty. I’m gonna go have a Slusho.
January 21st, 2008 at 10:08 pm
Doctor Atlantis: “3) My biggest problem (aside from most of the ones you mentioned in your review) was that in the end in the park, the creature’s scale is grossly inconsistent with the creature from the rest of the film. If we assume that the camera-man’s height is 6 feet then its mouth appears to be just slightly larger than that, maybe 7 – 10 feet? Whereas we saw earlier that the creature had to be 20 or more stories in height… That doesn’t seem right. I’m sure that was a mistake, and that you’re right in there being only one (indestructible) monster.”
I don’t know what the monster’s mouth size was compared to its height, but I’m 73 inches tall and my teeth can separate by about 2 inches for a ratio of 2/73=.027.
20 stories seems to correspond to about 280 feet, which means 7-10 feet would be a mouth/height ratio of .025 to .036, which seems reasonable as I’d expect something intended to be scary to have a proportionately bigger mouth than a human. So if your numbers were right, it doesn’t sound like it’s an obvious scaling error.
Then again, you did say 20 stories was a lower bound, and Wikipedia says 25-50 stories (gee, that doesn’t sound very consistent after all).
January 22nd, 2008 at 8:46 am
I’m glad I didn’t have to write a full review like Phil did, because I only saw about 30 minutes of this 90-minute movie. I had to close my eyes most of the time to keep from hurling! Seriously, the handheld-style motion was truly wretched (and retch-inducing). I didn’t have a problem with Blair Witch but I couldn’t take this movie at all.
From what I saw of it, the tiny monsters were rather creepy, in a Starship Troopers sort of way. (Anyone else think they looked like smaller Bugs?) But the idea that the giant monster could survive the pounding it got put the movie completely in the realm of unbelievability for me. No living thing no matter how big, even with a skin of titanium, could withstand thousands of pounds of high explosives!
The shadows of 9/11 were the creepiest part of the movie IMO.
January 22nd, 2008 at 9:02 am
I loved the hell out of this thing, but it practically begged for the backlash it’s gonna get hit with in the coming weeks. You just can’t go wide with a valentine to the genre faithful without pissing off the rest of the megaplex.
I had problems with it; nothing major. The characters were so lame I thought maybe it was supposed to be an anti-yuppie satire, but then I realized that it was made by people who cut their teeth on “Felicity,” so I guess their idea of a sympathetic character just doesn’t jibe with mine. And the cameraman was truly awful–lovable loser as portrayed by a loser-hating alpha dude. S’okay, the sorta-redhead rocked hard enough to make up for her comrades.
I’d have liked to see what shape the movie would’ve taken if they had skipped the mini-monsters. I get that you need them for that nowhere-is-safe vibe, but I think the extra breathing room would’ve worked in service of the awe/dread.
The central “quest” is what seems to really set people off, but y’know what? I totally buy it. The urge to flee makes logical sense and plays nicely into the man’s-inhumanity-to-man subtext of “smart” horror, but (WARNING: SELF-SERVING ICKINESS) having had a front-row seat to 9/11, I suspect that ill-considered heroism is actually the rule, not the exception. My instinct that day–and that of pretty much everyone I know–was far more “fight” than “flight,” and since me’n my crew are by no means a courageous bunch, I gotta assume that human nature’s more noble in a crisis than it gets credit for.
And my loved ones in lower Manhattan did NOT have legs like that Beth girl. I’d punch a giant monster right in the head-sac for those gams.
January 22nd, 2008 at 11:02 am
To address some nits:
Modern cameras are capable of recording for many hours; HD and SD cameras are easily able to record the full length of this movie, even taking into account that a significant percentage of the movie was recorded on a previous charge (the flashbacks). A random sample model I researched also has 10x optical zoom and up to 27 hours continuous recording time, in low quality of course. Another random sample had over 120 minutes at full-blast.
For the monster’s unreal size and apparent invincibility. It is a movie monster, what did you expect? It only has to have a nominal relation to earthen critters or else it wouldn’t really be a monster movie. If, as suggested at the end, the monster flew through space, entered the atmosphere and crashed into the ocean, it would be of a fairly resilient constitution.
