Cloverfield *spoilers warning*

First, the trailer:



*****

Cloverfield is a monster movie.

Whoa-kay, keep your pants on. It's... Not a Godzilla. I can't remember how Godzilla went, but if you liked it, good for you. Apparently everybody else didn't.

Let me try that again. Cloverfield isn't really a monster movie. It's a human movie. A monster movie is where you watch the show and you see that giant alien/mutant creature thing destroying the city and you have moments sometimes when you see this monster more and you actually feel for it, like when Godzilla fell and when King Kong... Fell too.

But in Cloverfield, you see the monster for a total of many ten minutes in the movie. No, seriously. Most of the movie is actually about the people, about how they run around and helping each other survive.

The movie was done in the first-person HandyCam view a la The Blair Witch Project, and even though there was a short moment in the movie when I started to get a little dizzy, it was quite well pulled off. There are scenes where the camera has to be put down and the scene has to play in the background, or when it stops and you see parts of the video of the main protagonist couple that it has recorded over.

It's not very action packed, though sufficiently filled with explosions and stuff, and I would say the most physically exciting thing the main characters did was probably that nightvision mini-monster chase in the tunnel. Or when Rob hacked one of them with a fire axe. Otherwise it was all about the main couple.

The story never went deep into the characters' backgrounds, but I thought it was reasonable. Trying to cram up too much character history would kill the realism it had did so well to portray, and what it had was enough to establish the relationships.

The character that was a joy to watch was of course the cameraman, Hud. He's one of those characters who you want to slap and root for at the same time.

All in all, Cloverfield was an awesome movie I think. If you have the time, I definitely say you watch it. It's story about a giant monster, it's a story about humanity, a story about survival and deep inside is a story about love.