A french experience of Cloverfield

---

I was lucky enough to get to see Cloverfield way before other people in france since I managed to get tickets for a preview (the movie is bound to be released officially the 1st or 2nd week of february here). I was hoping I would not get too distracted by the in-house animations and quizzes they had organized in the theater prior to the movie - Luckily, I didn't win anything, so no distraction for me

So the movie started. The first few minutes are really hard on the stomach, as expected, beause it takes some getting used to the shaky camera and the whole filming-in-bed thing. But later on, you always get a chance to look at a person talking in full frame, and get your stomach settled.

The whole going-away party and tricky romance-talks were a little too artificial and cliché for me, I found that part a little long. Of course, it's all necessary to understand why Rob would want to go back for Beth and the relationships between the main characters, but still at this point, I couldn't help yawning a little, since I didn't know about all this.

Fortunately, the action increases dramatically once the first shake happens, and THEN I really got into it. I never really got into the whole blairwitch thing, except maybe for the last few minutes. But Cloverfield, THAT is something I thought the acting was most of the time impeccable, conveying perfectly the stress and the panic of the people on screen. You feel frustrated every once in a while when the camcorder jumps from one sequence to another, without letting you kow what happened in the meantime (but hey, that's how camcorders work), and that adds to that feeling of utter panic you share with the characters.

I really thought the special fx were absolutely brilliant. it all looks so real, and like the city is really going down. Besides, the monster is never really shown completely until the end (we only get glimpses of parts of its body, or a remot helicopter view), and we don't get to see the small parasites in much details, since they're so quick and it happens mostly in the dark. It took me about 15 minutes to really get into the whole "reality" of the movie, but once I did, it really worked.

It's a bit sad though about Rob and Beth but on the other hand, it was so unrealistic that she could be up and running only minutes after having been pulled away from a steel stick perforing her chest, that it was only fair that she didn't last long


I wonder if the 50-year-old people in the theater who had obviously won their tickets in a quizz or something really enjoyed the movie ?....

This post was last modified: 01-31-2008 06:12 AM by padlock.