For the shot when the monster eats Hud, we are seeing it without scale reference for the first (and only) time. This being an astronomy site, we should all know about the apparently larger Moon on the horizon. The size is vaguely consistent with the first military encounter shot when the group enters the subway. Hud gets a shot from below and then falls down the stairs.
Did anyone else note that the monster looked really pissed just before it killed Hud? It was pretty deliberate about killing him and it was flapping those red thingos. I saw it as a chain of events: The bomber bombs the monster, the monster lashes out of the smoke and hits the chopper which crashes some indeterminate distance away. The monster makes its way over to the chopper while the team is incapacitated, creeps up on them (a nit?) and then deliberately kills Hud.
Considering the violent maelstrom that surrounds the monster during the rest of the movie. it is an unusual sequence and suggestive of the monster having a vindictive streak.
Finally, it is possible that the military were already aware of the monster prior to the public introduction of mayhem. It is also possible that an encounter with the military set off the rampage in the first place.
PS. This movie is a Nokia ad.
January 23rd, 2008 at 1:19 pm
nitpick #5:
The monster was from outer space and had been living and growing in the ocean off of coney island. At the end of the movie, when the video cuts back to footage of Rob & Beth at coney island and the camera is pointing towards the ocean, you can see a big splash to the right, off in the distance. A meteor perhaps?
January 23rd, 2008 at 10:15 pm
Huh… I thought there were language filters in place around here. Guess not.
January 24th, 2008 at 2:58 pm
One of the worst movies I have every seen. Don’t pay to see this movie.
January 25th, 2008 at 1:16 am
Just got home from seeing Cloverfield…. in a word, Totally Fracking awesome! Go see this movie!
January 26th, 2008 at 2:18 pm
Well there’s opinions across the spectrum here, but I’ll say for one that I really enjoyed it. I hated the Blair Witch by the way. Now I understand that it wasn’t the camera style that made Blair Witch bad, it was that I hated everything else about the movie.
The beginning of the movie sort of dragged on for my tastes. Too much drama for my tastes but maybe that was sort of the point because reality sets in and all that cheesy dilemma gets replaced with an actual problem.
Some people here say they felt like they were going to throw up. I mean was that hyperbole or did you actually get dizzy from a movie? I mean you weren’t moving yourself. I mean your inner ear should have still felt fine, so how the heck do you get dizzy watching a screen? That’s never made sense to me. How does watching something spin make you get dizzy? I also never got those “spinning tunnels” in amusement parks that made everyone around me grip the handrails on the perfectly stationary bridge. It’s like most people don’t even have an inner ear or something, or maybe there’s stronger biological bias in some people for the inner ear as balance than in others, except I don’t get sea sick on a boat either.
So anyway I’ve heard complaints about Hud “not helping” but I think they were watching some other movie. I mean the guy never had a chance to do much of anything. What did you expect him do to? I mean he saved them with the infrared mode and his scream. During that attack of the fleas he was knocked to the frickin’ ground. What sort of help is he supposed to offer when he’s trapped? Then it’s over. I find him blameless. As for him carrying the camera the whole time, yeah I found that unrealistic. However I have heard interviews on some shows of people filming during intense situations who say that psychologically looking through the camera feels like a defense mechanism, like they are somehow seperated a little from the violence. Maybe that’s what the director was going for.
January 28th, 2008 at 9:48 am
I watched cloverfield Saturday night generally I enjoyed it. I had no problems with nausea, but I have never had any problems from movies or FPS games. I have one small science nitpick about the movie, which I am surprised that nobody else seemed to have picked up on.
*** SPOILER ALERT ***
Presumably the “hammerdown” (I think that is what they called it) protocol that the military was going to implement would have been a nuke, as it looks like that is about the only thing that could stop whatever the monster was. At the start of the movie, it says that the video was found on a SD card in central park. If the military used a nuke to take out the monster, I would imagine that the EMP from the nuke would have completely erased any magnetic storage within a rather large radius.
January 28th, 2008 at 1:11 pm
After seeing this movie twice this week i have to agree with Phil. This movie is really awesome. I would give it a 4/5. I loved the open ending wich gives me (the viewer) more room for my imagenation on how it ends. Though i think they did it to make a sequell ($$ talks).
January 28th, 2008 at 9:55 pm
I love the movie.
Most of the nitpicks are right on. I think the first explosion wold have been much more effective if the light had arrived before the sound.
As for the monster being able to take the abuse it did, I have to wonder how sturdy a creature would be if it lived in the deep ocean, under that kind of pressure. I did’t see the object falling into the water in the last scene, even though the shot drew my eye to look for something in the ocean.
The camera? A super rich guy with business connections in Japan might have access to a camera better than any I’ve heard of. I have no problem there.
Hud filming while running? If the camera is large and heavy, like a TV news camera, it would be much easier to run with it on your shoulder, so the shot would still be eye-view.
EMP? I certainly hope that the Army would exhaust every other option before nuking Manhattan. The soldier who was warning them about the bombing never said nuke. Don’t you think he would have if that was the plan? It makes sense to try a an MOAB or a fuel-air explosion first, especially since the monster was showing no signs of leaving the area.
Lastly, nearly every review I’ve read mentions how unlikable all the characters are. I didn’t find that to be the case at all. I wanted to marry Marlena.
January 29th, 2008 at 1:39 am
I liked the movie as well and I generally agree w/ your nitpicks. My biggest beef with the movie that bothered me more than the leaning building was at the end when they were being evacuated in the helicopter why did the pilot choose to do a bit of sightseeing? I’m not military but it would seem to me that if you are running a evac operation you would put as much distance between yourself (and your evacuees) and the monster as possible and not loiter in the area.
January 29th, 2008 at 3:34 pm
[...] January 29, 2008 in movies, noise Cloverfield is getting pretty good reviews, generally. Some respectably geeky people liked it a lot. [...]
January 30th, 2008 at 3:09 pm
Im not sure if this has been mentioned but it seems a lot of people missed a subtle yet important part at the end of the movie. When it cuts to the couple on the ferris wheel thing at the very end you will see the camera rest on an ocean shot for a few good seconds. In the corner of the screen you see something falling from space and crashing into the ocean. This is (I think) obviously the monster. Anybody else catch that?
February 1st, 2008 at 7:58 pm
I had a problem with Sweet Young Thing In Short Dress covering all that debris covered distance in those shoes.
February 1st, 2008 at 7:59 pm
I have to admit that I agree, this is one of those love it or hate it movies. I particularly didn’t care for this movie at all. I think that the beginning turned me off to the rest of the movie.
SEVERAL of the scenes were straight out of 9/11 and honestly I found it to be disturbing and distasteful (downtown NYC being attacked in the manner that it was, ashes falling, people running into stores with clouds chasing behind them, ashened faces….ithe similarities were too much for me to handle….and frankly I was offended…..I apologize if I’m being to sensitive….I know movies are for enjoyment purposes….if you’re not from NYC and can get clips on live news footage you’ll see what I’m talking about…..it really does seem like some footage was directly acted out in scenes of the movie)….I’m not sure if that’s because I personally went thru the situation as it was happening. I feel that the monster attack could’ve been portrayed differently.
Putting all of that aside I still think it was a lame movie……much prefer the recent version of War of the Worlds and I’m not even a Tom Cruise fan….although I do LOVE Dakota!
February 1st, 2008 at 8:04 pm
…..and as for the Hud not helping comments, well he and the other dude talked about the importance of recording these events for history and then Hud procedes to film sweet-bugger-all about the attack, so this proves that the Hud character was about as useful as tits on a bull, so him not helping is only true to form
February 2nd, 2008 at 9:58 pm
Hey Phil,
Long time reader, first time poster! I agree on all of your points, the only nitpick I would add, is more of a character-thing. When they’re attacked in the subway by the giant horrible bug-creatures, they’re very quick to abandon the pipe or whatever it was they found on the ground, and later, the axe.
I think if I was remotely aware of monsters like that in the general area, or had just been attacked by them, I wouldn’t be putting down the pipe/axe/what-have-you for at least a MONTH after the attack.
February 8th, 2008 at 5:20 pm
Well I just watched this movie based on Phill’s recommendations. Well… *MILD SPOILERS AHEAD*
I can’t say I like or disliked the movie and I can’t say I am middle of the way. Parts of it I really liked, sometimes the movie made you feel part of the people in panic. But my problem is that the movie was just not fun overall. I think what ruined it for me is that it has no information at all. I mean its fine if you don’t know it for long time but you end up in the end with everyone dying and you still don’t know what happened. Where did it come from? Did they kill it in the end? How? Its like reading a book with nice story in the middle and that just wasn’t finished. Basicaly I liked it when it started and I hated it in the end.
February 14th, 2008 at 6:28 pm
[...] Phil Plait e Will Wheaton já falaram tudo o que qualquer um deveria saber [...]
June 2nd, 2008 at 5:27 pm
Ok, so this is an old post and nobody will probably read this, but. . . I just watched this movie on DVD and thought I’d put my 2¢ in the pot. I thought it was a very good movie, but unless they make a sequel that helps explain things, I think it’s a bit *too* vague to even compete with greatness. That said, my first question is: what “viral” marketing campaign are y’all referring to? I saw two advertisements for this movie and had absolutely no idea what it was about. I don’t even remember the second advertisement, but the first one made me very skeptical of it. Still, I figured it might be interesting so I picked it as my free movie from Blockbuster.
The first thing that concerned me on watching the movie was the intro that shows this as being “footage from XXX location” and I thought “Oh no! This better not be more Blair Witch crap!”. But it wasn’t. They did everything BWP completely failed at. First, it was not shot from a HandyCam. It was shot from professional-grade cameras in the mode of a HandyCam. This difference is critical; unlike the BWP, CF is a full-featured movie with all the post-processing and special effects of Star Wars or Indiana Jones, but shot from the perspective of a single person. Second, CF showed us people who were afraid of something a little more tangible than shadows. Third, CF was scripted, so it had humor and chaos, without all the “hey, what am I supposed to be doing here? ! I still haven’t advanced the plot. . .” of BWP.
I completely missed nitpick #1. Since I still have the movie sitting on my table (I’ll take it back tonight), I might go through to see it. Nitpick #2 occurred to me, but then it occurred to me that even my laptop was fully charged when I bought it from the store. #3 occurred to me repeatedly, but I did like the part at the end where he says “we have 3 seconds to the end of the tape”. Still, I don’t have a problem believing someone has better battery than my el cheapo camera, which lasts about 30 minutes with the light and IR modes being used off-and-on. Additionally, the flip-out LCD screens are a huge power draw, so my camera might last an hour or so if you only used the eye-piece. Nitpick #4 was the deal-breaker for my suspension of disbelief. We have weapons capable of blowing football fields covered in meters of concrete into the atmosphere; I have a very hard time buying that even a carpet bombing just barely slowed it down. With #5, at least it mostly moved very slowly, like you would expect a friggin huge monster to do. Because of that, though, I thought the scene where it just looms up and knocks a helicopter out of the sky seemed a bit odd. #6. . . I agree to an extent. I think it would have been consistent if he’d set the camera down in a strategically-scripted location to do more. Maybe drop the camera when he’s attacked (so it magically points right at all the action, of course) and do something besides be a wuss. But then, there are wusses out there. Three fighters and one wuss isn’t a bad random sample of a going-away-party population. By the way, he also set the camera down right before the monster bit him so he could help drag Rob away, so he helped out twice, not just once. He also pointed out the “climb the other building” plan, specifically said that he wanted to say something to his friend but didn’t know what, and probably the hardest thing of all was of not trying to hit on this girl he’s obviously got a big crush on even though this will likely be the only chance he gets (even if they all live). With #7, I wasn’t in a place with news while the WTC events were unfolding, and I really haven’t had a reason to go back and watch the videos, so I’ve no idea. However, it seems to me that a good way to replicate horrible events is to mimic actual footage of horrible events. Given that there aren’t a whole lot of skyscrapers falling down with tons of footage from all angles, the WTC event is among the best places to look. With #8, I don’t know. Yes, buildings are designed thinking most of the weight points down, not sideways, but at the same time there has to be some lateral resistance from winds. I don’t know the exact forces involved, but I’ve seen skyscrapers hit by category 4 tornados and they were still structurally sound, so the lateral strength can’t be *that* weak (the same tornados lifted huge sections of overpass and flung them hundreds of feet). I can see having one over-engineered building (out of all the other stuff the monster knocked over) that happened to not completely disintegrate from tipping sideways (I mean, look at the Tower of Pisa) and happened to be the one with the girlfriend. Plus, if that building wouldn’t take the stress, why would the other building (the one still standing)? Wouldn’t the immense sideways stress of the first building topple it too (making this double-bad-physics)?
While we’re on the subject of other movies this “copied”, I would like to say this had a several similarities to Miracle Mile in my mind, particularly towards the end. Going back to the apartment complex to save the girlfriend (though Miracle Mile’s wasn’t leaning up against another building), the rioting in the streets, coming out of the subway into the mall-like building with the bright light and military (instead of cops), the helicopter crash, and finally the boyfriend/girlfriend dying in each others arms amid the city being blown apart by (presumably) nukes all seemed very similar.
June 2nd, 2008 at 9:12 pm
Ok, so point #1 isn’t valid. Hud hears the sound first *then* pans over to look at the explosion. Additionally, given that fragments of the explosion reach the rooftop within 8 seconds of the sound, they can’t be very far away, so the delay would be fairly minimal; nothing like the space shuttle 6 miles away. Now, the impact sound when the statue’s head smacks a building (and later when rockets are hitting buildings) should have been marginally delayed, but again it’s extremely close when it hits, so it would be marginal. Also, while a couple-second delay would probably make sense to people, because of the only slight delay on everything else, I have a feeling that making it realistic would cause people to think the sound was stuttering. Still, I think it would be cool to watch a movie with realistic sound speeds to see if it seems correct or off a bit. I remember seeing an anime once where a nuke goes off in space and you hear. . . nothing (until pieces of exploded whatever start bouncing off the hull of the ship you’re viewing from), and it struck me as off, then “oh yeah, they’re in space”, so the sounds might be similar.
For the building in #8, I want to point out that the base of the building is still standing, so unless the supports snapped as the tower tipped, much of the weight is still resting on the vertical beams through to the ground. A very rough estimate says the building is leaning at a 7:1 slope (7 stories up for every 1 story sideways) at the worst point (the base is straight, then it sorta curves over into the other building, and is somewhat “merged” with the other building by virtue of all the weight crushing them together. In fact, a good deal of the weight of the leaning building would be resting on the supports from the standing building; this combined with the fact that the base is intact makes it more believable. I’m not an engineer either, but it seems within the realm of possible enough that it just might happen. Even if the building collapsed, it can only collapse so far before it has to topple the other building to go anywhere, and since Beth’s apartment was almost at the top, it’s feasible that there’s not a ton of weight on that floor, hence why it’s mostly intact.
Speaking of which: didn’t anyone else notice that Beth got pulled off a piece of rebar that was sticking *through her chest*, then she is able to run just as fast as everyone else (and actually outruns Hud), and help drag Rob right before Hud gets it? That was the first thing I thought when they showed her there: “Wow, even if they get her off she’ll be lucky to stand up, much less walk.” Especially given that she’s been there 7 hours, bleeding out, cold, scared and extremely tired.
In regards to the monster size, I count about 20 stories in the all-fours position, but then he raises up on his hind legs and nearly doubles in height. He then raises his arm which reaches 50+ stories total (I’m guessing here, since I can’t actually count the windows all the way from the ground). *Then*, he jumps to probably 100+ stories in the air to whack the chopper (which somehow isn’t crushed like a tin can), which negates his “slow, lumbering, hulking behemoth” status. Due to perspective, it’s hard to tell if the thing that got Hud is the same size as the thing elsewhere, but based on foot size, it’s probably at least 75% of the size, so if it’s smaller it’s probably a technical issue with special effects scaling rather than a different monster (the foot smashing a tank fits under a bridge easily, and is about 3/4 the height of a telephone pole while standing on the tank, and right before it gets Hud it appears to be maybe twice his height, but there are no visual cues to really measure against so depth perception is off and it could be a bit taller–also, when he looks up at the monster, he’s probably zoomed in, making it seem closer than it is).
Of course, if we made movies too realistic, we’d have to fire all the actors, since very few actors behave realistically (and the ones who do are called “bad actors”). Which is something I like about the party scene: all the mundane stuff you see in that scene is part of what makes it stand out above normal movies in realism. Like when Hud zooms in on the hot girl in the background while “filming” the good-bye speeches, or says “here, I put the camera down” but leaves it running.
Oh, and I don’t think the tail that hits the bridge is the same as the tail on the main monster. The bridge tail is thin and tentacle-y while the main monster tail is tall and flat like a fish tail. It’s just possible that the bridge tail is the monster tail sideways so it just looks thin, but I don’t think so. There *is* definately something falling in that final scene though. The “meteor” is very small on-screen and just a darker gray against the lighter gray clouds in the background, so that explains why a lot of people didn’t see it, combined with the fact that most people probably weren’t really looking (I didn’t know this was a game of Clue).
And the voice at the end does say “It’s still alive” fairly clearly when reversed, though that could be because the wikipedia site says it says that. Regardless, the forward recording sounds like gibberish and very much like a reversed sound. And now off to less nerdy things, like EQ2.
August 27th, 2008 at 1:13 pm
I don’t know if anyone addressed this, but we do know the monster came from space. At the end of the movie it shows footage taken a couple of months before the monster appears. It is at Coney Island I think, and if you look out over the water near the ship, you can see something fall from the sky and hit the water. My brother in law watched it many times trying to see it but couldn’t. We had to point it out.
Adios!
January 5th, 2009 at 12:42 pm
Regarding nitpicks 3 and 4…
The issue of whether the camera has a memory card or tape is a continuity error. It’s clearly stated in the opening moments that it’s a memory card, but during the movie, when Rob notices that it’s his camera being used, he clearly asks if the TAPE has been changed. So your nit pretty much stands.
As for where the creature comes from, it’s from space. I’ll echo what’s already been said by others. At the very end of the film, when the last footage of Coney Island is playing out, the camera pans to the ocean briefly. An object falls out of the sky in the distance, traveling from near the top right corner of the screen toward the center in a slant until it hits the ocean.
Look at the static that occurs in the switch between the two sets of footage. There’s undoubtedly some amusing stuff there. By looking at some of the static sections frame-by-frame, I managed to find a few frames from the original King Kong. There’s no telling what subliminal stuff they put in during editing.
January 8th, 2009 at 4:56 pm
Actually, regarding buildings leaning over. They can support themselves for a time if they fell in the correct manner. I don’t know if you have seen the Discovery Channel show “Destroyed in Seconds” but one of the episodes shows a building that has collapsed sideways across a street and is leaning against the opposite building. It does eventually fall, but for a time it holds its shape and I’m sure that some of the people inside could have gotten out. This was a smaller, maybe 8 – 10 story apt building and as such is probably significantly weaker, structurally, than a reinforced concrete and steel sky scraper. However, the weight is different as well. I’m not totally certain, but I don’t think it is outside of the realm of possibility. At least during a relatively short time frame.
September 11th, 2009 at 1:00 pm
There is a video of a building whose implosion went wrong, and it stayed up, albeit leaning. It’s on Youtube – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sa6z41EOt4o
December 12th, 2009 at 2:01 pm
I don’t know if this has been posted already but regards with the thing that falls into the ocean from the sky, wouldn’t millions of people notice that since there would be a giant bright object in the atmosphere? Like when astronauts come into the atmosphere, the shuttle heats up and becomes visible. So wouldn’t that be the same for the object?